Hello

[tanked]

Hello, just thought I'd introduce myself, I'm a migrant from bsdforums like most others. I was wondering, what technology are we using to keep spam from these forums?

[kienjakenobi]

That is an excellent question!



Image verification during registration (BSDForums.org used a less secure method of this)
Email verification (BSDForums.org had this as well)
Active users who can delete and ban usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses. Both administrators and moderators can do all of these things (Which means there are currently five active people who can do this). However, at BSDForums.org moderators could not ban users and the only person who could was obviously inactive.
New: A required question during registration which requires choosing from a set of check boxes, something bots are not usually programmed to handle.


We are also speculating on using several other methods of spam protection, but these measures should be adequate for a while.

[kienjakenobi]

Note: Email verification is not currently activated because the messages are probably landing in the spam box for a lot of people. This is being worked on by Carpetsmoker.

[mtx]

Note: Email verification is not currently activated because the messages are probably landing in the spam box for a lot of people. This is being worked on by Carpetsmoker.

mine landed in Inbox. that's a good thing to notice.

all the best,
v

[marcolino]

Note: Email verification is not currently activated because the messages are probably landing in the spam box for a lot of people. This is being worked on by Carpetsmoker.I thought this might have been the case for me, but it turns out the e-mail was sent 24 hours after I created the account. Is the long wait another anti-spam measure?

[stukov]

I received the messages pretty fast from this forum. My anti-spam is OpenBSD's spamd + SpamAssassin. I might even say that was faster than bsdforums.org....

[vermaden]

We are also speculating on using several other methods of spam protection, but these measures should be adequate for a while.

This suggestion also seems pretty good:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5083808.html#5083808

[Carpetsmoker]

I think we should stop worrying about spam for now and start worrying when it becomes and issue, because right now it isn't.

There was a CAPTCHA on BSDForums, but those can be "cracked" and having seriously outdated forum software doesn't help either.
There are many pretty large forums/sites which only use CAPTCHA and seem to be spam-free, so this *should* be enough for now, when and IF spam creeps up we can take additional measures.

[tanked]

Who is the owner of bsdforums.org? I always found it odd that the front page had not been updated with any news items since the beginning of 2006. Why did the owner/founder abandon the site?

[Carpetsmoker]

Who is the owner of bsdforums.org?
whois bsdforums.org

Why did the owner/founder abandon the site?

Ask him.

[lvlamb]

Domain blacklisting puts legit email addresses and domains out of reach.
I had several people stealing my legit email adress, one at my default ISP, the other at freeservers.com (which is not free but paid for services).
After a while, my default ISP took measures (and disabled some ports, hence it is not an Internet Services Providers anymore), while at freeservers.com I had to change my user account and passwords at least every day.
Don't know if they got rid of that annoyance, I cancelled my account.
Banning a domain could cut 40% of one contry's legit users (at least the case in my country for each of the top two providers).

As far as I see, this forum has a nice set of identification features.
It wouldn't bother me at all to confirm, say once a month, by typing the words from a *.png file, or to be force logged out ( a la Yahoo) once in a while.

[tanked]

whois bsdforums.org



Ask him.

Ah yes, a classic UNIX forum answer.

Bravo.

[phoenix]

How do you expect us to answer this question, when we are not the owners of the site, nor able to get in contact with him?

[tanked]

How do you expect us to answer this question, when we are not the owners of the site, nor able to get in contact with him?

"No idea, we don't own that site and we've not been able to contact him."

Kinda like that.

[18Googol2]

Ah yes, a classic UNIX forum answer.

Bravo.

Actually, not really. If the owner purchases Whois Privacy, the whois query is close to useless.