Verified Account

Where To

I recently joined a site where you had to submit a naked arms picture of yourself clearly holding a placard (with your account number written on it) in both hands in order to have your account verified by an admin for posting privileges.

I understand that on a site such as this it would be impractical to verify every new account, but how about restricting abilities such as creating new threads or posting links to verified members?

Is this in any way doable or am I talking through my hat?

Spear

I can hear Dav screaming from here.

My name is URL

Feel free to post a naked picture of yourself in any case

Where To

My name is URL wrote: »

Feel free to post a naked picture of yourself in any case

Ooops OP edited, meant naked arms not completely naked:o

My name is URL

Ah well.. nevermind so!

Boards.ie: Neil

We want to increase engagement here, not kill the site which implementing a verified posters only rule would surely do.

I fail to see what this verified account would achieve other than add an unnecessary step to being part of boards.

seamus

What problem would this measure fix?

Where To

seamus wrote: »

What problem would this measure fix?

From what I can see spambots are particularly adept at creating threads and posting links.

As far as I am aware, they are not so handy at taking photographs of themselves lying on a deckchair in the Bahamas with their username between their paws.

MugMugs

Where To wrote: »

From what I can see spambots are particularly adept at creating threads and posting links.

As far as I am aware, they are not so handy at taking photographs of themselves lying on a deckchair in the Bahamas with their username between their paws.

What about Joe Bloggs who has a quick query to make? Would they have to go through that rig ma roll?

I joined boards in 07 to ask some questions. Abandoned the account until I got the "we've been hacked" email which prompted me back..... I wouldn't have jumped through those hoops to verify myself initially and I wouldn't have had an account to eventually come back to had I not. It's a non runner dude....

Gordon

Where To wrote: »

From what I can see spambots are particularly adept at creating threads and posting links.

And automating batch processes that can be manipulated and executed manually with software for example.

As far as I am aware, they are not so handy at taking photographs of themselves lying on a deckchair in the Bahamas with their username between their paws.

You aren't aware of this because the need to create such a batch process such as this isn't necessary at the moment, there isn't a great need for a spammer to design this process, yet.

Spammers are either very poor or very greedy. Both of these types of people would easily be able to source 50-100 people to photograph on a white/blue background holding a placard with various numbers on them.

All they would need to do would be to photoshop a background into the image and use the placard numbers as a copypaste palette. To get a custom ID (ie , your account number) you just shuffle about the numbers or use copypastes from one of the other photographs you took.

Once you have made the images you just apply batch photoshop filters to them to make them look a bit different to the rest.

Anything can be bypassed, we certainly don't want to put a barrier in place that will prevent those that don't have a camera or don't have the smarts to upload an image from registering, when the diehard spammers will be happily signing up at will.

You sure the site Admins in that site are doing it to combat 'spam' as opposed to checking out the hot chicks hmm?!

Where To

MugMugs wrote: »

What about Joe Bloggs who has a quick query to make? Would they have to go through that rig ma roll?

I joined boards in 07 to ask some questions. Abandoned the account until I got the "we've been hacked" email which prompted me back..... I wouldn't have jumped through those hoops to verify myself initially and I wouldn't have had an account to eventually come back to had I not. It's a non runner dude....

You wouldn't have to verify yourself initially though, only before you could create a thread or a link.

Like most people I read boards for ages before I joined, and I admit I only signed up to create a stupid thread. I wouldn't have done this if my account had to be verified, but I would still have joined.

I know it's a drastic solution, but members already have to do specific tasks to gain access to certain fora (e.g. Soccer or R&R). It's not that terrible an idea is it?

Gordon

Where To wrote: »

It's not that terrible an idea is it?

Yes, sorry!

I'm assuming that the forum you're talking about is relatively small? Can you post the name of it here? Considering we get hundreds of people sign up every day, the amount of man hours spent simply verifying accounts would make this unworkable.

Where To

Gordon wrote: »

Yes, sorry!

I'm assuming that the forum you're talking about is relatively small? Can you post the name of it here? Considering we get hundreds of people sign up every day, the amount of man hours spent simply verifying accounts would make this unworkable.

I'd rather not name it:o

They claim to have over a million members, and 10000+ members online at any time, though I suspect this is a tad optimistic. Verification is carried out by respected members of the community themselves, a kind of prefect system I suppose. Account name and number has to be clearly handwritten on white paper with arms to the shoulders and face fully visible. I'm sure they have some sort of contingency plan in place for people with no arms.

Anyways, seems to work there, just thought I'd share my experience, no harm done.:)

Gordon

Where To wrote: »

I'd rather not name it:o

hehe, OK! Shame though, as I'm interested in how exactly they do it, and to see their weak points as I'm sure it's not perfect. How do they explain clearly to non-internet savvy users for example? And how many users are they missing out on, or does it not matter because it's a particularly niche forum, unlike boards?

They claim to have over a million members, and 10000+ members online at any time, though I suspect this is a tad optimistic. Verification is carried out by respected members of the community themselves, a kind of prefect system I suppose. Account name and number has to be clearly handwritten on white paper with arms to the shoulders and face fully visible. I'm sure they have some sort of contingency plan in place for people with no arms.

Anyways, seems to work there, just thought I'd share my experience, no harm done.:)

Well, we can easily have 10,000 people online and I think we've got half a million users, so we could be similarly matched, but you can check this roughly by looking at www.big-boards.com

Even if the devs didn't have to spend (a lot of) time creating this system, and could simply plug the software in, and we'd easily find a group of volunteers (spread across the globe to provide 24/7 coverage), and the data commissioner was OK with us storing people's photos (for how long? How do we guarantee these photos aren't copied elsewhere onto the internet/drivers licences/passports etc?), and the spammers *didn't* find an easy way to bypass this security: is it really worth it?

Right now we have a much larger base of volunteers (everyone) that can/do report spam 24/7. Moderators can effectively siteban users (we have hundreds and hundreds of Mods - last I counted was 550). We have a security link thing that the devs have made that works on outgoing links, I'm not sure how it works tbh, but it fights spam! And we have stringent human based signup scripts that have *severely* cut down spam from a few months back.

Sure, we need a proactive solution to enhance our much improved registration process, running in parallel with our reactive solutions, but taking photos of yourself seems too convoluted and risky to me.

Steve

Gordon wrote: »

You sure the site Admins in that site are doing it to combat 'spam' as opposed to checking out the hot chicks hmm?!

This is a great idea!.. if you need a volunteer to trial this new feature then you know where I am Gordy..

IvyTheTerrible

I have to say, I wouldn't be keen on having my photo associated with my username, even if it's only mods that see it. I'd imagine lots of other potential posters would be put off by the perceived loss of anonymity too.

ibarelycare

What if you don't have arms?

PC CDROM

ibarelycare wrote: »

What if you don't have arms?

Then you're probably 'armless to the site.

I'll get my coat.

MugMugs

ibarelycare wrote: »

What if you don't have arms?

Then you're gonna have a bit of a tough time typing!

catch.23

Gordon wrote: »

Well, we can easily have 10,000 people online and I think we've got half a million users, so we could be similarly matched, but you can check this roughly by looking at www.big-boards.com

According to that site only 3.4% of boards visitors are coming from Ireland, which seems a bit hard to believe.

Spear

catch.23 wrote: »

According to that site only 3.4% of boards visitors are coming from Ireland, which seems a bit hard to believe.

Those stats are complete nonsense. How could they see where the users IPs are anyway?

seamus

Spear wrote: »

Those stats are complete nonsense. How could they see where the users IPs are anyway?

Tracking cookie. If you look at the detailed stats, the online user count dropped to practically zero last December, meaning that someone stopped big-boards from using tracking cookies on boards.ie. The latest stats for daily users is 2 or 3 on average - probably people with tracking cookies still living on their machines.

So the data for the location of users is all over the place because it's based on a tiny set of 2 or 3 users. 1 person whose company proxy terminates in the USA could account for that entire slice of the pie

Boards.ie: Neil

we removed the bigboards code ages ago the december timeframe rings a bell with me, it was totally unreliable their code was hugely slowing down page speeds so we dropped it.

Dav

Just for the record, I'm saying right now that this idea is in the "never in a million years" category. It's far too much of a barrier to genuine sign-ups. It's like really bad DRM on computer games stopping you playing the game you've paid for because of piracy (ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE YOU USELESS BALL OF $&£&!) - it only ever punishes the genuine customer.

Boards.ie: Danny

catch.23 wrote: »

According to that site only 3.4% of boards visitors are coming from Ireland, which seems a bit hard to believe.

Big-boards.com gets more inaccurate by the day since we removed its tracker for slowing down the site

What's this about topless photos?