This forum is getting swamped by spam lately, and if anything this seems to be escalating.
Can it be that the forum software is outdated, it seems to be very simple for bots to become members. It is really starting to spoil things.

it is old, and based on C_A's new discovery, we're getting over 2 million hits a month. definitely a spam magnet. from what C_A has said updating the forum software may end up in deleting all our old information, and of course C_A and Chris are extremely busy.  

As said, C_A is currently working on it, forum will be upgraded as soon as possible  ;)
Meanwhile, we're doing maximum efforts to grant a good usability of the forum, just have a little more patience and spammers will soon be a memory of the past  :)
Greetings,
Mauro.

Yeah, don´t get me wrong I was not complaining, I know people are working hard to minimize the spam trouble.
I was just wondering whether this "manual labor" could be automated, I frequent a couple of other forums, spam trouble isn´t as evident there.
But I understand it would mean a serious overhaul, probably a whole new forum and archieving the info in this one...not easy I imagine.

wrote on Nov 12^th, 2011 at 3:57pm:

Yeah, don´t get me wrong I was not complaining, I know people are working hard to minimize the spam trouble. I was just wondering whether this "manual labor" could be automated, I frequent a couple of other forums, spam trouble isn´t as evident there. But I understand it would mean a serious overhaul, probably a whole new forum and archieving the info in this one...not easy I imagine.

most forums now use captcha- that thing that has an image of a word that's all screwed up and weird so it's near impossible to read. it makes it harder for bots/spammers to make an account. they also require you to click on a account verification link on your email account, something that is optional on our forum.

updates should fix the problem.  :)

wrote on Nov 12^th, 2011 at 3:57pm:

Yeah, don´t get me wrong I was not complaining, I know people are working hard to minimize the spam trouble.

Don't worry!  ;)

Actually, I told C_A about captcha, but he told me that bots are nowaday able to avoid them quite easily.
He has downloaded the whole forum in his pc (it required A LOT of time) and is now working on a better upgrade.
We'll have the most secure forum of the whole web I bet  ;D
C_A for President.
Greetings,
Mauro.

Before we can change anything the current forum info needs to be copied and backed up offline because I don't think it's possible to edit the forum software while it's being used. Once that's done we have a few modifications that will protect the forum better, but C_A needs time to work on it. We also have the option of updating the forum software entirely, but that's our last resort for the reasons kid mentioned. We may all get deleted accidentally and everyone would have to make a new account, or we may lose all of our pictures or worse, the old posts could disappear and we'd lose all their archived information.The forum is swamped now, but I promise we hae a plan to fix things as soon as there's a long enough break.

[edit]It's already downloaded. Updates shouldn't take too much longer, then.[/edit]

Yeah the problem is that the forum software is 8 years old. and the current generation of spambots are either reading the page code for the authorisation code or just using ocr to replicate it.
So in the process of updating.

I'm half way there.

the procedure for either modding or updating the forum software (what I'd prefer) is three fold:

1) download an exact copy of the forum to my computer - took 2 days but I'm pretty sure I've done that bit. Which gives me a working copy.
2) modify the foum while it's on my computer and then perform as many checks as I can to make sure it all works.
3) shutdown the forum and upload the modified sections back to the server.
4) pray it works :-)

Currently got a lot of actual work on so it'll be  a few days or a week or so.
Worst case scenario I can always stick the old software back on.

But it's going to happen :-)  
If I can I'll update to yabb 2.5 which has a lot of the security mods already installed as well as a bunch of other stuff that would be good.

Don't forget naked ladies  ;D
Just kidding  ;)
Greetings,
Mauro.

life is never easy.

out of all the versions of the yabb board from 1 - 2.4.
The only one you cannot simply upgrade to 2.5 is - you've guessed it - 2.1.
The version we're currently using.

Soooo, when I actually install the new board and move the existing files across, it may take some time.

Give you a clue - it took me 2 days to download the complete forum files. IT shouldn't take that long to move or put the old files onto the new forum.

But if at some point in the next week or so you see the ' forum is undergoing maintenance' message for a day or two - panic not.
It's just me playing silly buggers :-)  

Thank you

currently I've suspended new member registration until I can update and check out the new forum software.

some of the crap we had all over the board this morning should not be viewed by anyone - particularly someone coming to our forum.

I'd rather not have any one join for a short while, than have our members subjected to that kind of crap.

Bear with me. This will be sorted.

CA

Good luck with it CA, interesting times ahead (we´ll keep our fingers crossed ;))

lol you're telling me  :o

Let me add my thanks to CA for his work.