Public Service Announcement: Account Activation

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Allan
Posts: 933
Joined: 30 Aug 2003 20:44
Location: Victoria BC

Public Service Announcement: Account Activation

Post by Allan » 24 Jul 2013 18:06

As a reminder, for the passed year (or so) I've been manually vetting every new member to the site. They request an account, I get notified and manually email them; once they reply, I activate the account. I did this to try to stem a tidal wave of spam; the system was getting hammered and fast becoming unusable.

When I took manual control over new account verification, I also implemented new spam prevention controls in the application form; new users are asked one of several questions that has a specific, footbag-related answer. Between these two measures, I've happily processed dozens of new users into the system.

Since I started it, only a few applications have not responded, and that doesn't necessarily mean those people were spammers. The questions seem to be doing the job. I do wonder how many legit new people haven't been able to answer the question(s), but I honestly don't think it's likely to have happened at all.

Were I more thorough, I'd paste the questions here. Ha. Got a question for the form? Email me, please.

Given that 99% of the new applications I've processed have been legit, I think it's time for me to stop being paranoid and automate the process again. I've just flipped the switch back to email-only verification of new accounts. New users will still have to reply to an email to get write access, but that email will be automated.

Please keep a close eye on the forums. If you see *any* spam, anywhere, please email me immediately: allan@footbag.org

Thank you for reading.

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