locking down SM Forums...

[Greg Needel]

Right now I run/maintain team 73's forums. We use Simple Machines Forum software on a MySQL sever. Over the past two weeks we have been riddled with bogus registrations from what I assume are web bots all from the email domain mail.ru. As of now they aren't doing anything disruptive, and I just keep deleting the accounts. Is there anyway to just stop the registrations all together?

[artdutra04]

I'm not sure if there are any available mods for SM Forums, but for other forums like PHPbb or VBulletin, there are mods which allow you to customize the registration process. If you add a single question, like "What is our team number?" to the registration page, most of the automated-spam bots cannot deal with this, and their registration fails.

[Kims Robot]

We use the PHP forums I think... and they now have an update that has the spam control where you have to type in some obscured word/number. Not sure if there is a way to implement this with the forums you have, but if you talk to Eric (angryEric) at the Ruckus or just drop him an email he should be able to help you.

[Chief Pride]

yes, you can not only close registrations, but you can make it invite only...

[GRaduns340]

Greg,

There are two thing I would do for your site. I am using SMF 1.1RC3, so it might be slightly out-dated, but these settings should be similar:

1) Make sure you haven't disabled visual regisration:
- Go into the admin section -> Registration (left) -> Settings (top)
- Make sure there is no check in the "Disable the use of the visual verification on registration"

2) Add mail.ru as a banned domain.
- Admin section -> Ban List (left) -> Add New Ban (top)
- Fill in whatever information you want for the first few blanks, but check the e-mail address and enter "*@mail.ru" as the ban.

These should work, but I'm not sure if they will remove the current users or just remove their posting priveleges. You might have to go through and delete them one last time.