Guest fountainhall Posted September 1, 2012 Posted September 1, 2012 What is happening on this Board? A box at the foot of the page tells is there are 12,225 members of gaythailand.com. Not all are active, and many probably have not visited any part of the site for a long time. Nevertheless, 12,225 is quite a healthy figure. But something has been happening in the last couple of weeks. Have you noticed the names of the latest members? Now, many of us choose log-in names which may seem a bit off the wall. But the latest members seem to have come from some weird computer programme. How else do you explain these names, all of which have become members on the last 10 days or so? ksenniaaaaaa, om0BladeSoulsb6, CmIriggigh, BafAffoxflirl, ExcickFlict, Opporyclesory08, bqujeYaaT, vyfituruwa. TaibiaSmini, mjyeqmjyedrv, attertylype, archibaldtal, Advoroexere ,dalawaitteRem, Deengeazy, regnucax, prasilaimpady, Snannainculge, ffagundos, diorinewmero. It is usual that members are vetted before the membership is confirmed. But how long does that take, I wonder, for ksenniaaaaa is still being “validated” despite having “joined” 10 days ago? Check on the most recent ones and you get a different message – “Sorry, you don't have permission for that!” along with “The member is no longer active”. Yet this is someone who joined today!!! Is the member list being systematically padded? And if so, will these ‘members’ end up making fake posts on this Board? Perhaps one of the mods will kindly tell us what is going on. Quote
Gaybutton Posted September 1, 2012 Posted September 1, 2012 Perhaps one of the mods will kindly tell us what is going on. I can answer that for you because it's precisely the same problem I had with my own board. The phony Russian bot company has found this board. I get up to 100 of these phony bot registrations daily, and often more than that. That's why I disabled automatic registration on my board and personally approve new registrations. I also require people registering legitimately to send a confirmation Email to me before I'll approve their registration - to make sure it's actually a human registering and not a bot. Every few days I do a sweep-out of the phonies. I don't know how the software works on this board, but on mine it's quite simple - one click and presto! They're gone. This board will probably have to do something similar to put a stop to it. Quote
Guest fountainhall Posted September 1, 2012 Posted September 1, 2012 Thanks for the heads-up. I know Jomtien reads the threads very regularly. If it is not already being solved, hopefully he'll pick this up and relay it to the Board owners. Quote
TotallyOz Posted September 1, 2012 Posted September 1, 2012 They know. Everyone that owns boards knows this as it is a CONSTANT issue. What happens with Invision is that they are able to register but they are flagged as spam and immediately inactivated. I can honestly say that I have closed boards for this hassle. One board I own with Invision had over 800 of these registrations in one day. It is a true PITA! It is one of the reasons that upgrades to boards is so important. Many often say if it ain't broke don't fix it. But, that is not the case with Message Boards. Each new version makes it a bit easier. Quote
Gaybutton Posted September 2, 2012 Posted September 2, 2012 What happens with Invision is that they are able to register but they are flagged as spam and immediately inactivated. Isn't there an option to delete the phonies rather than inactivate them? I prefer deleting them because I'll have an accurate membership list and my board will show an accurate number of registered members. In any case, maybe this is a good time to explain to everyone why these phony registration companies do this. I'm going to leave it to you to do the explaining. You explained it to me before, but you know much more about it than I do. Quote
TotallyOz Posted September 2, 2012 Posted September 2, 2012 I prefer to keep the inactive and that way they can't register for the board again under the same e-mail or username. but, part of the reason they are inactive is many of them NEVER verify their emails as they are fake. The reason the companies do this is to help their clients with SEO. SEO is Search Engine Optomization and it is what helps a company get high up in the google, yahoo, bing rankings. One way they do this is by getting "links" from legitimate sites over to their site. For each of these links on different pages, it helps them. If the site is ranked high in its own SEO and / or had lots of original content, it helps those companies. So, they try every method they can in order to get those links back to their site. Each link helps them to move higher in the rankings. Some sites, like gaythailand.com have authority. It is long established, it has constantly changing content, it has been registered a long time and it is at the top of google for several prime keywords. Therefore, spammers try to get on the site any way possible. Most try to get in the forums as it is one of the few places that allows "back links" to other sites. It is a multi billion dollar industry. I hope that helps. Quote
Guest jomtien Posted September 2, 2012 Posted September 2, 2012 I just wish all those spammers would stop emailing me and asking for Gaybuttons phone number. Quote
ChristianPFC Posted September 2, 2012 Posted September 2, 2012 When I post something on blogs, there is usually a "captcha" to verify I am a person. That would be an easy way to prevent automated registrations on forums? http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA Quote
Guest thaiworthy Posted September 2, 2012 Posted September 2, 2012 I just wish all those spammers would stop emailing me and asking for Gaybuttons phone number. Send them to me. I have his number, but the line is always busy. I assume he is chatting up other Thai boys. Your spammer friends may have a long wait. Quote
Moses Posted September 3, 2012 Posted September 3, 2012 First of all: the only reason for fake registration is possibility to setup URL of own site in forum's profile. So, the easiest way don't be target and honey pot for spammer is to add small tag code into memeber home page URL on profile's page which will make forum useless for spammer. rel="nofollow" also for russian searchengine Yandex you should "cover" the same URL with paired tag: <noindex> put member's home page URL here </noindex> spammers exchange by database of forums and trade it... a few times per year owners "clean" from DB useless addresses of forums... if your forum is in DB then flow of spamm registration will grows day by day also is very important to clean from forum fake members and fake registration cuz even at inactive state it still reachable for google-bot and valuable for spammer by this reason... Quote
Moses Posted September 3, 2012 Posted September 3, 2012 I forgot to mention one good way to cut false registration: add hidden field at registration form and short script for validation. Users can't see hidden fields, but bots read code of page and they "see' it and fill. So validation will be very easy - if field is filled - then it is fake registration by bot-software and it isn't necessary to add this user to forum's data base. Quote
Guest joseph44 Posted September 4, 2012 Posted September 4, 2012 I know of other forums of which the moderators do actually need a few hours per day to get rid of all the spam-registrees. Mostly from USA, Nigeria and Russia. Talking about it.........maybe it's me or my browser, but I can't use any button "home - city guide - my account - etc." I seem to have 6 messages, but I can't get to them. Quote
