Although I resurrected this Mod to deal with automated spam members added with random names using @mail.ru email addresses, it strikes me that it will work for any of these nuisances, and other members may now find it useful.

Our forum has recently come in for the attention of these bots, and although validation stops them registering fully and posting anything, they still bloat the member list and validation request page, and need to be deleted daily as a maintenance task, which has nuisance value.

I recalled the old Mod we had written back in 2005 to bar unwanted members with certain free email accounts, and thought I would try it against the mail.ru nuisance.

Although Mod was written for E-Blah 9, and the Mod install routine does not appear to work for 10.3.6 (sorry, I've never looked at how it works), I just installed the relevant code into Register.pl by hand and it works just fine. As it's not for human use, I deliberately left out the language file entry, but this would presumably work if also added manually to complete the job - but why give spammers helpful info, just let the registration fail with no info, and let them guess.

Since it works, and is simple, I thought I'd mention if for others, and maybe it would be worth updating by the Team to work as a Mod for 10.3.6

This is the original thread:- http://www.eblah.com/forum/m-1128459527/

The original Mod file is located here:- http://www.eblah.com/forum/m-1128556272

And a support thread here:- http://www.eblah.com/forum/m-1128563864/

I can rewrite for 10.3.6 but it would be much better to use Human Verification that way they can't register  

There is Eblah's built in but is dependanton modules being installed on your server.
There are also a couple of mods like Assira that are independant but work very well.

Thanks for the wise words (again ).

The Human Verification wouldn't run when I tried it way back - hosting problem - but I forgot I had been obliged to move hosts, and had not tried it after the move.

The new host worked first time (provided all the installation instructions are followed faithfully) and will hopefully do the job.

If not, I like the Assira cat option, so my recent problem should be reduced or eliminated now.

Glad to be of assistance.

Just to let you know, I installed the Assira mod on my test site and it works a treat.