Essentially, the MOD asks potential new members a simple question which any real person wanting to join will know the answer to. If they ignore it or get it wrong, they are shown the door.
Admins will still watch all new registrations carefully and whenever the question is compromised by a spammer, it will be changed.
Additionally, thanks to our webmaster doing some sterling work, Admins now receive an e-mail giving details of the spam registration attempt like this:
Please DON'T click on the link above! It is likely to be malicious.User 'xxxxx' has failed to answer the Textual Confirmation question correctly. It might be a spambot, therefore the registration is rejected.
--
User: xxxxxxx
E-mail domain: @xxxx.com
Website: http://groups.google.com/group/celebs-movs-npt/web
Signature:
Best clips in the net
--
Data provided by the server:
REMOTE_ADDR=68.45.71.76
HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0d; Windows NT)
ENCODING=iso-8859-1
This enables Admins to help genuine members who have difficulty in registering as well.
A genuine, successful registration also e-mails the Admins to alert them to the need to activate them. On successful activation the new member receives an e-mail to confirm they are now active and can post.
Another benefit of the e-mail system now working correctly is that Admins can now be collectively reached by sending an e-mail to:
forum(at)frenchcarforum.co.uk
The activation of new members by an Admin will continue for the foreseeable future as the new system cannot defeat a clever spammer intent on registering by going through the registration process manually. However, it does seem to be good at keeping the majority of spambots at bay. That is, until they become more clever and sophisticated.
