New User Restrictions on Albums

Hey Guys,

As announced in the forum announcement, I took some measures to reduce the amount of album spam the moderators have had to fight. It seemed there was a vulnerability in our system that allowed for spammers (bots) to be able to create an album very rapidly. I decided to implement a user restriction software that blocks users from performing certain actions before they acquire a certain post count. For now this restriction has only been applied to the creation of albums. It will now require that a member have 10 posts on the forum before they are allowed to create an album.

As I mentioned previously, the patch has only been applied to albums. If you notice that you are seeing other forms of spam, please contact me via PM to my "h2s" account and I will try to address it as soon as possible. I know the post restriction can be annoying for new members who want to contribute, but it was the only feasible solution.

A special thank you goes out from me to my moderators for taking care of the spam as it has taken in and keeping this site running smoothly. I could not do it without you guys!

-h2s/admin

What was the reason behind them creating the albums?

No idea, just figured that some forums forget to put restrictions on it (I didn't (they couldn't post links), but now I blocked them from creating an album at all). It was an add on to VB4, but it includes alot of restrictions and I only turned on the one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BBG

What was the reason behind them creating the albums?

---

Some spammers would fill their profiles full of spam and links to avoid the spamming in threads and the resulting deletion and bans. It's a more covert way to create linkbacks than thread posting, as you don't realize it has happened until you visit their page. I banned one or two for this already.