Something needs to be done about all the spam posts appearing on this forum lately...much of it XXX rated (no, I haven't opened any of them, but I can tell by the title).

Perhaps the requirements to register for the forum need to be tightened up. I know it probably isn't possible to eliminate 100% of spam, but there's been a deluge lately.

I just got rid of about 10 porn and non-porn spam messages in the General Forum. One of them was most explicit. There are a couple things we can do. One is to ban the user. The other is to ban their provider (IP) address. I have banned a couple dozen IPs in the last few days. Problem with the latter is I can ban a legitimate user which just happened. Trying to figure it out, Linda. As I have said to others, the direct and collateral damage done by these criminals is beyond description . . . Fred

P.S. Anyone having some ideas or know of specific technology, please send me email - don't want the perpetrators to know what we might implement. Man, what a waste of productive and personal time!

Fred, I don't know what's possible on this forum in the way of tightening up registration requirements...and I don't remember what I had to do to register. But, here are some thoughts...might be possible, might not...in fact, some of them may already be in place.

** When someone registers, have a box where they have to type in some combination of letters and numbers that match up with what shown in another box (clear as mud?). This should eliminate automatic bots that go to sites like this and leave spam.

** Before registration becomes active so that a person can post, generate an email to the person to which they have to reply. This would eliminate people who sign up with a false email address.

** Moderate the first post or two...i.e., only you see the post and have to approve it before it appears on the forum. I know this would mean additional work on your part and may not even be possible with the forum software.