Temporary SPAM solution

spurrymoses · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:40 pm Post subject: Temporary SPAM solution

I've tightened up registration on this forum, in a quick band-aid response to the overwhelming problem of SPAM. You will get this message below, when you register. Which means, the administrator will get an email, and decide whether to activate you.

Your account has been created. However, this forum requires account activation by the administrator. An e-mail has been sent to them and you will be informed when your account has been activated

It's probably nice that this forum is small enough to do this - at least until I can get a SPAM solution back up and running. The Japanese question thing, was 100% effective, so I'll be looking to get it back, somehow.

spurrymoses · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:12 pm Post subject:

Not that I expect anyone to read this before they register but it would make it easier if you indicate that your a real human (eg any Japanese text in any of the fields) when you register.

Keith · JLPT Helper Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 191 Location: Japan

If you are going to stick with this forum software, which I assume you are, you should find a mod that implements CAPTCHA. Then registrants will have to type in the alphanumeric code that was randomly produced and embeded into a difficult to read graphic.

spurrymoses · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 12:32 am Post subject:

I've implemented a different SPAM solution. It's just a bit simpler than the last one. You have to answer a simple question like this:

What is 'book' in Japanese? (use hiragana, kanji or romaji)

Hopefully that question is easy enough for anyone who wants to register.

Questions are chosen at random (there is more than one) so it will be difficult for robot spammers to get around this. I'm getting 10 or 20 robots registering per day lately, so I had to do something.