Is it possible....?

I think Matthew mentioned a captcha-type thing (those images of letters that need to be typed in), and that might also work if it's in the works, if not on account creation then maybe also for posting in forums and on articles. (Perhaps anyone with reasonably old accounts combined with a few un-blocked posts wouldn't need to be tested anymore.) There have still been at least 18 forum spam posts in the past 8 days, so I'm not sure if it's slowing down. I think we're just seeing a few people being very quick at flagging them before others show up.

I think you're probably right on that one izogi, I know I have flagged quite a few recently and so have others, still it seems better than it was.....!

My kids belong to an unrelated forum with a very interesting answer to the captcha issue. Instead of a "copy this into the box if you can read it" it is a simple verbal maths query. Something like "if I had a dozen oranges gave half of them away and ate one how many do I have left" Bots are better at reading the normal captchas than we are but it takes a human to work out that the answer is 5 the site is www.stardestroyer.net

Matthew could we also make it a condition of joining that you have to have a profile of some sort....? I know this won't deter nor affect ths spammers, but for those genuinely wishing to become a part of the community it would be helpful if they added a bit of background info so we'd know who we were actually talking to in conversations........just a thought..!

Hi everybody, There is an email verification procedure. Once I've picked up the pieces of the office after today's rumble, I'll check that you have to have a verified address before posting. Yes there is a CAPTCHA system already. Spammers are filling them in correctly (it blocks robot spammers, not human spammers). Regarding profiles, I don't really like rules and I'd prefer to *encourage* people to fill in their profiles. Enforcing it can simply mean people don't sign up. I'll look into this....

Hope all is well Matthew and I'm sure you've got the security thing under control. I take your point about having rules regarding profiles but I'm not sure how to 'encourage' people to fill one out..????