Re-enable account activation via mail / Keep undesirables out of forum

[NachoTPAO]

Hi, I have a medium-large forum with arround 20K users, my problem is we have a large number of young users, this users, when banned create dozens of accounts to spam the forum, the problem is mail activation doesn`t work, only a tiny fraction of activation mails reach their target. I want to know if there is a way to fix this, or a better method to keep the undesirables away, IP banning is out of the question, everyone has dinamic IP and they know very well how to change there IPs. With the forum Staff we have been thinking of authorizing each new account but it takes a lot of work, others proposed moderating the first 5 post of a new account but I think is even mork work that way and not very user-friendly. I someone knows a better method for sending activation emails, or fixing it or the server requirements, or a mod (NO miserables users mod) wich helps us keep them from creating 10 accounts in 5 minutes.

The forum is www.tierras-perdidas.com/f a General Discussion & MMORPG Gaming Forum (Spanish).

Look the amount of banned users yesterday (The red users with a linethrou their names)

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6761/bannedusers.jpg

[gonedigital]

here's a few plugins I would suggest. We had this problem on our forum with the little bastards making new accounts with bogus email addresses, using ip-proxy servers to hide behind, and so on.

This combination of plugins has pretty much locked the little bastards out.

Multiple Account Prevention & Detection
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199077

Verify Mail Before Registration (verifies they have an actual working email address)
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=201466

Proxy to Real Ip Conversion
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=201211

Multiple Account Registration Prevention
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=127045

Limit Account Registration by Domain
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=188418

we also shutdown new account registrations that come from yahoo, hotmail, gmail, msn, live, and other free email webservers. so if they use email from a fee provider, they can't register. our forum requires them to have an email address from their actual Internet Service Provider (comcast.net, swbell.net, pacbell.net, bellsouth.net, att.net, att.com, verizon.com, t-mobile.com, etc).

hope that helps man, cause I know it's frustrating.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

I think the only real solution to your problem is focussing on why your welcome emails do not reacht their destination.

If you solve that, then you can verify the email addresses.

[NachoTPAO]

here's a few plugins I would suggest. We had this problem on our forum with the little bastards making new accounts with bogus email addresses, using ip-proxy servers to hide behind, and so on.

This combination of plugins has pretty much locked the little bastards out.

Multiple Account Prevention & Detection
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199077

Verify Mail Before Registration (verifies they have an actual working email address)
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=201466

Proxy to Real Ip Conversion
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=201211

Multiple Account Registration Prevention
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=127045

Limit Account Registration by Domain
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=188418

we also shutdown new account registrations that come from yahoo, hotmail, gmail, msn, live, and other free email webservers. so if they use email from a fee provider, they can't register. our forum requires them to have an email address from their actual Internet Service Provider (comcast.net, swbell.net, pacbell.net, bellsouth.net, att.net, att.com, verizon.com, t-mobile.com, etc).

hope that helps man, cause I know it's frustrating.

Thanks! I will try with some of those plugins. But sadly i cannot deny registration from free email providers, because 99.99% of the userbase use those, even me and the forum staff. We all user hotmail in here :$

I think the only real solution to your problem is focussing on why your welcome emails do not reacht their destination.

If you solve that, then you can verify the email addresses.

thanks!

Do you know what could be the cause of the problem? I have no idea what t could be. What are the most common causes for this problem?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You would need to diagnose the problem.

Are the mails received by your mailserver?
Is the mailserver sending the mails out again without errors?
Is the IP of your server maybe blacklisted?
Is your domain maybe blacklisted?