Spammers!

Actually, before I "discouraged" the spammer, I added an Avatar for them. This particular photo is of a former head of the Republican Party in Maine, whom I didn't like.

 

I just deleted about 25 accounts that were created in the last couple of days. Every one of them used a handle rather than a first and a last name, and they used handles that are more common with spammers than real people, consisting of random letters and numbers (such as velyqpo and viwetpr2226), and every one of them used a Gmail address, also common with spammers. After one of them had posted spam to the forum, I went in to delete that one account, and found all the others, so I just deleted them all.

It's not uncommon for someone to create an account using a handle rather than a first and a last name. Usually, I will just message them, explaining the first and last name rule, and let them know how they can change their member name, but these looked too suspicious. In the event that someone you know mentions that they had created an account here, but it was deleted, ask them to create another one using a first and a last name, and they'll be fine. I didn't ban the IP or anything.

There are a few other relatively new members who are using handles too, which don't look suspicious, so I'll be messaging or emailing them, as I normally do. Plus, there are one or two that do look suspicious but they haven't done anything wrong yet so I'll wait and see.

 

We've had a whole lot of spammers signing up over the past couple of days. Although only one posted in the forums, the others were getting their links in their profiles. As you know, I don't mind your having links in your profile, or adding links to any web sites you might have in your signature, but that's because you're part of this forum. But when someone is using a handle, has not posted to the forum, and has links in his profile, that's a spammer, and I've removed a bunch of them, including five within minutes of their creating a member account.

I also left a few of them after changing their member names and making sure they no longer had access to their accounts because that sometimes keeps them from just creating another account. At some later date, I'll delete their member accounts. In other words, I can ban the IP or a range of IPs but if I delete the member account, the ban is also gone and they can simply create another member account.

I also deleted several spammers who I had banned a while back, so the numbers have gone up and down a lot, but most of them weren't real people, and they were all IP numbers from India, China, and the damned Russians. I blame Trump.

 

This won't be anything that any of you will see but I've changed the CAPTCHA for the forum. The CAPTCHA is the thing you have to enter in to prove that you're a human being while signing up for a new account here. There are a few options used, and I think I was using the blurred letter one, which I don't like myself because I often have trouble reading them or - even more often - they look clear to me, but the CAPTCHA tells me that I was wrong anyhow.

Over the past few days, we've had so many new spam accounts that I am thinking that one of the automated spam systems had found their way though the CAPTCHA, as occurs from time to time. Because several forums use one of several of the same CAPTCHAs, eventually they get imported into the automated systems. Anyhow, I am getting tired of banning or deleting spam accounts so I switched it to a custom CAPTCHA that allows me to enter questions and answers into the bank of CAPTCHA questions. Since I am writing them myself, they won't be in any automated spam systems, so at least our spammers will be actual human beings.

These are simple questions like...

Four minus 2 equals...
What is the capital of the US state of Arizona?
How many letters are in the following word: twelve
Sweden is between Finland and what other country?
Which number is the word "triple" associated with?

I can add as many as I like, and the CAPTCHA will choose one of them at random to present to new members signing up. I can give it as many possible correct answers as I want. For example, for the first one here, correct answers might include:

2
2.
two
two.
Did I say I was a math major?

Someone may not know what the capital of Arizona is, or even which country is on the other side of Sweden, but these are things that can be easily looked up. As an added bonus, really stupid or really lazy people won't be able to get in either.

This doesn't affect anyone who is already here. I am just mentioning it because I didn't have anything else to do at the moment, and because I have had some fun entering questions into the CAPTCHA test bank.