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Spambot Infestation
#1
So some of you may have noticed the occasional shifty-looking spambot thread on our forums. (If you haven't noticed, then good... because that means myself and the other staff are fast with spotting these threads, deleting them, and permabanning these spambots.)

Generally, these threads are posted by new members on the forum with gibberish names like ANNOUSKAKLAMY or
Weelvetuh
, but some of them are not-so-gibberish... like AndersonFox. The threads are generally poorly-punctuated, poorly written, and poorly titled. They also have some shifty looking links, and they might be advertising something.
Essentially, they're the forum equivalent of a '~wIn A fReE iPoD~!!!!11!' comment on YouTube.

Yes, the staff are looking into a long-term solution to this, but I'm not very qualified to explain it. Expect a follow-up post by Zark explaining this further. In the meantime...

Basically, this is just a reminder to use common sense: if you see a thread with shifty links, don't click those links. Instead, report the thread and the username to a staff member, and then go do something else. We'll delete it ASAP.

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding,

The Staffles.
[Image: a88823d4-5335-49cc-91b4-f8c511e214f8_zps...1409225114]
#2
Thanks, Michelle!

Yes, it was unfortunately just a matter of time before the removal of the malfunctioning e-mail registration started causing these problems. Even if I was hoping captcha would do the trick.

These people are however not machines, they are some poor lifeless sods out there sitting around advertising random bullshit to earn money. But don't fret, I'm contacting the host about configuring the e-mail properly again. It might take a while though, so be patient.
#3
So I have an update on this matter and it is very important that its read.

I have again turned on email activation and it looks like we might have successfully caught some spammers this way. However I will keep an eye on this all and see if it lets through those who actually are new players. I have decided this might be easiest by doing the following; disallow weird email providers.

You see, most spammers does not use the "normal" providers, they tend to use Russian providers or other bull crap we've never heard about. Since they register on multiple forums per day to spam they likely never check these addresses and thus never activate their accounts.

Thus if I it really isn't working (which it should) and you as a new player register with a weird mail provider, I will not activate you manually if your mail doesn't arrive.

Please use another address, like hotmail, gmail, yahoo... etc.
  


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