The old board didn’t have new members for a few years, and the free (ad-ridden) board must have had some kind of blocking software included with it that I didn’t know about.
I get about 20 requests for new memberships a day now. I found a website to check/report spammers, so every application gets compared to that. If the "new member" appears on that site, they are deleted, and their email, user name and IP address are banned.
Lots from Russia, weirdly enough, and TONS of gmail accounts. Some obvious spam domains I can block "any user" at any given "@domain.com" but if I were to block gmail I’d be blocking myself too, and a lot of legitimate users. Who’d have thunk that gmail was the mail of choice for spammers?
Oh well – if I don’t have time to go through them, they pile up. I eyeball the list throughout the day and anybody that looks legit, I do a quick check and approve them. Everybody else waits – I accidentally deleted one legit user, and she contacted me and I got her set up again… but none of the others I’ve deleted/banned/purged has complained
Jenn