Spammers love Forum name = e-mail address

[Wazoo]

Thought about sending a few PMs but then noted that there are approximately 160 users that registered using their e-mail address as their user 'name' ... didn't take long to talk myself out of that. There's a bulk-mail feature available here, but selecting users with an "[at]" sign in their 'name' isn't one of the options and I'm pretty tired of hacking code right now. Therefore, just posting a copy of a recent PM I sent out to a recent poster;

You may want to take a look at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...indpost&p=29130 and come up with something other than your e-mail address.

The obvious reason goes to spammer & virus scraping of e-mail addresses.

Though I might be settig myself up for quite a flood, I also recognise that a lot of folks came, registered, and have never been back. Others for some reason pay no attention to these "Announcements" ...?? Oh well ....

[Wazoo]

Odd, only four folks thus far have taken any action on this.

[Wazoo]

In the interest of trying to protect users from themselves, I've made an attempt at having this application code replace the [at] character with [at] when an e-mail address is posted. The thought is to minimize exposure of our users' addresses to the bots, scrapers, and even infected systems that may be perusing this Forum. The initial attempt at setting this up replaces every instance of the [at] character, but I don't really recall postings that would normally use this character in another instance, and even if used, the replacement should be self-explanatory (?) Thus far, the Moderators have made an attempt to edit these posts, but ... getting to be a lot of extra work that shouldn't be required.

It would appear that the method I've tried here is not retroactive, only impacting a post when it gets submitted or edited.

Edit: results of testing by dbiel (thanks!)

And for those that need to use the [at], all you have to do is make sure some non alphanumeric character (including the space) appears on at least one side of the the [at] symbol

[Wazoo]

It appears that the attempt at munging of user posting of e-mail addresses does not have an affect on currently register users, but have to note that it may cause some issues for future folks trying to register and attempting to use an e-mail address for their account name.

[Wazoo]

Title change made for possibly more attention grabbing ..????

[turetzsr]

Title change made for possibly more attention grabbing ..????

33642[/snapback]

...Do you have access to the HTML for the registration page? If so, do you need java scri_pt code to keep users from registering with an [at] sign in their user name?

[Wazoo]

...Do you have access to the HTML for the registration page?  If so, do you need java scri_pt code to keep users from registering with an [at] sign in their user name?

33645[/snapback]

Rumours are that one could simply add the "[at]" sign into a Banned filter and that would prevent someone from trying to sign up with an e-mail address, but ... as mentioned (somewhere) some folks 'want' that extra (spammer) attention ...

I started sending out PMs to those non-SpamCop addressed people that basically haven't shown up since (or shortly after) registering ... quit when my PM storage got (back) to 80% full ... see if there's any/much response (or how many of these get reported <g>)