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Topic: Why not verifying email before anyone can be able to register on this forum? (Read 379 times)

legendary
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I can see some people are only repeating what some people have posted on the first page of this thread. So because of this I will lock this topic now. I have read the important information and I know now that requiring email verification is not necessary on this forum to limiting spammers and scammers with continuous repetitive topics or posts. I do not think new posts on this thread will be useful anymore so I will lock it now.
hero member
Activity: 784
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The spammers can create multiple email accounts on various email providing platforms like Gmail, Hotmain, Yahoomail, Yandex, mail.com, and so many others and those aren't temporary emails but personal emails. I believe for a spammer something like that isn't a big issue, and I also believe that IP ban can somehow be avoided too by using various VPN based IP addresses that aren't blacklisted yet. So in end the spammers will continue to create multiple spamming accounts no matter if email verification become mandatory.
hero member
Activity: 798
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I guess the spammer is from a good country like United States, Europe or those countries that spammers are not many. I think this is the reason the person IP has not been taken down? As the person is able to continue creating accounts and no IP banned is what I meant as ineffective IP ban.
Whatchu mean here? that the forum is a little bit racially biased? Enhh, I dunno if I'm to agree with this, but I'll say we're both entitled to our own views ... You get my point? I can't remember having any racial-based problems in here but yunno, people can be very funny sometimes.

Email verifications won't do any better just like everyone has been suggesting...I find it very hard to imagine the level of technical development that has been ran through the KYC/identification systems over the last 35 years...
So many loop holes that you can't control and as a result of that, there's a limitation to what you can do... For the most part, protecting yourself from within is all you got.
hero member
Activity: 1022
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That spammer have become a pain in the ass recently and for sure having to figure out how to deal with the ease of creating such tons of account will definitely be what is on the thoughts of every concerned forum members, but email verification is far from solving this issue permanently.

But IP banned and stoppage from registering is what could hult this guys from spamming our forum, this way when the IP get banned it blocked from creating an account here in the forum even if their are willing to pay the evil fees.
hero member
Activity: 1386
Merit: 513
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It was total of 60 accounts
I remember spammers with many thousands of accounts. Spam really isn't that bad anymore nowadays.
Wait what thousands of accounts? Is that person was totally free, or he did that automatically by using some kind of bot?
Quote
The surprising thing is how he was able to create that much account from the same IP
As far as I know, IP-addresses only collect units of evil after an account created from that IP-address got banned.
So that means if he did not got banned by doing any type of spam from the IP then he can make unlimited numbers of account from the same IP? That's strange.

And even the spammer started creating more accounts after the previous ones got banned; they can easily bypass that ban by using a VPN.
 
Someone who is determined to spam can figure that out within a matter of minutes, or there are possibilities of getting the number of accounts needed ready before they even get started.
Free VPN might not be enough I know changing the network and other things can help them create account but someone cannot just create that many account by figuring the ban in matter of minutes although I just checked the time of creation of account of some accounts and it was a delay of few minutes only I am sure he had used some kind of bot maybe to automate the work. As he can't make that much effort just to spam from all of the accounts.
sr. member
Activity: 1204
Merit: 290
I remember spammers with many thousands of accounts. Spam really isn't that bad anymore nowadays.

I agree. I still remember how Bitcoin Discussion and other main sections of the forum were flooded with spam and spammers around 2018/2019. It was almost unbearable to watch. And, that was after the introduction of the merit system but the spam was still out of control in the initial days.

One thing is certain, spam and spammers cannot be wiped out completely, there have been so many suggestions for restrictions but as theymos has said, he doesn't like the idea of putting a lot of restrictions on new users and we know spam begins from lower ranks. So I don't think he will implement any restrictions any time soon unless things go out of control which doesn't happen because of the systems that are already controlling things to a good extent.

I guess we have no other option than using the "ignore" and "report to moderators" options to deal with spam and spammers for the time being.
sr. member
Activity: 658
Merit: 387
The surprising thing is how he was able to create that much account from the same IP
As far as I know, IP-addresses only collect units of evil after an account created from that IP-address got banned.
And even the spammer started creating more accounts after the previous ones got banned; they can easily bypass that ban by using a VPN.
 
Someone who is determined to spam can figure that out within a matter of minutes, or there are possibilities of getting the number of accounts needed ready before they even get started.
hero member
Activity: 812
Merit: 560
You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?

Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.

I may not buy the idea of verifying the email address before registration on the forum, because this platform preach most about privacy and one of the ways in which this can be proven in by not intruding deeper in other peoples affairs, if they use a fake email address, then they are taking the risk of losing the account for life one day.

Let those spamming continuous with what they are doing, as long as they were being caught, they will be reported and proper action will be taken on them by the moderators, we cant just be tired of reporting them.

legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
IP ban with evil fees is not working very good, and I know genuine people who couldn't registered in forum because of this, but verifying email addresses won't solve anything.
Spammers and scammers already have a bunch of email addresses they can use for registration on any websites they want.

I remember spammers with many thousands of accounts. Spam really isn't that bad anymore nowadays.
I think they mostly moved to other platforms like twitter aka X and telegram.
If you have accounts there you can expect to receive regular fake followers inflow and a bunch of stupid questions.
legendary
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It was total of 60 accounts
I remember spammers with many thousands of accounts. Spam really isn't that bad anymore nowadays.

Quote
The surprising thing is how he was able to create that much account from the same IP
As far as I know, IP-addresses only collect units of evil after an account created from that IP-address got banned.
hero member
Activity: 1386
Merit: 513
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You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?

Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
It was total of 60 accounts if you wish I can even enlist them but what we can do, I was amazed to see that much topics being created on Tuesday without realizing someone was spamming. The surprising thing is how he was able to create that much account from the same IP I mean he did not get any type of ban from the same IP even there are cases when people make account by using VPN somehow it detect the IP and ask for small payment I doubt if the person has really paid that much money.

I wonder what hack he/she has for creating this many accounts. If he can actually make that many accounts on this forum, who knows how many accounts a person can be having right now (not spamming though, like this).
legendary
Activity: 3290
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@LoyceV, I am not saying that those legitimate users will be delighted if they have to wait more than 6 minutes, but in the last few days we have dozens of newly created accounts that manage to make 3-4 posts before being banned. I think that every beginner should therefore prove himself before he gets the opportunity to use the forum like everyone else - and if that means he has to wait 10 or 15 minutes between two posts until he becomes a Jr.Member, I don't think that would discourage most legitimate users.
Read this again:
Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.
Spammers don't care about limitations, they'll just let their bots create more accounts. Humans care.
legendary
Activity: 1568
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For a small amount of money you can create hundreds of email addresses per day so adding email verification won't change anything.

Now you can even create them for free by abusing SimpleLogin and Passmail, although they will ban you if your addresses are reported.
legendary
Activity: 3234
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@LoyceV, I am not saying that those legitimate users will be delighted if they have to wait more than 6 minutes, but in the last few days we have dozens of newly created accounts that manage to make 3-4 posts before being banned. I think that every beginner should therefore prove himself before he gets the opportunity to use the forum like everyone else - and if that means he has to wait 10 or 15 minutes between two posts until he becomes a Jr.Member, I don't think that would discourage most legitimate users.

I agree that we simply cannot protect some users from themselves, but we can raise the bar to a higher level to make it harder for scammers to do their job on this forum.
legendary
Activity: 3290
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1. Many temporary email website exist.
2. You could abuse plus sign on email address. For example, [email protected], [email protected], ... , [email protected].
3. There are some service which offer lots or "unlimited" email alias. For example, Apple's Hide My Email.
4. It's annoying to register with an email address. Most websites require it, but would be so much better without it.

It looks like many websites (not only crypto-related) use the email provider as spam protection. So they reject temporary email providers and usually say "gmail+something" is invalid.

If there is real spam from newbies then admin can reduce posting limit to several posts per day instead of the 360 ​​second limit but you need to prove that there is a heavily spam happening and it is harming the forum.
I think that this limit should be increased and thus make it as difficult as possible for these spammers.
Spammers will patiently wait, real users will be annoyed if they have to wait even longer than 6 minutes before they can post again.

Honestly, I think that someone that naïve can't be protected. Even if every inch of the page had been full of warnings, he still might've fallen for it, since he wasn't even thinking about the possibility of being given evil instructions.
legendary
Activity: 1288
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You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?
Even registering with online email, they allow that after generating email, you should also verify it. So, it just a lil time to waste and they are fine verifying the email. If theymos wants to fight spam in a harsh way, he knows a way to go about it. Maybe by reintroducing the newbie jail. But he's not just interested because the merit system does the work.

Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
IP ban works. Evil fee even affect the innocent. But the IP ban isn't immune to VPN or Tor.
jr. member
Activity: 87
Merit: 6
You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?

Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.

Spamming is a highly violation in the forum, I also wonder the need of anyone spamming with more than one account that is to say the user has been unable to handle a single account so why bothering of having more still?
But being sincere, verifying emails won't solve the problem because there is every possibilities for one user to create hundreds of email to pass the verification process.
I also learnt that having more than one account is not against the forum policies but thou shall not spam.
Maybe moderators could help people as Theymos on the disciplinary conditions on users going contrarily to the forum terms and conditions.
legendary
Activity: 1064
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It is just a suggestion. But the conclusion is still what people have posted before. That we should continue to report the spammer. Thank you all for posting under this thread.

IP ban works perfectly in fact it bans people who never wanted to register before. I know it because many people DM me on my Telegram that they are banned and can not post.
I guess the spammer is from a good country like United States, Europe or those countries that spammers are not many. I think this is the reason the person IP has not been taken down? As the person is able to continue creating accounts and no IP banned is what I meant as ineffective IP ban.
full member
Activity: 162
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You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?
If you watch carefully I had raised similar concerned about someone creating same topic with same post, but they responded to have him restricted and they would try their best to make such poster got tired of it.
I have also wanted to ask this as well because with mail there would be restrictions but I feels more that it's account security because when account is hacked you can restore or recover account through mail, but then address signing has also proven that.
legendary
Activity: 3416
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Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?

After the email verification, will these spammers stop joining and stop spamming the forum? we have very active moderators; all we need to do is just report them and when they see that all their efforts are just going to waste, they will be annoyed and stop or take a break. From my experience, spammers or shills just leave the platform if they see their effort being wasted.
It will take them several minutes to create an account and create a post, and only a few seconds for us to report it.
full member
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Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account? Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
From what I've seen before registering an account on the forum can capture the IP pretty accurately but I've yet to see any system to verify this email.

But I think it would be very difficult or impossible to prevent scammers from registering accounts by verifying this email. But if it could be ensured that spammers could be unregistered by email then the balance of the forum would be well preserved. Scammers come to the forum by posting random posts in the forum to upset the balance of the forum. Although the moderator deletes the random post after seeing it for a long time but the scammers are usually there with some motive which is definitely not a good motive for the forum. But you'll be happy to know that scammers don't last long on forums.

The IP works perfectly and actually indicates to people that they have never been here before or that they can't register because it's banned from that IP.
sr. member
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Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
IP ban works perfectly in fact it bans people who never wanted to register before. I know it because many people DM me on my Telegram that they are banned and can not post.
The IP ban still works well, the only thing here's that the IP ban can be avoided by the use of VPN and many members,  was affected by the IP ban but where able to get through it using VPN and they're now positive members the forum.

I think until another option that support or improve privacy, the current approach of keeping the forum free from spammers will be better.

legendary
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I don't know how the spammer solve the reCaptcha easily I think theymos need to switch from reCaptcha v2 to v3 just to avoid those bots from registering new accounts.
Raising the entry barrier only makes it harder for honest people to join. A spammer can easily create 10+ accounts a day and send their spam messages across the forum regardless of the reCaptcha version used.

IP ban works so there is Whitelisting process and some community members are volunteers for whitelisting like (perhaps more, I am not sure).
Welsh also has a published email to accept whitelisting applications. This is still a volunteer task as while all staffs can whitelist, not all have public emails to accept applications for that purpose.
legendary
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~snip~
If there is real spam from newbies then admin can reduce posting limit to several posts per day instead of the 360 ​​second limit but you need to prove that there is a heavily spam happening and it is harming the forum.


I think that this limit should be increased and thus make it as difficult as possible for these spammers. It may seem like a "hostile move" to someone, but if the rules of the game are set as it is now, then we see that someone can write 4-5 or more posts with obviously dangerous links before being removed from the forum.
legendary
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Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?
It's for privacy. Emails can connect so many things and if you are not careful, it breaks your privacy.

BTW, email is a big privacy issue in general. It's too expensive (mainly time-wise) to create new email addresses, but if you use the same one, it creates tons of links. Ideally, you should use one email per service.

I don't know how the spammer solve the reCaptcha easily I think theymos need to switch from reCaptcha v2 to v3 just to avoid those bots from registering new accounts.
If they use captcha bypass code, they can easily log in their accounts, no need to solve captcha.
legendary
Activity: 1722
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Your suggestion would make sense if there weren't bunch of services for temporary email address
But since they exist, this would be just another pointless step that won't stop or slow down account farmers and spammers.
hero member
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It won't solve the spamming activity or making new account bots for spamming, remember there are temporary/disposable emails available online. But this will surely will solve other things like forgetting email for account recovery.
legendary
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I got almost 40+ notification from spammer.
I don't know how the spammer solve the reCaptcha easily I think theymos need to switch from reCaptcha v2 to v3 just to avoid those bots from registering new accounts.
legendary
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Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
IP ban works perfectly in fact it bans people who never wanted to register before. I know it because many people DM me on my Telegram that they are banned and can not post.
sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 560
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The thing is spammer's like this tend to come to the forum from time to time. I thought about creating a similar thread like this when I saw over 20 of his repeated spam posts but I decided to chill since they will eventually get deleted and a thread like this has been raised previously before. That email verification of a thing would be effective but I'm not sure Theymos would want to implement it .

Had I created this particular thread I would have suggested some kind of IP block for a long period of time. I know that newbies have it already but it seems the duration of the block still allows scammers like this do continue spamming. Let's just give it a while though hopefully he'll tire out soon.
legendary
Activity: 2688
Merit: 3983
For a small amount of money you can create hundreds of email addresses per day so adding email verification won't change anything.

If there is real spam from newbies then admin can reduce posting limit to several posts per day instead of the 360 ​​second limit but you need to prove that there is a heavily spam happening and it is harming the forum.

BTW


Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.
legendary
Activity: 2870
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IIRC theymos mention about better privacy. Anyway, i don't think simply requiring to complete email verification can stop spam or scam attempt for some reasons,
1. Many temporary email website exist.
2. You could abuse plus sign on email address. For example, [email protected], [email protected], ... , [email protected].
3. There are some service which offer lots or "unlimited" email alias. For example, Apple's Hide My Email.
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1298
Lightning network is good with small amount of BTC
You can see an idiot spamming on this forum with the same posts but different accounts. The person finds it easy to use any email which are not even existing to create new account on this forum. Not verifying email before anyone can successfully register an account on this forum makes it easy for the person to create new accounts. Why not make email verification compulsory before registering an account?

Since the person continues, I do not think the IP ban is working or the forum does not want to ban the IP of the country the person is using to access this forum.
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