[StevenTN]

I would like to know why it was specifically removed, so I can make a much more informed decision, rather than question whether or not it's really insecure. Having it removed due to unspecified security concerns, and not even allowing others to post a fix, is extremely bad policy in this day of age.

If we used that general of a reason for everything, I wouldn't be using vBulletin at all. In fact, the saving grace with vBulletin itself is at least they publish their security issues, and either advise on additional action, or issue a patch/new version.

d8tabyte's suggestion wouldn't work for us, given that we can't have someone monitoring registrations 24/7. In fact, the moderators and I we have were getting burnt out on dealing with the advertising that was posted by spambots. That is why we started to employ the blacklist, with great success.