Account registration temporarily suspended (now active again)

[Hellfire_WZ]

I've had a couple of very persistant spammers trying to register accounts here over the last couple of days, clearly too f*cking thick to realise that I'm going to delete them every single time. As a result, I'm temporarily suspending new account registrations. I will let you know in due course when it's active again.

[Snakenator1]

I cannot believe we have people who are so stupid that they never register the first warning given to them. *sigh* right down thick in every manner, Thanks for this heads up Charlie.

[AGSys]

Good to know you're dealing with dem spammin' dickheads. But are you sure there wasn't any other alternative that may have still allowed for new acc/ regs? I don't know much about preventing spam so just asking.

[Dirtbag]

I've seen places use a guest sub forum for registrations, so they can post/apply in it to get a proper account registered when you give access to them individually. Don't know if it's possible on VBulletin but it's just a suggestion if you're looking for a way to solve the problem until a better solution is found.

[rdmx]

If they're automated spammers, I recommend adding a question and answer field to the registration page. Cut down on the majority of spam registrations to a board I used to manage.

For this forum, I'd perhaps recommend "Name one of the teams in any WipEout game".

[docfo4r]

I would give a generic question if we do this. Maybe we have people who want to sign up here but don't know anything about WipEout yet so asking them for something about WipEout [even it is a very simple question] might appear daunting.

[Hellfire_WZ]

Q&A verification has been set up since 2008, but it seems it was not active. I'll see if I can get it running.

Registration is now open again

[dreadofmondays]

well the idea is not to put up a knowledge barrier; it's just to prove they are human (humans can just google the answer, bots cannot)

[Rapier Racer]

You had better have that knowledge if you forget your password though, as it does indeed ask you to name a team! I'm sure any registered member could manage that though

[infoxicated]

I got asked that recently when I couldn't remember my password.

Hoist by one's own petard!

Charlie, if the spammers are coming from the same IP range you can just add that to the block list in the site options.

You need to be careful how far up the IP chain you go, though - for a while (and I'm sure anyone who was around 5 years ago can work out why) I inadvertently blocked Australia!

[blackwiggle]

Yeah, I remember that
I think you had blocked a certain ISP, which unfortunately for me was also the one I was using, and had recently recommended to the person you were trying to block.
[Ironically he hardly ever plays video games any more ]