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Young Writers Society


Spam usernames



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Reviews: 65
Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:40 pm
Midnight says...



Have a look at the birthdays and membershiplist...
available
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:43 pm
Firestarter says...



Nate already knows. He's hoping to delete some of them soon....I hope we can implement a security code feature to prevent people from making these kinds of accounts.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:15 pm
Nate says...



And I thought there was really 720 registered users... ;)

What's happening is someone out there has created a bot that automatically creates usernames. To stop this, I'm requiring visual confirmation from now on (to see what I mean just log out and then go to the register page).

Anyways, later tonight I'm gonna go ahead and delete all the illegitimate usernames. I would do it right now since it shouldn't take very long (ten minutes tops), but I'm going to my "job" as soon as I finish typing this.
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:24 pm
Matt Bellamy says...



Oh yeah, like a picture of a word and you have to type the word to verify you're not a bot, I've had to do that before. *recognition*
Matt.

Got Tumblr? Me too! http://www.writersam.co.uk

Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine is accepting submissions! http://peekingcatpoetrymagazine.blogspot.co.uk
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:27 pm
Firestarter says...



That's what I meant by security code feature. Couldn't think of the word. I knew what I meant in my mind.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 9:49 pm
Bobo says...



Can you get a hack to limit the possible characters too? Or at least make people use letters? Those all number or all symbol usernames are annoying, although I doubt most people would want to use them anyways.
  





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Thu Apr 14, 2005 11:54 pm
Nate says...



All the spam usernames will be deleted within 24 hours. The program that I have running now to delete them will not allow me to delete them before that. But, 24 hours isn't that long of a time.

After all is said and done, expect the username count to drop below the number that it was before the spamming; possibly to down around 300. This is because I am deleting all users who have never logged in.

A lot of the names, though, are really funny. I like Vote Catholic Papacy 2006, lol. It comes right after other ones that say Vote George Bush 2000, Vote Al Gore 1997, Vote Dick Cheney 2004 and so forth.
  





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Fri Apr 15, 2005 2:06 am
electricbluemonkey says...



Those are pretty funny names...

And I too thought that we had so many members, but I couldn't believe it. I mean, gain about 300 members in a couple of days? It was scary...
Gotta a find a woman be good to me,
Who won't hide my liquor, try to serve me tea.
  





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425 Reviews



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Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:17 pm
Nate says...



All fixed :P

The member total is, as of right now, 360, which is below the level it was before the spamming. This is because I deleted all users who have never logged into their accounts. Most of those accounts were just people who were >13 and couldn't join without explicit parental permission (required by the COPPA act), although I think a few others weren't real either.
  





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418 Reviews



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Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:10 am
electricbluemonkey says...



Ah, finally. I was getting kind of tired seeing all of those people who have never even posted on there. It was annoying.
Gotta a find a woman be good to me,
Who won't hide my liquor, try to serve me tea.
  








People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.
— Albus Dumbledore