Hello.

Our forums are being attacked by a malicious and very destructive individual repeatedly who is managing to register and whom has started to send out appalling, absolutely awful, images of abuse in pms to our forum users. I wont go into detail here but they are appalling and haunting.

I pm'd Base, the staff member here, and he suggesting posting here and seeing if members or (ideally) an admin will respond.

Due to the repeated, vicious, and very clever attacks I dont want to go into details but they are intensely disturbing. I would very much appreciate an Admin contacting me so that I can discuss the situation in more detail and most of all make it very, very clear we're trying everything we can to curb this stuff.

1) we disabled all new registrations for a while. now they are enabled, but a forum admin must enable them.

2) You must now post 5 times or more before you can send pms.

3) ill be putting flood control on as soon as ive finished writing this.

4) We have now got several modders who can ban people immediately, hopefully providing 24/7 coverage.

5) almsot all the suggestions here https://help.forumotion.com/t75418-my-forum-was-hacked have been put into effect

6) we will be deleting all inactive accounts over 12 months old and all accoutns that he may have created in a period of 3 months earlier this year.

We want to make it absolutely clear we hate this guy's actions and we do NOT want to be in trouble with forummotion.

If an admin could contact me ill provide more details. we woudl very much appreciate this.

thank you

Dormouse

You have taken quite a few corrective measures.

You can also do the following.
General>Forum>Security
Unauthorize members with less than a week registration to post external links and emails : Yes
Unauthorize guests to post external links and emails : Yes
Unauthorize unofficial forms to post messages and private messages on the forum :Yes
IP address accounts creation limit, for each 24 hours :0
Flood control. Delay between 2 messages, topics or private messages by a user.: 60 seconds or whatever you find suitable.

DM Dormouse wrote:Hello.

Our forums are being attacked by a malicious and very destructive individual repeatedly who is managing to register and whom has started to send out appalling, absolutely awful, images of abuse in pms to our forum users. I wont go into detail here but they are appalling and haunting.

I pm'd Base, the staff member here, and he suggesting posting here and seeing if members or (ideally) an admin will respond.

Due to the repeated, vicious, and very clever attacks I dont want to go into details but they are intensely disturbing. I would very much appreciate an Admin contacting me so that I can discuss the situation in more detail and most of all make it very, very clear we're trying everything we can to curb this stuff.

1) we disabled all new registrations for a while. now they are enabled, but a forum admin must enable them.

2) You must now post 5 times or more before you can send pms.

3) ill be putting flood control on as soon as ive finished writing this.

4) We have now got several modders who can ban people immediately, hopefully providing 24/7 coverage.

5) almsot all the suggestions here https://help.forumotion.com/t75418-my-forum-was-hacked have been put into effect

6) we will be deleting all inactive accounts over 12 months old and all accoutns that he may have created in a period of 3 months earlier this year.

We want to make it absolutely clear we hate this guy's actions and we do NOT want to be in trouble with forummotion.

If an admin could contact me ill provide more details. we woudl very much appreciate this.

thank you

Dormouse

I have another safety precaution on my little sister's board, which is an "application" form you must fill out.
Her board is also administrator activation only (it's targeted toward a younger audience, so security must be a #1 priority).

The form asks you to describe yourself, how you found us, etc. This way, you are given a warning light to suspicious accounts and you can disable their PM boxes temporarily to see if they are trustworthy.
Obviously, this form should be set to Adminstrator viewable only.

Empire_1 wrote:
I have another safety precaution on my little sister's board, which is an "application" form you must fill out.
Her board is also administrator activation only (it's targeted toward a younger audience, so security must be a #1 priority).

The form asks you to describe yourself, how you found us, etc. This way, you are given a warning light to suspicious accounts and you can disable their PM boxes temporarily to see if they are trustworthy.
Obviously, this form should be set to Adminstrator viewable only.

How do you add this?
EDIT: Nevermind figured it out.

Thank you very much for your replies. Appreciated.

Going to pm Sanket with the name of our boards and a few more details.

*coughs* Empire_1 or iLeo, how do I set that application form up? *blush*

Please don't double/triple post. Your post need to be separated by 24 hours before bumping, replying or adding more information. Please use the edit button instead!

It's easy.
Go to ACP > Users & Usergroups > Profile

Create a text zone. Title it "Application into [Your Site Name Here]"
In the description, list out the things you want them to tell you.

Then, uncheck the options for displaying this in Profile or Messages.
Then set it up to viewable by Administrators only.
Save.

Now when a user registers, go to the Inactive Members list, check his application section. If his response is suspicious, you can choose to take whatever action you need (ignore, disable PM, accept, etc).

Be careful of deleting them however, since the system will notify by email to anyone who is deleted.

---

Edit: Member has contacted me. This thread can now be locked