Re: Luftwaffe Archives and Records Group (LWAG) website possibly going down
 

In an intererest this specialized, your research acquantices become very dear friends. You do what you can, if any thing.

Re: Luftwaffe Archives and Records Group (LWAG) website possibly going down
 

Dear All,

I couldn't agree more and for my friends here I am ever so grateful.

Let me bring you up to date on the current status of things. To begin with, I am not a website expert. I use the administrative tools available, but when it comes to looking under the hood and tinkering, I am out of my league.

Thus, when I have dialoged with 24hostingnow where the site is located, their suggestions, some of which I can follow and others I can't, I am left in a state of great hesitation, what I early on called the fear of pressing the wrong button only to see a small mushroom cloud arise from my monitor.

24hostingnow did what they could, but the spamming has continued. I raised the sensitivity level of the site's Spam Assassin software, but, in reading how Spam Assassin is supposed to work, the type of spam I am getting wouldn't be affected, which has proven to be the case.

I realized that I had a resource I had not involved and that was my son, David, who, himself, happens to be a computer scientist working at Google. Why did I take so long? Well, typically my problems have dealt with Windows and this is a subject that David has stayed away from. So, typically, he wouldn't be able to help. But, dealing with a spam attack and delving into code is actually something he can wrap his arms around and he has agreed to try to help. I'm hopeful that he can pull off a miracle. He's a pretty savy CS.

In the meantime, I continue to look at each registration, as about 1 in 10 or 20 is actually legitimate, and these I do authorize.

Failing success in this area, a stopgap measure would be to halt all registrations, meaning that the site would be read only, except for those already registered. I'm not sure we can do this, but I would suspect it could be done.

That's where things stand at the moment. This is a very pernicous spam attack. 24hostingnow has not been able to defeat it.

Regards,
Richard

Re: Luftwaffe Archives and Records Group (LWAG) website possibly going down
 

Dear All,

As I struggle with the spam registration problem, I find that I need the assistance of someone familiar with spam control in the registration process. The software used by LWAG is vBulletin. I am just now looking into the cPanel, but really don't understand it. If there is an expert in cPanel that would be willing to answer questions, please send me a PM with your e-mail address.

One possible method of spam control is cPanel's Spam Assassin. However, this appears to be directed to e-mail spam control and I am unsure whether it has any bearing on spam control in the registration process. At the recommendation of 24hostingnow, I changed the Spam Assassin setting to 3.0 from 8.0, a more aggressive setting, but to no affect.

Also, if there is an expert in vBulletin, especially someone who has also struggled and, hopefully, overcome spam registration issues, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.

The spammer pulled a new one on me yesterday, sending me a spam message in my private message account. This smacks of intentional maliciousness, rather than an automated spam for financial gain.

Regards,
Richard

Re: Luftwaffe Archives and Records Group (LWAG) website possibly going down
 

Dear All,

The spam bot has been registering about 10 times a day. Unfortunately, my son David's efforts, so far, have not yielded positive results. Thus, at least temporarily, I have halted all new registrations. He will be home for the holidays and we can attempt a fix then, unless I find one sooner.

Regards,
Richard