Sincere apologies for the recent spam attacks Options

[usr.c]

Dear all,

This is to sincerely apologize for the recent spam attacks that have been affecting our board as well as the IPB boards of many other websites too. The attacker was able to mass PM all members with spam and, naturally, caused quite a few people to get upset.

What we have done now to temporarily combat this issue is:

• Permanently disable all new registrations. This will be an inconvenience both for new users as well as for admins, but for the time being new registrations will be frozen until we can get past this issue. Thereafter, we will look into setting up a process for selectively approving and validating new registrations. We hate to do this, since new users are without a doubt an important part of this community, but unfortunately, for the time being we feel forced to have to take this step.
• Members will not be able to use the PM system unless they get promoted to the +Members group, which happens after the member makes a certain number of posts. Members in other groups will not be affected.
• Offending user accounts have been deleted

We will lay out a long-term, permanent plan soon and keep you all posted once that's available.


I would like to personally thank and credit the following members for their vigilance, for sending in their suggestions and for always reporting offending users and posts; this website would truly not be the same without you guys: amir, bobhome, j-rah.

Special thanks goes to Thorchevron7 for taking a personal interest in fixing the issue despite not being a poster here. He could have simply ignored the issue, but instead decided to drop me a line with some tips on permanently fixing the issue.

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies. We've taken steps that we believe will mitigate the issue, but in case it persists, kindly let me or one of the mods know right away and we'll work promptly on getting to the bottom of this headache once and for all.



Regards,
Ali