Forum OPEN for new users (was closed before)

[Snake_Man]

This topic name was "Forum closed for new users" but I changed it now to show we are OPEN for new users.

We have gotten few spam posts on some "bots" or "robots" recently and clearly there has been some such users registering here in past few weeks/days.

So from now on, PMC Tactical forum is closed for new users registering by themselves, only admins can add new users to the forum. Edit: But we are open now again

If you are reading this without account to this forum and you truly want to be a user here posting messages, then feel free to contact me on IRC irc.quakenet.org at #WrpTool channel, or email me into flashpoint at nekromantix and of course the dot com to finish the address (write some clear PMC Tactical Forum into the subject line so I dont delete your email along with the daily spam).

I'm very sorry for this, but the lame spam just got too much for me, this is where it all ends.

[Snake_Man]

Now I want to try if the PRE-Registration really works. Its used all around I think, you register as new user with valid password, you get email from PMC Tactical and activate your account from there. I have no clue if these spam-bots can click the link automatically, lets hope not

So, all new users are welcome to join again. There is going to be much more PMC OFP stuff in the near future so its nice new users can join.

[Snake Man]

The new phpbb forum is now set to have new users validated by Admin.

Actually I'm not sure what it means, but I hope it now stops the spam bots and fucking spammers. We'll see how it turns out. The first post of this topic still has valid contact information, so if you cannot register, use that info to contact us.

[Raptorman]

Maybe these 2 mods can help you fighting spam:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=354376
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=464628

[Snake Man]

Thanks Raptorman, I'll keep those in mind. But I think the board is apparently in the mode that admin (me) can only activate new accounts, so no matter what the spammers cant get to post to annoy you real users. However many times the spammers actually didn't post here, they just registered with their WWW page being the the spam, which was weird. How many users here check the profile of new users? Eh.

Anyways.

[Snake Man]

The spammers kept coming... and I had it. Forum is now officially closed for new users.

If anyone wants to register, admins have to do it manually. So ask in email, other forum or IRC if you want to have account in PMC Tactical forums.

[Snake Man]

As the forum is closed for new users, anyone who wants to have an account here needs to email me or private message me on some other forum. Send me your login name, preferred password and email address.

My email is tactical at our-domain-name and you can reach me on IRC irc.quakenet.org at #WrpTool channel, or from few forums; BIS forums, Frugals world, FreeFalcon forums or in CoC forums.

With that amount of contact info, I dont think anyone can have any problems contacting me and getting account arranged here. PMC is very happy to welcome any and all OFP, ArmA and Falcon 4 community users.

[Snake Man]

When the new forum software phpbb3 olympys was installed I left the registrations open to a new users as there is quite nice graphical questions and stuff to remove any bots/robots trying to spam. However real persons of course still get in and real persons can post spam which happened twice now.

So again, the forum is open for new users which have to go through all the graphical questions etc... but ultimately the account activation has to be done by me. I will not activate anyone's account who don't post a Private Message to me telling me a good reason why should I activate them.

So if you want to get account for PMC Tactical, go ahead and register, then PM me with few words about yourself why you should get account here.

Any new users just registering and not posting a PM to me withing few hours, will be deleted.

[Snake Man]

I just discovered that if a new user registers to our forum, they cannot access even a private message (PM) inbox (user control panel) as they are not let in before admin has activated their account. I don't like this as the original plan was to have users register normally, then send PM to me explaining who they are and after that I'd be activating their account so they can start to post messages normally.

I apologize to everyone who's registered but could not do anything including posting a PM, while not getting any emails from me. I didn't know how the forum registration process really worked before I tried it myself, now I know.

So nothing's changed on the new user perspective, except that now I'll be monitoring all new registrations closely and anyone not totally looking like a spam bot, will get email directly from me asking why they want to register into our forums. So when you register and get the email, please answer it for prompt forum account activation.

Hopefully this method is now the final one and which we will be using for months (if not years) to come.

Thanks

[Snake Man]

Well it wasn't...

I've had it once again... we kept getting like 20+ spam bots registering daily, they could not cause any damage to the forum with their spam as admin has to validate them and no regular users can see them, but monitoring the new users registrations became just impossible task with this amount of spammers, try to pick up a genuine user from that amount of trash, impossible.

So now, once again (how many times has this happen by now?) PMC Tactical is completely closed for new users, if you want access, please email me and ask!

My email is the same old, pmc at pmctactical dot org, should be no problem for anyone to get in touch with me.

Please don't get confused, we welcome new users, we want new users... its just that we have to do the registration manually as the spam bots ruin it for everyone. So please join up by requesting account using email.

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience, once again.

[Snake Man]

I just purged about 5 PAGES of new users from the queue, there was only 2 real users and 1 that is still pending on evaluation (email sent to him).

See, that's the reality of new user registration queue in phpbb3 forums nowadays, spam bots & robots are massing their attacks.

Anyways main thing is that the forum is open for new user registrations, its just my pain to sort through the mass of spam bot accounts and delete them.

[Snake Man]

Another 6 (six) pages of new users purged from the queue, they were all spam bots / robots. What a fun!

[Snake Man]

I was bit busy the last few days because of ArmA 2 release, so the registration queue got long again, I think it was 8 pages now and on those pages we got only four (4) real new users registered. Spam bots galore!

Who said its painless to run a forum

[Snake Man]

I am very happy to announce that the spam bot problem has been solved!

Thanks goes to Lone Wolf, our beloved linux guru who always gets the tough configurations done, thanks man, your work has been appreciated through out the years.

We upgraded to new phpbb version and installed anti spam bot mod which seems to work perfectly. Before the install we got like 30 spam bots per day, since the install we have gotten only valid users. This makes me very very happy.

Now, everyone register!

[Snake Man]

To follow this topic over the years; new user registrations to PMC Tactical forum are now, again, closed

After installing v3.1.3 forum software, it dropped the mod's that had new user registration spam bot detection systems. Over the last few years we ran the forum with those and during that time very few, very few new users registered who actually posted...

So now with the forum upgrade those mods are not in use and I closed new user registrations due spam bots... (it was actually funny, after upgrading and doing some finishing touches forum already got like 5 spam bots registering hehe) and because no new users post anything, I see no reason to work on the new user registration setup.

If there are some new user who genuinely wants to come here to post, I've explained it hundreds of times how to contact me and ask for an account.

[Snake Man]

As the story continues, new phpbb installation and new spam bot new user registration settings in place so registrations are open once again.

Ping pong around we go in endless circle

There is now question displayed to registering user, its specific PMC or ArmA/Falcon 4 question which no low life spammer would know. Although I'm not sure if the questions are too harsh for newbies as how would they know all such specific questions, hmm dunno... maybe I need to tweak the questions to be bit more easier. Anyways hopefully this time the new spam bot prevention setup will be effective.

Oh well at least it should prevent spam bots entering and allowing genuine new users register.

Since we moved domains our new email is pmc at pmctactical dot org and PMC Tactical contact page has been updated today.

[Snake Man]

It was over a decade ago when this useless new user registration loop begun, today I have again closed the forum for new user registrations and deleted all new users who have not been posting anything. Since couple of days ago some spam bot site or something discovered how to get through our new user questions and we got like 10+ new users.

[Snake Man]

Its that time of the decade, another forum new user registration settings update

In early 2024 PMC Tactical forum seems to be under slow but steady spam bot attack, not talking about any DDOS type hammering but every day we get 5+ new spam bots registering user accounts here, every single day. This is fine for you legit users as you never get to see any damage from these spammers before I weed them out, so that is a good thing. However its a daily chore to delete those spambot accounts and gets pretty tiresome after a few weeks.

Forum new user registration includes questions about our editing and game playing activities, this is slightly a problem because now besides Falcon 4.0 and ofp/arma series, PMC Tactical forum also covers the farming simulator game series. So ofp/arma guy might have never even heard of this "stupid farming game!?" (like me with FS17 heh) and farmsim guy never once played some shooter game or flown single hour in combat flight simulator for that matter.

But technically any new user registering can find the answers in PMC websites, yes it is very annoying to go dig through google to find something just to register into the forum, but I just have no other technical solution right now to prevent mass of spam bots getting into the forum areas.

Just now I added three additional even more tough questions into the new user questionnaire, they are kind of tough ones but on the other hand, if a human being has brains and its not a busy spam bot nigerian price money scamming scumbag, they will definitely find the answers.

I am really sorry for all of you legitimate users who want to register here to put you through these tough questions, I really wish there was some other way to prevent bad people to do bad things (spammers, bots etc), but this is the world we're living. I'll keep working on the problem to find more easier new user registration solution.

If you are a legit ofp/arma/farmsim person who desperately wants to register into our forum but just simply cant get past those tough questions, you could try to find my email and contact me directly, I don't use discord or twitch anymore, sometimes I do login to twitch so I can watch and chat with my favorite streamers, buddies actually, but its so random it probably wont help, I do login to ofp/arma bis forums though so if you're from that community just send me a private message there, unfortunately I do not have giants farmsim forum account. I welcome each and everyone to our forums I'd love to have good game editing / playing discussions with you and help all the new people wanting to get into editing, so don't lose hope if you cant get through forum new user questions, keep at it, google, search, educate yourself. Also I'm on the community every single day, so ask around you might meet someone who knows how to contact me.

Once again, I'm so sorry for these tough security measures, but I have to prevent spam bots ruining fun for all of us. I hope to see you all on the forum asking questions or posting answers, sharing new knowledge with like minded folks

For contacting me use; PMC Tactical contact page (just check it out), bis forum account, github page.

[Snake Man]

Updated new user registration questions, it now only lists the question what group runs this web site, this question have been cracked by spam bots so I'm assuming the flood gates are again open, but dunno what else to do as since my previous post in february 2024 there has been two (2) users who got through previous question, maybe the question was just way too specific that even people in that specific gaming community don't necessarily know the answer.

I'll try to do some research to find a better spam bot prevention technique or simply better question to use during registration.

No need to worry, no malicious intent new user gets through to the forum as there are three preventive measures: 1) new user question, 2) admin activation, 3) first three posts need to be admin/moderator approved.