Banning of free email accounts

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Should free email accounts be banned from registering in the new year to stop spammers?

Yes
5
23%
No
17
77%
 
Total votes: 22

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Xaccers
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Banning of free email accounts

Post by Xaccers »

We've been getting more spammers than usual slipping past our state of the art spammer spotting system, mostly from spammers using free accounts such as gmail and yahoo.

Should we ban these outright in the new year?
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Post by Paul-R »

Well I've voted no as ever since I waved goodbye to Virgin earlier this year I've been using my Yahoo account as my main one.

Perhaps if you can arrange it so that only registration is affected that might be OK.
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Post by myglaren »

I'm not happy with it as a lot of mail accounts linked to an ISP are absolute rubbish and never used.
Attempting to sign up with one is unlikely to be achieved easily if at all.

I cite my wife's Post Office account, which is completely useless. she hasn't been able to use it for over a year and talking to the PO has all the benefits of banging your head on a wall.
AOL falls pretty much into the same category and TalkTalk is hardly any better.

In comparison with some other active forums there isn't that much and while it can be a bit of an irritation it is generally dealt with fairly rapidly.
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Post by CitroJim »

I agree Steve. The day of the ISP e-mail address is virtually over now and with it POP3. Hardly anyone knows what POP3 is these days...

Then we have those like me who run their own email.

Fact is, no longer can the provenience of a potential new member be determined by email address...

I say stick as we are and remain ever vigilant..
Jim

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Post by Paul-R »

To be honest, my experience in another forum is that the problem is the other way. When activation emails are sent out Yahoo, Hotmail, etc have a nasty habit of traeting them as spam.
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Post by myglaren »

Paul-R wrote:To be honest, my experience in another forum is that the problem is the other way. When activation emails are sent out Yahoo, Hotmail, etc have a nasty habit of traeting them as spam.
Exactly - they just disappear like smoke on some systems.
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Post by Julz »

from my experience really serious spammers tend to use e-mails from their own hastily registered domains so banning webmail addresses wouldn't solve the problem.
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Post by spider »

I think we can reduce it a bit more though.

Spammers love phpbb2 because it exposes the website url and this is asked for at registration time, so Google index's these = more hits for the spammer. Consider chopping this out the registration template (to not show this on the registration form) and possibly hide it in profile view from guests.

Adding another Captcha will help. A random one (not the built in one, bots can read that!) will go a long way too. ;)
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Post by pug_owner2002 »

I was going to click yes, but then realised that when I signed up many years ago I used (and am still using) a Yahoo webmail account. So have had to vote No.
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Post by reblack68 »

I've gone through half a dozen ISPs in my decade or so online but I still have my original Yahoo address. I don't even know how to get email on my current ISP.

I've always found Yahoo more convenient anyway, it's just there when I've bought a new PC, want to check my mail from the phone, when I change ISP, when I'm using a friend's or public PC etc.
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Post by davewithington »

I've never used the mail addresses supplied over the years by cable and Wireless, Virgin etc, as they can't be accessed when I'm not at home.

I've recently changed from Yahoo to Google - less "business" on the home page - so I'd not be able to acess the useful information and sparkling wit on the forum if web based addresses were banned, so no, please don't
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