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The reCAPTCHA program from Google has recently been hacked. This explains the recent rise in spam accounts being created on our forums, and some of the posts you may have seen with off-site links to purchase pharmaceuticals or other inappropriate materials (before they were moderated).
I've implemented a few changes to (hopefully) prevent this going forward.
Registered Users are restricted from many things - e.g. sending PM's, having signatures, uploading photos, etc. Basically anything that they could potentially upload or enter into the forum which would promote their products.
New legitimate users should notice no effect other than that their posts won't appear in the forum immediately. Once a moderator has approved them, they will appear, and the user will be promoted to an Online Member, where no further moderation will be required, and all those privileges will be enabled (PM's, signatures, uploads, etc) - just as they are today.
There are 277 users currently defined as Registered Users. At some point we'll probably go in and clean out accounts in that category over a certain age (e.g. if you don't post 3 things in 6 months, we'll remove the account). But for now we hopefully won't have to prune anything for awhile.
If you've been moved to Registered Users and don't feel you belong there for some reason, you can email webmaster@kcjeepclub.org with more information, and we'll investigate further.
Obviously anyone who has paid dues and joined the club will be immediately promoted to Club Member, where no initial moderation applies, even if they have not posted anything.
Thanks!
Rich
I've implemented a few changes to (hopefully) prevent this going forward.
- Replaced reCAPTCHA image verification with question-answer challenge
- All Online Members with < 3 posts were placed into the Registered Users group
- All new registrations which respond to the activation email successfully will be placed into the Registered Users group.
- All posts by Registered Users are placed into a moderation queue. Once 3 posts have been successfully moderated, the user will automatically be promoted to an Online Member. The promotion task runs at 25 minutes past the hour, 24 hours a day.
Registered Users are restricted from many things - e.g. sending PM's, having signatures, uploading photos, etc. Basically anything that they could potentially upload or enter into the forum which would promote their products.
New legitimate users should notice no effect other than that their posts won't appear in the forum immediately. Once a moderator has approved them, they will appear, and the user will be promoted to an Online Member, where no further moderation will be required, and all those privileges will be enabled (PM's, signatures, uploads, etc) - just as they are today.
There are 277 users currently defined as Registered Users. At some point we'll probably go in and clean out accounts in that category over a certain age (e.g. if you don't post 3 things in 6 months, we'll remove the account). But for now we hopefully won't have to prune anything for awhile.
If you've been moved to Registered Users and don't feel you belong there for some reason, you can email webmaster@kcjeepclub.org with more information, and we'll investigate further.
Obviously anyone who has paid dues and joined the club will be immediately promoted to Club Member, where no initial moderation applies, even if they have not posted anything.
Thanks!
Rich