Verified SL Names Now Required for Forum Access

[Seven Shikami]

Hi, folks. Since we started these forums, we've had the "purple name" group -- Verified SL Residents, which allows us to link your SL identity to your forum identity, allowing you to post to restricted boards like Community Announcements.

Unfortunately, due to dozens of fake accounts set up by wily forum spammers, who assault this place every day despite putting strong captchas in place, we're forced to change this policy. Now, if you want to post to ANY of our boards, you'll need to link in your SL identity.

Fortunately, this is a fairly easy task.

To be added to the "Verified SL Name" group, log into Second Life and send an IM to 7Seas Sass stating "My forum name and SL name are the same."

If you didn't use your full first AND last SL name as a login here, also ask 7Seas Sass to change it for you. That way people can IM you easily in-world if they need to, and it stops any evildoers from stealing your SL name on the forums (unlikely, but possible.)

Thanks for your patience. Oh, and five Bulk Bait Buckets to the first person who IMs 7Seas Sass with a solid, workable security change we can make to phpBB to lock the fake-account bastards out for good. (We've tried IP range banning, and increasing the strength of the captcha, but they just keep coming, like a swarm of bees. Angry, viagra-and-porn toting bees!)

[Numpty Mistwallow]

Would using e-mail verification not prevent these spam-bots from ever posting? Another forum I post in uses this and the bots only get as far as registration but can't actually post.

[Seven Shikami]

We already use email verification and a strong captcha. Somehow, they're still getting in, and by the dozens. I can't claim to be a PHPBB expert; we just installed and ran the thing. If anybody who IS an expert can help us they get their weight in bait!

[LittleHelper Eichel]

Hi,

we run a german forum and as far as i can tell: you will always have spammers. Unluckily some ppl have nothing better to do.
The solution over inworld "registration" via 7Seas Sass is a good one i think. So the best things to avoid spam are already done.

Avoiding hacked accounts (we had such a problem a few weeks ago) is done by really good passwords ! So really everyone here should use a PW that can be called PW, including big and small letter, numbers and maybe some special characters.

Havig a look at this page can help finding "hacked accounts" : http://www.bugmenot.com/view/7seasfishing.com
No data until now EDIT: (Forget it, because the forum is in a subdirevtory it maybe will not work with that)

Greetings LH