Sovietwarplanes

In order to clamp down on the forum spam/porn taking place here, I have disabled entirely any new registrations.  We are/were getting sometimes as many as a dozen a day, all bogus.  I had attempted to make the process stringent so that only real people could post here, but it seems that some real people went through the trouble to get accounts to post porn here.  No more.  While new registrations are disabled, I will be cleaning out the member logs, which are swollen with bogus registrations.  Additionally, I will take the opportunity to identify and delete/ban accounts which are used to post spam/porn here.  AFTER THAT, when things are running fairly well, we'll look at opening up a registration process that will let in ONLY people wanting to discuss Soviet aviation.

Best regards,
JP

Ok, here's what I'm seeing.?

To start off, there is no way real people are spending this kind of time actually registering on boards to post this junk, so apparently someone has made a program that can run thousands of registrations automatically.? So . . . there are 137 pages of apparent forum members, probably 120 of which are crap.? That's a lot of work to go through them, but I have already started.? Here is my approach.

First, continue to delete porn/spam posts as they appear, then ban and delete the offending account.?

Second, I'm going through the member list and deleting accounts according to the following:

- Numerous memberships obtained by the same IP address.? I realize there could be a couple of people using an internet cafe, so what I'm talking about here are the cases of 3 or more.? There have been some IPs registering more than a whole page of user names.? Given the obscure nature of this site's subject matter, I seriously doubt if 45 people at some internet cafe all decided they needed to be forum members of this site.? If for some reason you felt compelled to sign up for 15 different accounts here, sorry - you've been deleted.? I feel pretty confident that I have not deleted anyone wishing to post here for honest reasons.

- Any username and/or registered email with the word "sex" or "porn" appearing anywhere.? Gone.

- Any username made up of random, jumbled letters that make no sense, as in "sjdhgfysef".? Gone.

- Any mildly suspicious combination of factors combined with never having been online or posted here.? See ya.

The way I figure it, the people that currently have valid accounts and post spam will self-identify for removal while I work through the logs manually.? May take a while, but we should see a sharp decline in porn here with return to normal operations in a few weeks.? From there, we decide how to process memberships.

IF FOR SOME REASON I deleted your account and you were a serious member of this forum, email massimo and he will direct me to re-establish your account.

JP

Well made, John.  :)

Massimo.

Here's something fun for you faithful forum visitors to do.  As I delete page after page of false memberships, you can watch the number of members drop in the "key stats" box in the upper right of this screen.   8)

Hi John, :)
this is an excellent work. I have not seen further spam in last days, after the stopping of subscriptions. Probably they made a new subscription each time.
Massimo

Well, as you can see, I have the number of "members" down from nearly 4,000 to 1,744.? With even a generous assessment of our true membership at 200 people, there are obviously about 1,544 more fake "members" to root out.? For this, I must be more careful, and since the spam has stopped I can be more patient with this process.? I was thinking now at looking at when each member had last been online.? I ran into problems when I noticed some legitimate members who hadn't been on in a LONG time.? John at WEM, for example, posted three times but hasn't been back here in almost two years.? ?:o? However, given a pause, I'm thinking it would be safe to delete the many pages of members who have registered here, but who have NEVER actually logged onto the account AND have NEVER posted anything.? What do you guys think?? I suppose there is a possibiity of deleting a couple of people who intended to participate honestly, but then for whatever reason, they never did.? In such a case, I'm not sure it's much harm deleting such an inactive account.

One last troubling thing is that many of the accounts I am relatively sure are not honest are logged into frequently.? I am referring here to accounts which meet some of the conditions for being suspicious and have never posted.? Many pages of them are logging in here frequently, and I'm trying to figure out why since they haven't posted anything to this point.

I was watching the board traffic, and for several days after I turned off registrations, I was able to watch automated web traffic (showing up as "guest") picking through the forums and even attempting to register.? There were usually 20 or so attempts going on at any one moment.? That seems to be slowing down now.?

Nice work! As you already know, I'm web site illiterate, but to me, it seems reasonable to delete any account which has never actually been logged into and/or never been posted from since it was created. If a legitimate user gets bounced, eventually they can re-register. Does it make any sense to suggest implementing one of those "CAPTCHA" things for new registrations, or is setting this up just a big headache, or not effective for some reason? I suppose it would deter the "bots", but real live human beings wanting to register and post inappropriately would still get through.

John

Hi John,  :)
Great work! Reading thousands of names is a big effort, reflecting on their reliability is even harder. Thank you for making this cleaning work.
Massimo