Why When Joining Ab Can’t A Code Be Sent To The Person Joining To Let The Ab Team Know It’s Genuine ?

[Bobbisox1]

This would help stop multiple IDs and throw away email addresses , I’m not a member of any other group but I’m told this is a procedure they use, just a thought as weekends on AB see Trolls coming out from under their rocks and now it’s happening daily ,

[nicebloke1]

Taunting & provoking the trolls that you think are looking in will not improve the situation. Going on what I've seen the last few weeks.

[Old_Geezer]

It is an anonymous site, but you still need to provide an e-mail address to join. If there was a simple confirmation to prove the e-mail, that ought not put off new members, is a complexity for bot code, and yet all remain anonymous.

[Meaghan27]

^^^^ I don't know how long it has been since you joined this site, or indeed if things have changed, but when you join, you provide an email address and then receive an email to that address from Answer bank inviting you to verify your account.

[AB Editor]

Hi all, a few thoughts:

Currently members receive a validation email they have to click on to complete their sign-up, so there is a form of validation at the moment. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop people from using multiple IDs or throwaway email addresses.

Knowing if a person is "genuine" is very difficult, and it depends what you mean by genuine - trolls, spammers, returning banned members?

An email address is attributed to one username, so nobody can sign up with that email address to create another account - it's impossible.

Anyone who goes user inactive and wants to be reactivated needs to ask the editors to do this for them, and we decide if we do it on a case-by-case basis. So if a troll went UI, we would review and not reinstate them if they asked.

We can block user IPs which does work in some cases. But most people have dynamic IP addresses, which means the IP can change at any time - for example if you were to reset your home router your IP address may change. People who really want to get around this also use VPNs which means that we can't block the IP address because other members are also using that IP address so to ban one person would be to ban lots of genuine members.

As an aside, a comment that has since been deleted states the people who run the site don't live in the UK, which was said with misplaced confidence and is completely incorrect.

As previously said, the best thing to do with trolls is ignore and report.

[Bobbisox1]

Thanks for the feedback S.E

[Old_Geezer]

So it's agreed that the e-mail doesn't put off new members, and that they still remain anonymous. Thought so.

I guess bots don't auto-enroll anyway then, so presumably that's already not an issue.

[lankeela]

Trolls are not the problem, it is the spammers who join and post once to advertise gummies etc then disappear. Must be a way of approving a first post surely?

[AB Editor]

lankeela - Needing approval for the first post would quickly highlight the spammers before they get a chance to post, in theory. But this would be a big task if done manually, as over the last few days we've had 50-60 new members join per day. If they all made a post that same day, that would be 50-60 posts to approve or deny. And if there isn't an editor or moderator around to approve the first post, this could put off genuine members. It is an interesting thought though, and definitely worth putting these ideas out there to consider.

[naomi24]

Pleased to see that the ever-returning troll bent on pursuing a particular member here was spotted and zapped within minutes the other day. Well done that zapper. Good work.

[Meaghan27]

Looking at the usernames of spammers and trolls its pretty obvious who they are, using machine generated usernames. Genuine users of forums rarely use random letters and numbers, preferring something more personal. Would it not be possible to block machine generated usernames?