Disallowed email addresses - gmail.com

[AUbicycles]

Hi,

In the last few months dodgy spammers have been using spam robots to register hundreds of dodgy accounts here. These have to be manually deleted and to put a stop to it, gmail.com email accounts are no longer able to be used to register on bicycles.net.au. (Seems that Google hasn't got this email account abuse under control).

We still allow email account from other free providers such as yahoo and hotmail.

Existing users will gmail account will not be affected.

--

Also... don't forget that when you register it would be great to write 1 post within the first month as we delete old accounts with not posts after about 1 or two months.

[sogood]

Is that the only way to stop these? Or is this just a temporary arrangement until this group of spammers have calmed down? Given the popularity of Gmail, I suspect this will inconvenience a lot of potential new users.

[AUbicycles]

I understand... I have let it run a few months and the time required to remove the accounts (about 5 a day) adds up over time. There is no easy to filter pattern which would allow me to solve it.

An update to the latest forum version is on my schedual... which adds another point - the currentmodifications that have been made to prevent spammers... will they still work with the updated forum?

If the new version allows me to automatically solve this issue, obviously no problems allowing gmail accounts again. Maybe it gives me some time to participate a bit more rather than dustpan and brush duties

Cheers
Christopher

[Kalgrm]

Can an active member later udate their profile to a gmail account? In other words, if someone joins up today with a non-gmail account and posts for a while, are they able to later change their profile to point to a gmail account?

Cheers,
Graeme

[mikesbytes]

Can an active member later udate their profile to a gmail account? In other words, if someone joins up today with a non-gmail account and posts for a while, are they able to later change their profile to point to a gmail account?

Cheers,
Graeme

Graeme, why don't you test it out by creating another user.

[Crawf]

Migrating to phpbb3 any time soon?

[Kalgrm]

Can an active member later udate their profile to a gmail account? In other words, if someone joins up today with a non-gmail account and posts for a while, are they able to later change their profile to point to a gmail account?

Cheers,
Graeme

Graeme, why don't you test it out by creating another user.

Okay, tried it and failed. When you try to update the profile, it comes up with an error message telling you the email address has been banned.

This is going to be a problem for me if I ever want to make a real update to my profile (like a change of signature). The email address will prevent me making any changes to my profile from now on.

So if you don't like being told to "think outside the double triangle", it's time to toughen up!

Cheers,
Graeme

[Mulger bill]

Bloody shame to block potential members like this, but if it makes life hard for spammers...

Maybe Gmail will lift their game?

Shaun

[ShanDog]

a temporary solution is to get one of those free online email forwarding services. Try this

[heavymetal]

An update to the latest forum version is on my schedual... which adds another point - the current modifications that have been made to prevent spammers... will they still work with the updated forum?

Most of the anti spam modifications available for phpBB2 are available for phpBB3.

The process involves uninstalling the current mods, cleaning the mod's fields from the database (there is a tool for it floating around), running the version 3 upgrade and conversion on the DB, and then installing the same anti spam mods.

This gives you the 10 posts, 7 day option back.

Kev.

[AUbicycles]

Thanks Kev

That was my hope... now to find a big block of time to do this all as I often get stabbing feedback when the forum is offline too long !!