Every day we get around 10 spammers registering for an account, the vast majority of which have their account deleted before they have the chance to make a post.
The forums software has a few inbuilt security features to prevent undesirable member registrations.
1. New members must input a code which is embedded in a graphic during the registration process, this prevents robot spammers. Yes believe it or not there are such things.
2. When a new member signs up they receive an email with a link included, which they must click in order to validate they have used a real email address. In addition all new members are queued in the forums back end and I now manually validate each new member.
3. Based on my findings over the past couple of months I have banned the use of @web.de, @mail.ru, @cashette.com email accounts for registrations. Anyone trying to sign up with one of these email addresses will not make it through the registration process. Unfortunately what this means is legitimate members using one of these email accounts will not be able to register.
4. I have banned a number of ip addresses for repeat spam registration attempts.
The above measures will help to keep our forums 'spam free', but can I ask all members to remain vigilant and use the "report this post" feature if you spot anything untoward.
Thanks for your assistance.
Simon