Australian-Coins Forum

Non Numismatic Discussion => Forum Announcements and Rules => Topic started by: markn on November 19, 2012, 01:55:43 PM

Title: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on November 19, 2012, 01:55:43 PM
From this point forward GMAIL addresses are banned from this forum.  I am aware that quite a few of you have GMAIL addresses associated with your accounts so you'll have to find some other email address to use.

The reason for this is the large (50+) number of registrations we're getting every day from spammers using GMAIL addresses.  It's not fair on NEVOL or PPH to have to monitor and delete them all the time.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: purplepennyhunter on November 19, 2012, 02:34:01 PM
I'm afraid those with gmail addresses can't see these posts as they have gmail addresses associated with their membership and can no longer login. They are being asked at login to change their email address to something different. Any problems let us know.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Russ e on November 19, 2012, 03:34:26 PM
would it be worth making everyone use the paid email associated with their internet accounts?
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on November 19, 2012, 04:25:16 PM
I've emailed everyone with GMAIL address already.  We'll probably lose a few members but we've had dozens and dozens of spam sign-ups in the last week and it's not worth the hassle.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Fr45h3R on November 19, 2012, 09:10:23 PM
Is anyone else using Hotmail to get mail from this forum ?
I swapped from gmail to hotmail but i'm receiving no mail (thanks Markn for activating the account with the hotmail address so i could get in here)

Just trying to work out if it is a personal mailbox issue, or perhaps to do with the messages being sent from the forum.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Ozcoins on November 19, 2012, 11:29:29 PM
I am on a hotmail address.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: enworb on November 19, 2012, 11:36:25 PM
Im also a hotmail user
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: trout on November 20, 2012, 12:17:00 AM
I have had an account with bigpond for a number of years, I presume my email is "Safe" :good:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: purplepennyhunter on November 20, 2012, 07:23:48 AM
enworb I sent you an email through the forum messages (a little while ago now) and you didn't get it. Is that what we're talking about here because you have a hotmail address?
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Ozcoins on November 20, 2012, 08:45:43 AM
I think banning all gmail accounts is not the right way to go.
If you would like help with sorting out new members, I volunteer to help
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Nevol on November 20, 2012, 09:55:09 AM
Quote from: 'Ozcoins' pid='3589' dateline='1353363343'I think banning all gmail accounts is not the right way to go.If you would like help with sorting out new members, I volunteer to help
Out of 115 spammers that I checked and deleted during the last 10 or so days, 77 were from gmail addresses. :Gigakach_01:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: enworb on November 20, 2012, 10:29:15 AM
PPH i think what happened with that email was it went to junk and was automatically deleted after 10 days. I have been stupid to check the junk inbox. I am now in the habit of checkng the junk folder daily because any emails from this forum go there.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Russ e on November 20, 2012, 12:41:03 PM
right click on the email header and mark it as not junk
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: WavyTwenty on December 04, 2012, 02:56:37 PM
I tried to use an outlook.com email address (Hotmail) - but that didn't work.  I never recieved the authentication email.

I had to resort to an ISP address that I don't like using.

Wavy20
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: JeffH on January 28, 2013, 08:04:42 AM
Have more email domains been blocked?

I could not view the forum just now and was told to change my email address. The address I had was the email address provided by my internet service provider (exemail). I tried a fastmail address, which was rejected. I tried another fastmail address and that was accepted.

I would much prefer my exemail address which has a mailbox titled "Coin Forums" and rules set for all coin forum emails to go directly there.

markn; what have you been doing?

Jeff
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: trout on January 28, 2013, 08:10:50 AM
I have a bigpond email address and have NEVER had a drama with it :good:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on January 28, 2013, 08:15:29 AM
Quote from: 'JeffH' pid='7439' dateline='1359322482'Have more email domains been blocked?

I could not view the forum just now and was told to change my email address. The address I had was the email address provided by my internet service provider (exemail). I tried a fastmail address, which was rejected. I tried another fastmail address and that was accepted.

I would much prefer my exemail address which has a mailbox titled "Coin Forums" and rules set for all coin forum emails to go directly there.

markn; what have you been doing?

Jeff

I just installed a new spam filter.  This shouldn't have had any effect on existing accounts as far as I was aware.  Can you PM me your old address please?
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: gac_1808 on January 28, 2013, 09:49:39 AM
I have a hotmail email address and this was blocked.
I had to change email address to a work email, which is not what I wanted to do.

Cheers
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on January 28, 2013, 10:06:37 AM
Sorry I am trying to resolve this.  The plugin has now been deleted rather than just turned off.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: trout on January 28, 2013, 10:13:31 AM
Crikey Mark, You Mods may have to catch a bit of Sun.
Look at the bottom of the main page, You have lost ALL your colour :laugh2:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: purplepennyhunter on January 28, 2013, 10:18:09 AM
Quote from: 'gac_1808' pid='7455' dateline='1359328779'I have a hotmail email address and this was blocked.
I had to change email address to a work email, which is not what I wanted to do.

Cheers

Markn is looking at this, looks like quite a few people are affected. You should be able to change your email address back once the issue is sorted.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: trout on January 28, 2013, 10:28:49 AM
Quote from: 'purplepennyhunter' pid='7463' dateline='1359330489'
Quote from: 'gac_1808' pid='7455' dateline='1359328779'I have a hotmail email address and this was blocked.
I had to change email address to a work email, which is not what I wanted to do.

Cheers

Markn is looking at this, looks like quite a few people are affected. You should be able to change your email address back once the issue is sorted.

Not Me :dance2: Good old Bigpond :yahoo:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on January 28, 2013, 10:30:12 AM
It seems to be working again.  The plugin wasn't causing the problem.  I added all the newly banned emails for last weeks bunch of spammers and one of those is causing the board to have a spasm.  For now I've deleted all of the banned emails, I'll add them again slowly and see which one causes the problem.

Apologies.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on January 28, 2013, 10:34:50 AM
OK I have it.  We had a number of spam signups from @mail.com so I happily banned mail.com using the wildcard match *mail.com.  Trouble with that is that *mail.com matches anything with mail.com in it, like hotmail.com, ozemail.com.au, foomail.com.  Anyway you get the drift.  It's fixed up now.  I can re-install my spam plugin now because that wasn't causing the problem.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: gac_1808 on January 28, 2013, 06:04:26 PM
Quote from: 'purplepennyhunter' pid='7463' dateline='1359330489'
Quote from: 'gac_1808' pid='7455' dateline='1359328779'I have a hotmail email address and this was blocked.
I had to change email address to a work email, which is not what I wanted to do.

Cheers

Markn is looking at this, looks like quite a few people are affected. You should be able to change your email address back once the issue is sorted.


All changed back to orginal email address. Thanks:wavemulticolor:
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: markn on February 21, 2013, 09:34:43 AM
The anti-spam measures I put in place a few weeks ago have worked out nicely so I think we'll go ahead and unlock Gmail addresses again.  As of right now they are unlocked.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: BCNumismatics on April 03, 2013, 04:12:10 PM
Thanks,Mark.

Expecting people to register with an address from an I.S.P. or from a non-free source was a bit too much.

It is Hotmail addresses that has been the ones used by hackers & spammers,as they are easy for some people to hijack.

Gmail has a lot of security measures built in.

Aidan.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Fulvio on April 04, 2013, 05:44:08 AM
The trouble with Hotmail, since Microsoft took it over (and this goes for all other MS services, like live.com, ninemsn.com.au, etc) is that they read incoming mail, and if they decide they don't like it, they bounce it without telling the recipient.

So if you send someone mail from an MS account, and they reply to it, you may or may not receive it, depending on whatever arcane process (which of course isn't revealed) they use to decide its spam. Every other provider simply marks it as spam and/or moves it to a spam folder, but with MS, you have NO idea that there was ever a reply sent to you.

This caused countless problems for an organisation I ran, because people would email us, not get a reply, start getting narky, and we had no way to tell them what was going on, unless they happened to include some other contact details in a followup email. It caused us significant harm, and probably still does.

This sort of arbitrary behaviour is why I started actively discouraging people from using any MS mail service. As Aidan says, Gmail doesn't play games with your mail, and is the only one of the free services I'd have no hesitation recommending.

As to the spam signup issue, every site that allows self-registration has the exact same issues, and not just from one particular provider. We were getting hundreds a day from all sorts of addresses, free, paid and ISP. The solution is a captcha in the registration process, or (as I've done on my test site), to abstract the registration. My Joomla accounts are actually set up by SMF forum, not the other way around, which is non-obvious and the spammers can't find it. I've not had a single attempt since I made that change.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Ozcoins on April 04, 2013, 08:20:11 PM
Fulvio.
Regarding the problem with your emails not arriving to hotmail addresses.
It sounds like you were blacklisted.
Title: RE: Gmail Addresses
Post by: Fulvio on April 04, 2013, 10:06:13 PM
No. Some Optusnet emails went through, some didn't. If Optus were blacklisted, none would have worked. The blocks are definitely on a mail by mail basis, based on content.