The Exiled Gamers Forum: The Exiled Gamers Forum -> Spam Monitoring Now Activated

Wow, don't we have enough already?!?!

No, never! And isn't it relaxed we don't get 10+ user accounts every day just to see they are either idle because they failed there spam to be posted (script error?) or succeed and add a bunch of topics with all the nasty content we were not waiting for. You can now login knowing that new posts are most likely made by other members you like to discuss with (or joke about).
And that it is because of a good system based on a solid core and protection that it is so quiet with new registrations, not because people cannot register at all.

---

So, what this all about? Didn't you just previously posted something about Akismet? I almost hear you asking but yes, that's correct and that's not enough. I mentioned that in this blog entry. Akismet is aiming at the blog system only. Also very solid and in use by many and well known blog systems. If you open a hosted wordpress blog it will be enabled for you by default and they will give you no choice to disable the service, for a very good reason! This system I am posting about this time has been created by ;]IPB. And it has been activated as long we hold an active support contract.

How it Works?
Each time a user tries to register, the ;]IP.Board will contact the service (a central database) and report the IP address and email address attempting to register. The service will scan a list of known spammers and give the account a score of 1 - 4. There are various options configured to control what behavior happens based on the score such as banning the account, letting it through normally, or queuing it for approval.




By harnessing the power of the many thousands of ;]IPB communities by IPB, the service can "learn" over time what accounts are spammers. For example; a real human could never register on 5 IP.Board communities in just one minute so the service would see that account as a probable spam account.

The service will also monitor the "mark as spam" feature now included in IP.Board. This means that, if we as administrator or (global) moderators manually mark an account as a spammer, the information is reported back to the service to help stop those accounts on our community and other IP.Board communities as well!

Through these methods we are part of a service that learns from the collective data gathered from all IP.Board communities who choose to participate in the Spam Monitoring Service.

Privacy
;]IPS will collect various registration information to track and catch spam accounts. Information that is not from a spammer is only kept temporarily (to detect trends so we can catch spam accounts) then deleted. The only information permanently kept is for those known to be spammers.

---

Think about it this way, if you send e-mail through your ;]ISP or web hosting account; or you receive e-mail, the e-mail has most often gone through several databases to check it's validity and then marked as spam with a score from 1 - 10. Most services will not even deliver email with an high score (8 or above). This service is not different but kind of unique that it intergrates with a forum system. I even dare to think that this is the first and we're one of the first world wide

Oh and before I forget, use the spam button with care! Just like e-mail, you do not want a valid e-mail message to be marked as spam. And same goes for the sender!Several member groups cannot be marked as spam users (now who would those be?). And only a small selection can mark others as spam users (wonder who would they be?).