Peterborough Linux User Group (Canada) Forum

PLUG => Website & Forums => Topic started by: Jason on February 21, 2020, 12:04:11 PM

Title: Fake sign-ups & what to do if you're banned
Post by: Jason on February 21, 2020, 12:04:11 PM
Bots go around signing up on forums in the hopes they can post spam or they just put it in their profiles. It appears they've gotten smarter. Even Google re-captcha doesn't seem to stop all of them. In about a week, at least a dozen "people" have registered for the forums, half of them the last few days. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if it wasn't for this anti-spam feature.

But I'm wondering if the spammers have created their own algorithms to bypass the google system to make sure people are not bots or if they're actually paying real people to create fake accounts.

For those that are curious, there are various ways that I can tell they're spammers, you might see some of them yourself if you look at a recently joined forum member's profile.

In my zealousness to prevent Spam sign-ups, I may inadvertently ban a member or a real person. If this happens to you, send me an email. If you don't already know my email address, click on Contact on the main website at https://plugintolinux.ca (https://plugintolinux.ca) and let me know what IP address you were using and your ISP. You can find our your IP address by using this website (https://www.whatismyip.com/). Just let me know the series of numbers that shows on the line and after it where it says "My Public IPv4 is: ".