| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Increase info required on registration to make life more difficult for spammers Thread poster: Marie-Hélène Hayles
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| Cost-effectiveness of this kind of actions is usually not good | Jun 17, 2009 |
Making more requirements mandatory to honest registrants may be more work than they are willing to do (or more information than they are willing to share) at that point, whereas for a spammer it is very simple to pick any valid value for fields marked as required (and privacy of fake data is obviously no concern to them).
Regards,
Enrique
| | | | | So purge the one-night-stands | Jun 17, 2009 |
Enrique wrote:
Making more requirements mandatory to honest registrants may be more work than they are willing to do (or more information than they are willing to share) at that point, whereas for a spammer it is very simple to pick any valid value for fields marked as required (and privacy of fake data is obviously no concern to them).
Then it might be a good idea for the system to automatically purge those records that were opened once, and never used again for, say, 90 days.
IMHO "honest" registrants should at least indicate a language pair in that period, or get purged as well. If they don't have a language pair, or if they don't have the time to click on two items, either they don't have any business at Proz, or they have so much business on their hands that they don't need any more from Proz.
| | | | | Impact on spammers | Jun 17, 2009 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote: Enrique wrote:
Making more requirements mandatory to honest registrants may be more work than they are willing to do (or more information than they are willing to share) at that point, whereas for a spammer it is very simple to pick any valid value for fields marked as required (and privacy of fake data is obviously no concern to them). Then it might be a good idea for the system to automatically purge those records that were opened once, and never used again for, say, 90 days.
This would have no impact on the activity of spammers.
Enrique
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Enrique wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote: Enrique wrote:
Making more requirements mandatory to honest registrants may be more work than they are willing to do (or more information than they are willing to share) at that point, whereas for a spammer it is very simple to pick any valid value for fields marked as required (and privacy of fake data is obviously no concern to them). Then it might be a good idea for the system to automatically purge those records that were opened once, and never used again for, say, 90 days. This would have no impact on the activity of spammers. Enrique
I've no doubt that spammers create their empty profile and then start spamming mmediately, so I agree that purging empty profiles would have no effect. However, this is why I suggested making people wait a set time before they could contact other users, and also suggested a workaround to enable genuine new users to contact people if they provided full contact details.
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| Not perceived as a big problem | Jun 18, 2009 |
In any case, judging from the initial comments and the relatively low participation on this thread, it's clearly not perceived as a big problem (and in fact I don't think it's a big problem either, as I've already stated).
So I guess people are generally satisfied with the reactive spam control measures already in place.
| | | | | Incomplete profiles are unrealized income | Jun 19, 2009 |
I'm referring in particular to KudoZ askers who create blank profiles in order to bypass the five-question daily limit for free members. If they were forced to complete a full profile, they would probably re-evaluate becoming paying members. I understand any web site depends on volume traffic for income, but in this case, imposing restrictions could benefit ProZ.
These duplicate askers can be easily spotted when they post five questions dealing with an unusual field of expertise, fo... See more I'm referring in particular to KudoZ askers who create blank profiles in order to bypass the five-question daily limit for free members. If they were forced to complete a full profile, they would probably re-evaluate becoming paying members. I understand any web site depends on volume traffic for income, but in this case, imposing restrictions could benefit ProZ.
These duplicate askers can be easily spotted when they post five questions dealing with an unusual field of expertise, followed by another five questions from a "different" blank profile. Invariably, their user names are single words and often include numbers. When reported and confirmed, the staff deletes the profile and adds "xxx" before the user name.
As for fake profiles being purged, this is falling short of the mark. Case in point, these profiles, one of which has been around since November, 2007:
• http://www.proz.com/profile/759604
• http://www.proz.com/profile/999565
• http://www.proz.com/profile/974071
Regards,
Daniel
PS: Since I posted yesterday those links to the F-word names, those profiles have been quietly removed. So they do read our posts!
[Edited at 2009-06-19 23:23 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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