Posting now permitted by registered users only

[chris]

Due to the amount of spam on the forum recently, I've changed the forum permissions so that you must be a registered user to post a new topic or reply to an existing one. It's an unfortunate inconvenience, but ultimately better for the forum, I think. Feel free to post your thoughts on the new policy here.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Its the same policy I enforce at Celestialvisions and I dont see it as an inconvenience but like you said a deterrant from unwelcome advertisements....

Guests generraly are happy enough to read the forums and generally join to post more often than not...

I personally dont think this will change the atmosphere as an unwelcome forum imho...

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

No complaints from me. Thanks for doing this!

[Bob Hegwood]

Muchly appreciated here...

Thanks, Chris.

Take care, Bob

[dirkpitt]

On another phpBB forum I frequent, they also have the same problem of spam, except these are coming from
registered users with suspicious sounding names like "Get_Verizon" or "porn_bus". Apparently there are spambots
out there who can automatically register too. I can't remember if this forum takes the extra step of "click
on this link we sent you in your email to authenticate" but if not then it might be something to consider.

[Bob Hegwood]

I can't remember if this forum takes the extra step of "click
on this link we sent you in your email to authenticate" but if not then it might be something to consider.

Now there's a good idea. I'm all for it...

Take care, Bob

[UncleSpam]

Since anything that can be abused, will be abused... well I guess it came down to this...

I also agree. This is a good way to keep things sane.


Bogdan

[Cham]

Finally ! Thanks Chris !

[Don. Edwards]

Well I am all for it as well. I was just surprised that the forum hadn't been harder years ago.
I also think that the email verification would be another nail in their coffin.
It would help keep the bots out, at least till someone creates a bot smart enough to reply to the email verification. That?€™s when we all have to start worrying.

BTW,
I'm back!

Don. Edwards

[Harry]

I also think that the email verification would be another nail in their coffin.
It would help keep the bots out, at least till someone creates a bot smart enough to reply to the email verification. That?€™s when we all have to start worrying.

Isn't email verification already in place? Anyway, replying to e-mail (or AFAIR "clicking" on a link sent via email) isn't hard for a bot to do. I'll really start to worry when they pass turing-tests (these tests where you have to enter some alphanumeric sequence shown completely distorted as an image is a step in that direction).

Harald

[Michael Kilderry]

So that's why they have those distorted number security codes on certain forums. Could this be implemented into the Celestia forums?Just wondering.

Michael Kilderry

[andersa]

So that's why they have those distorted number security codes on certain forums. Could this be implemented into the Celestia forums?

While every forum could implement it, I'm not sure we'd want them to. Optical character recognition (OCR) involves no magic, just a little image analysis, and if those images are effective against robots today, it's only because they aren't yet common enough to warrant the cost of creating and deploying the analysis software. When they are found everywhere, spammers certainly won't lack the funding for beating them. Why provide them with that incentive, if we can solve our problem with less drastic measures?

As long as we can't provide any effective deterrent against spamming (such as automatic retaliation aimed at the spammer's ISP), our only option is to try to delay the flood by gradually raising the barrier according to an unpredictable schedule. Most of the delay we see isn't due to spammers having trouble circumventing our security measures, but rather due to most Internet users not even implementing the security measures available to them.

The best way to render some medicine ineffective against the germ it's supposed to kill, is to serve that medicine for breakfast, lunch and dinner to the entire population whether they need it or not.

Besides, I prefer not having to spend an ever-increasing part of my time convincing every single computing device that yes, I am indeed a human and not a robot, now please let me make that phone call or mail that letter...

[Butch Pa]

I don't think it's a hassle at all. If the topic is of interest to people I don't think they mind registering.

[rthorvald]

Besides, I prefer not having to spend an ever-increasing part of my time convincing every single computing device that yes, I am indeed a human and not a robot, now please let me make that phone call or mail that letter...

Well, look forward to the day micropayments becomes practical - i.e. one-click. That??s all it will take... One penny to register for life: nothing to an individual, but absolutely prohibitively expensive for a spammer bot...

-rthorvald

[Harry]

One penny to register for life: nothing to an individual, but absolutely prohibitively expensive for a spammer bot...-rthorvald

You can think of "Visual Confirmation" as something similar - you pay by performing some kind of computation (character recognition) which is easy and fast for a human, but difficult and CPU costly for a bot.

Harald

[andersa]

Well, look forward to the day micropayments becomes practical - i.e. one-click. That??s all it will take... One penny to register for life: nothing to an individual, but absolutely prohibitively expensive for a spammer bot...

Why would it be expensive to the spammers? They already know how to distribute the cost of Internet access, by having thousands of poorly secured machines act as zombies sending junk mail on their behalf. If they can penetrate weak-or-nonexistant security, install their own proxy software, identify the proper mail relay server to use and obtain target addresses from a local address book, then emulating a mouse click to make a micropayment from the account of the penetrated computer will hardly be a major obstacle to them.

Since spammers have access to and use the very same communication modes as regular users, you can't really make things hard for spammers without making them hard for regular users too. That may be an acceptable compromise, depending on the actual approach chosen. As for myself, I prefer methods that discriminate between different groups of users, requiring only some users to laboriously identify themselves while letting others in with minimal effort, rather than applying the very same restrictions against everybody, spammers and users alike. Users from a "clean" group or neighbourhood deserve a reward for keeping it clean.

Fighting spam by making regular communication more expensive is somewhat like fighting drug abuse by making injection needles more expensive; that kind of reasoning depends on the drug addict never stealing or borrowing somebody else's needle. Neither are spammers above the conduct of thiefs.

[Butch Pa]

I'm afraid that until we can start to lock these spammers and hackers and data thiefs up and throw away the key we will continue to have all these problems.

What sort of deterent is it when people read about one of the perpetrators who stole the data on 135,000 people being given a lousey 16 months in jail. That's it ?!? Steal that much data and that's your only punishment? I can imagine the other scumbags reading about that and saying to themselves; 'hum might as well try that, chance to make a lot of money (or cause damage) and even if I get caught they will only slap my little hand'. That to me is a joke.

[andersa]

I'm afraid that until we can start to lock these spammers and hackers and data thiefs up and throw away the key we will continue to have all these problems.

On the contrary, singling out a few misbehaving individuals and making an example of them by awarding them ridiculously harsh prison sentences for doing what half the community may be doing secretly is the absolutely worst way to educate Internet users about basic ethics. It won't teach people that spamming is bad (many of them know that already anyway); it will teach them that getting caught spamming is bad, which is a message entirely different from the one you'd want to send out.

And while there may be legal controversies surrounding GNU/Linux and free software in general, sending Linus Torvalds and other hackers to jail for creating it isn't a very appropriate response to that problem. I'm sure those controversies can be resolved in an orderly manner around a discussion table.

This is getting off-topic with respect to Celestia forum registration procedures, and I suggest that further discussion about spamming in general be moved to the Purgatory section.

[Helmut2005]

Test

[Gjmorvillo]

Recently every forum and guest book I have dealt with had so much Spam, it became a futile effort.