For reasons unknown someone decided that this Q/A site was a delicious target for Registration Spam and as of 2021 the dbFront Q/A has received as many as 12,000 registration attempts per day. Even with the help of a ReCaptcha and checks to StopFormSpam, BotScout and others, that can still result in the creation of thousands of Spam accounts per day. There has always been a certain level of Spam registrations but never at this level.
This causes four major issues:
1. Spam Email
Every successful registration results in a verification email set to an email address they specify. This means these registration bots can use Forums and Q/A sites to generate Spam to users who never requested it.
2. Poor Email Reputation
The victims of the registration Spam logically hit the Spam button with the result that it seriously affects the email reputation of the hosting site.
The immediate result is that users that WANT their license emails or expect answers to their support tickets have to look in the Spam folder. Some security conscious organizations completely block emails from suspect domains causing even further issues.
3. Sleeper Accounts
Some of these accounts become sleeper accounts, left unattended for an extended period of time at which point they suddenly wake up and post Spam articles or links. This creates moderation headaches.
Because of the way these sleeper accounts are created and then later reactivated, sites like StopForumSpam can't be used to report or block this malicious activity.
4. Administration Headaches
Because of the thousands of sleeper accounts it becomes difficult to administer and respond to real users properly.
Solution
After considering a variety of options we decided that the best solution was to limit the Q/A registrations to email addresses or company domains used by existing dbFront license registrations.
Let us know at [email protected] if you have any difficulty signing up for a Q/A account and we would be happy to help.
