Who ever did what ever to knock out the spam, thank you.  It seemed like we were under attack the last week or so, when I would log on, the first thing I would do is report spam.  What ever you did, (C_A?), thank you.

C_A turned off the new member registration option. bascially, new members can't join (in this case spammers) unfortunately real users can't join, but then again seeing the large amount of spam we're seeing that may harm our site's image...it's probably not a bad idea.

lol it's a temporary measure. To give us a bit of a breather.

Basically the current forum software is out of date (it's 6 years old) and the current generation of spam bots can now get round the registration security.

Also we have a LOT of traffic as a website, so we are standing out and attracting more than our fair share of spammers.

So until I can update the forum software and increase the security to the point where we're back to the usual levels of human registered spam accounts, I've suspended new member registration.

I'm still getting questions from internet users via email, and can register people if they ask for an account.

But to be honest after the last month or so when all the mods were giving up at least a solid hour a day  to do nothing but clear the increasing amounts of spam (I was doing nothing some days but logging in every half hour or so to clear spam - hell I was even doing it while working). We're kind of enjoying the peace lol

The guys are all volunteers, none of us get paid and the amount of effort they've put in recently is pretty phenomenal. The fact that you only thought it was getting bad in the last week bill, says a lot.

Personally, I think that passion for slinging and (in my case) the willing to offer a good service to forum user, does not need thanks, even if is surely a pleasure to receive them.
I'm sure that C_A will soon remedy this situation, and that we're recruiting new slingers again soon  :)
Greetings, and thank you for your reporting activity - that is as important as deleting messages!
Mauro.

I knew you guys were deleting a lot of spam, I just didn't know how much.  I normally log on once a day, read the new posts, make a comment and then log off.  I would be online for 15 to 30 minutes or so.  Some days, when I would follow a thread or be trapped inside due to weather, I might log on three or four times, most of the time, you would have all the spam cleared out and I thought what I saw was the normal amount.  I knew you were deleting spam and were doing a good job, what I didn't know was how good a job you were doing.

Regisetered a new member tonight - so as long as they've got the sense to ask, it's not  a problem.

I will miss the spam fights - a little.

A spamfight is when two or more mods try and delete the same spam or spammer at the same time. The ones who got the : post no longer exists' message lost.

Probably just me playing that - but it made it fun - of a sort  ;)

C_A, the slayer of spammers.

aussie's style i guess ;)

http://troll.me/images/y-u-no/dug-y-u-no-stop-spam-bots.jpg

We could have made a tournament!
Mauro.

Mauro Fiorentini wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2011 at 3:32pm:

We could have made a tournament! Mauro.

http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1242252286

Ehehehehehe  ;D
Mauro.

well it's been 9 months with zero spam.

I spend a few minutes a day signing up new members. rather than a couple hours fighting spam.

It works - it's staying. No longer temporary. ;)

God, now that I think about it, it was quite boring - to log in every half a hour or so and find up to 12, 15 spam messages... luckily we're a great team, we are #1  :)
Greetings,
Mauro.

lol yay for us !  ;)

Those wedding dresses did sound like a pretty good deal though. ::) ;D

lol yeah, those sods are still hanging around. Everytime I look there are 20-30 very similiar looking chinese ip addresses hovering around.