Member Email Addresses

[webmaster]

Every day I get hundreds of emails that notify me of site activity. That allows me to keep an eye on things without actually visiting the site. A growing number of those are now bouncebacks because of invalid email addresses in member accounts. This morning I received at least 25 bouncebacks. They are PMs, notices about posts in subscribed threads and most surprisingly, replies to classified ads. Many members are placing ads without checking if their member email address is valid. It's discouraging to see that so many replies to classified ads are not delivered.

A group of members with invalid email addresses are so active subscribing to threads that it creates a constant flow of bouncebacks. For those members I've been forced to change their invalid email address to a "blackhole" address so they don't flood my mailbox.

If you are an active member who wants to receive notices of posts in subscribed threads, replies, PMs or responses to classified ads PLEASE update your email address. You can do that by clicking "User CP" on the blue nav bar.

By the way, this site never sells or shares your email address with anyone. EVER!

[wifi]

By any chance, did you switch email providers ? I am on one forum that switched to a bulk free email provider, I only discovered this when I stopped getting activity reminders. Turns out this new provider wasn't passing my spam filters and had to make some adjustments to my "private" (chuckle) email server.

Just tossing this out there if it applies to anyone.

[boat_guy64]

I assume that in order to reduce spam, you do not allow yahoo and gmail addresses. This has forced me to use a work address instead. I've changed jobs and I'm certain that my email is no longer valid. I'll change it now but it sure would be nice to be able to change it to my 15 year old yahoo account. As a reminder to those that have changed jobs and do the same as I do, you may want to update your information.

[SIKSUKR]

I checked my registered e-mail and it was and old one. I tried to change it but it wants my password. I forgot it but to get the password sent to me it asks to put in the registered e-mail which is no longer valid. What to do?

[upthesaukee]

Originally Posted by boat_guy64

I assume that in order to reduce spam, you do not allow yahoo and gmail addresses. This has forced me to use a work address instead. I've changed jobs and I'm certain that my email is no longer valid. I'll change it now but it sure would be nice to be able to change it to my 15 year old yahoo account. As a reminder to those that have changed jobs and do the same as I do, you may want to update your information.

When I first joined this site, I used my Yahoo account and have not had a problem, and as far as I know, have not created one for the webmaster.

[webmaster]

Originally Posted by boat_guy64

I assume that in order to reduce spam, you do not allow yahoo and gmail addresses. This has forced me to use a work address instead. I've changed jobs and I'm certain that my email is no longer valid. I'll change it now but it sure would be nice to be able to change it to my 15 year old yahoo account. As a reminder to those that have changed jobs and do the same as I do, you may want to update your information.

I don't block any email services. You are welcome to use a Yahoo or Gmail address.

To stop the spam registrations all new registrations are filtered through a database called StopForumSpam. It rejects ten's of thousands of spam registrations every month on this site. Then I do an IP lookup on the rest before approving them. I don't approve registrations made through proxy servers or from places like Russia or Eastern Europe. You can see by the absence of spam on this forum that my steps work pretty well.

[webmaster]

Originally Posted by SIKSUKR

I checked my registered e-mail and it was and old one. I tried to change it but it wants my password. I forgot it but to get the password sent to me it asks to put in the registered e-mail which is no longer valid. What to do?

Just send me an email at webmaster@winnipesaukee.com and I'll manually reset your password and send it to you. If you want include your preferred password and I'll use that. If not I'll make it something random.

[webmaster]

Originally Posted by webmaster

To stop the spam registrations all new registrations are filtered through a database called StopForumSpam. It rejects ten's of thousands of spam registrations every month on this site. Then I do an IP lookup on the rest before approving them. I don't approve registrations made through proxy servers or from places like Russia or Eastern Europe. You can see by the absence of spam on my forum that my steps work pretty well.

For anyone interested here is a screenshot of the StopForumSpam log. The activity you see is just one 30 minute period and there was only one legitimate registration during that time. You can see in the red circle that there were over 17,000 registrations since I flushed it a week or so ago. Without the StopForumSpam database I don't know how this constant flood of registrations could be managed.

[jeffk]

Originally Posted by webmaster

For anyone interested here is a screenshot of the StopForumSpam log. The activity you see is just one 30 minute period and there was only one legitimate registration during that time. You can see in the red circle that there were over 17,000 registrations since I flushed it a week or so ago. Without the StopForumSpam database I don't know how this constant flood of registrations could be managed.

It is amazing that websites are under almost constant attack by such attempts. The only reason the whole web doesn't collapse is because of protections like StopForumSpam. The average user has no idea how nasty the internet would be without all the protections that are in place. Maybe that's not a good thing because, absent experiencing it, they don't truly appreciate the scope of the problem.