User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

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MegaMav
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Posts: 4694
Joined: April 27th, 2007, 5:00 am
THS Average: 225
Sport Average: 200
Positive Axis Point: 5.5 Over & 1 Up
Speed: 16.0 MPH - Camera
Rev Rate: 375
Axis Tilt: 14
Axis Rotation: 45
Heavy Oil Ball: Radical - Informer
Medium Oil Ball: Brunswick - Fearless
Light Oil Ball: Radical - Bonus Pearl
Preferred Company: Radical Bowling Technologies
Location: Malta, NY

User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by MegaMav »

Members (and future members),

After receiving countless emails over the past couple of years from users who never received their activation email, and wanted to register for the forum, I've decided to change the way we register for the forum. To make it easier on people to register and less work for me manually activating accounts for people who never got the activation email.

This week when BrunsMike aka Audiostylz signed up, and had problems I had enough. So I turned off the registration emails. Everything has been good, until this morning I noticed a spammer. I squashed him like an old cigarette.

We were using reCaptcha on the registration page, that was hacked in 2010, worldwide.
Then I switched to peoplesign, that didnt work all that well.
Over the past year I've been using Question and Answer bowling trivia questions.

I had a pool of about 20 questions, most of them I checked against google to see if the answers were easily found. I just checked today, and 2 of them were, so I eliminated them and added 30 more questions that were not found on google, front page of the search anyway.

We have a total of 50 google ambiguous bowling trivia questions that can be answered by looking up the balls in question on BowlingBallVault.com.

Users will be granted instant access to the forum if they get the question correct in 3 attempts.
Sessions will be locked out if you get the question wrong 3 times.

Note: I reviewed inactive accounts between January 1st 2013 and today.
If your account was inactive and I deemed you to NOT be a potential spammer (IP from Russia, Poland, Brazil, China, etc) your account has been activated. All pre-2013 accounts that were inactive have been deleted. Registering again is required for these accounts, those usernames are still available.

Heres to more members on this great forum for 2013 and beyond.
Lets keep it spammer free.

Your trusty (and crafty) Administrator,

-Eric
JohnP
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Location: Hawesville KY/Tell City IN

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by JohnP »

Thanks for the hard work to keep the site the best in bowling. -- JohnP
learnmore
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Posts: 139
Joined: March 10th, 2011, 11:33 pm

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by learnmore »

thats a lot of work, we all appreciate it
User avatar
MegaMav
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 4694
Joined: April 27th, 2007, 5:00 am
THS Average: 225
Sport Average: 200
Positive Axis Point: 5.5 Over & 1 Up
Speed: 16.0 MPH - Camera
Rev Rate: 375
Axis Tilt: 14
Axis Rotation: 45
Heavy Oil Ball: Radical - Informer
Medium Oil Ball: Brunswick - Fearless
Light Oil Ball: Radical - Bonus Pearl
Preferred Company: Radical Bowling Technologies
Location: Malta, NY

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by MegaMav »

Thanks guys, it was for the betterment of everyone.
Not one spammer all week, I must have done something right this time.
lkdelta
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Posts: 26
Joined: January 31st, 2010, 2:14 am
THS Average: 218
Speed: 15 ish
Axis Tilt: 20*
Axis Rotation: 10*
Heavy Oil Ball: teal rhino, c300 quake
Medium Oil Ball: natural or burgandy hammer
Light Oil Ball: ebonite turbo urethane, Amf bobcat
Preferred Company: hamr,c300,ebon.. not LN 1
Location: central ny

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by lkdelta »

learnmore wrote:thats a lot of work, we all appreciate it
Not one spammer all week, I must have done something right this time
Great job and congratulations
no matter what I ask, the worst that can happen is "sorry, can't help", so I ask away...as always THANKS for your time!
btaylor
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Posts: 16
Joined: October 4th, 2011, 5:25 am

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by btaylor »

Eric, thanks for the work you do on/for this site.

Your frustrations are totally understandable as I am too an admin for a forum. The site used to be open to all until we got hacked. Had to spend a couple days going through all the PHP code looking for the hooks.

Locked up registrations like you at that point where a response to an email was required to activate their account. I would also track host IPs that may be foreign countries who I would ban. This has lessened overseas accounts from trying to get in, but created another problem.

The user email has an embedded hyperlink which may trigger the user's spam programs or email to dump the mail or put it in another folder. So potential users have assumed they never got a confirmation of the registration request. So I now have to go into the member accounts and send a personal email asking if they want to continue their regsitration where I have to manually activate them.

I use SMF and hope they get some mods that work better.

Keep up the good work.
Bob
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Triplicate
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Location: Canada

Re: User Registrations - 2013 and beyond

Post by Triplicate »

Keep up the good work Mav.
High Game - 300 (20), 299 (10), 298 (2), 11 in a row (18)
High Series - (278 Triplicate) = 834 (9)
HOF induction - 2 (1 Local and 1 Provincial)
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