Has somebody crashed our forum?

[Randall]

What's with the topics listed? Hopefully the moderators are working on this.

[JohnH]

The moderators will take care of the slime ball posters in due time.

First they need time to get out their rubber gloves and the disinfectant.

[kcjenkins]

You are right, we're working on them. Taking care to hold my breath and wearing my hazmat outfit, of course.

Please don't respond to any of them.

[kcjenkins]

Just one more point. The last one posted had some horrid pictures, which opened with the post. So if you don't want to dirty your mind with this crud, don't open them at all. You can click on the little check box at the far right, and then delete them all without ever opening them.

[taxit]

Just one more point. The last one posted had some horrid pictures, which opened with the post. So if you don't want to dirty your mind with this crud, don't open them at all. You can click on the little check box at the far right, and then delete them all without ever opening them.

KC where is the check box to delete you referred to?

[Randall]

They all seem to be under the 'efile' section.

[Mel in Hawaii]

Moderators get the 'delete' option, we don't unfortunately. Yup, it was bound to happen that the slimballs would find the forum, but also note that deleting an occasional post is not going to do you any good as they have loaded the board into a database of forums most likely, so you can delete all you want, they will come back. That's the bad thing about automated posting scripts, once you are in one of the databases, forget trying to get rid of them.

Some ideas to slow them down. Change the URL of the signup page once a week. Capcha works a bit, but once again is easily defeatable. If the forum software allows, disallow attachments/HTML for members with less than a week/10 posts.

[Mel in Hawaii]

Also, if you want to give me delete privs, I will only use mod powers to delete spam, up to you of course.

[Mel in Hawaii]

So far it looks like they have created 51 users so they can come back and post whenever they want. This is DEFINATELY a script doing the posting, not a human.

[Eric]

Looks like I'll be shutting down the forum for a little bit to clean up the mess and patch the forum's CAPTCHA feature.

Sorry for the short notice!

[Eric]

I deleted every user that registered today. I hope we didn't have any legit registrations, but things were getting out of hand.

I've also patched some of the SPAM protections and enabled some other security features. Hopefully that keeps the bots out... I'll be watching tomorrow morning to make sure the changes did the trick.

[JohnH]

Eric: Thanks once again for all your efforts to initially set up this forum and your ongoing efforts to keep it running smoothly. Thanks to KC for all she does to moderate as well, especially with the personal pressures she is going through at present. I'm using this episode as a reminder to myself that it's time to make another contribution toward the upkeep and maintenace of the forum, which I did this morning. I urge anyone else who feels so inclined to do the same.

[mcb39]

Eric: Thanks once again for all your efforts to initially set up this forum and your ongoing efforts to keep it running smoothly. Thanks to KC for all she does to moderate as well, especially with the personal pressures she is going through at present. I'm using this episode as a reminder to myself that it's time to make another contribution toward the upkeep and maintenace of the forum, which I did this morning. I urge anyone else who feels so inclined to do the same.

That was a pretty shocking experience. Thanks for the reminder to donate.

[Lion EA]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.