Hi Pokemaster,
I’d just like to inform you that recently, we’ve had an increase of bot and spam accounts. Sometimes they post a bunch of crap that gets filtered by the admin tab, and sometimes they just make accounts and post a load of crap in their profiles. Today, staff went though the new users list and banned about 20 accounts that were spam/bots and using proxy services. All and all they’re harmless, but it’s still annoying.
I’d like to propose some sort of captcha or “verification” to help filter out the spam accounts. Thanks!
For reference, here's a list of them. The oldest (that we found) goes back a few months ago, while the newest was made earlier today. So it's an ongoing problem, though perhaps not an urgent one given that they don't seem to be doing anything. I've excluded ones that have spam links in their profile. I'll put those in a hidden comment below.
https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Evawls https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Evaatd https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/burskProow https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/burskvProow https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vikiwao https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vikifca https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Igoriut https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Igordpv https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Igorgsx https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Igormfr https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianaiyg https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianajig https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianarkg https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianaknz https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianamcq https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Vilianaumk https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlghb https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlfmb https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlhap https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlanasub https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlanayud https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlanamfl https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Svetlanajmc https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronaapq https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Julikfo https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Julirmh https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronacyi https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronaapq https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronajdm https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronaaxb https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/user/Veronavod
Definitely looks like a bot given the name+random letters naming scheme that a lot of them use. A simple "I'm not a robot" captcha when signing up would probably weed these out.
Here’s an example of what they post, when they do post. We get maybe 5 of these a month.
