Gmail accounts banned

[Bonsai Nut]

Unfortunately, we have had to ban gmail accounts from the site once again due to spamming issues. In the last week, we have had over 5,000 bad/fake/hacked gmail accounts try to register at the site. This morning I had to manually remove over 50 bad gmail accounts that had registered in the last 24 hours. Until Google can fix their security issues, their users will not be able to register on this site.

Sorry for having to take this action (again).

[Rick Moquin]

Can't blame you one bit Greg.

[treebeard55]

Nut, does this mean anything for those of us who have gmail accounts and are already registered?

[Bonsai Nut]

Originally Posted by treebeard55

Nut, does this mean anything for those of us who have gmail accounts and are already registered?

It shouldn't. Let me know if you have any problems. I can also manually create user accounts with gmail accounts if people absolutely require it. I am just shutting down the automatic registration process.

Spammers actively scan the Internet for forum software, and then have automated scripts to try to hack in and create fake accounts. I was once trialing some board software on a different URL and after installing the software decided I wasn't going to use it. I forgot to delete the install. A week later I had over 100 user accounts registered, and they were all spammers filling the forums with spam messages. This is AFTER they had to go through image recognition and email confirmation. It's crazy.

[Klytus]

Does it get worse when schools out or is it purely random?

[Bonsai Nut]

Originally Posted by Klytus

Does it get worse when schools out or is it purely random?

It is somewhat random. It is definitely heavier during the week, and heavier on non-holidays. Every now and then there is a big burst of spam until I block the new URL's and IP's. I assume there are spammer databases out there, and every now and then we get added to a new one which results in higher spam traffic in the short term.