New anti-spam measures

Official SharpCap and Forum announcements
Post Reply
User avatar
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 13173
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:52 pm
Location: Vale of the White Horse, UK
Contact:

New anti-spam measures

#1

Post by admin »

Hi folks,

Recently we have had an increase in the number of spam posts being made to the forums - particularly in the form of people who make new accounts and then post hundreds of new posts full of advertising links (often with titles stolen from existing posts). Due to the way our forums are set up, users will never see these junk posts, since posts from a newly registered user do not appear until approved by admin or one of the moderators.

Even though the posts don't appear to normal forum users, cleaning up takes up admin and moderator time.

To limit the scale of the problem, I have just tweaked the forums so that newly registered users can only make *ONE* post initially. Once that first post has been approved by an admin or moderator, they will be able to make more posts without any restrictions. If the first post is full of advertising links or other junk, they can expect to have their account deleted and their IP address banned.

Another happy side effect of this change is that it should prevent the odd duplicate post we get from a new user who doesn't spot the message about their first post needing moderation and posts the same content again :)

This should not affect existing users (with an existing post count of 1 or more). It should also not make any difference to new users unless they try to post a second time before their first post is approved. If anyone does spot any new problems related to posting that could be related to this change, please let me know (via private message or using the 'contact us' link at the bottom of the page).

thanks,

Robin
Post Reply