a bit off topin - forum

[onlinegamesnz]

hi all, i have a forum www.tab-db.com/forum/
and there are always new registered users. (not a bad thing haha) but the emails dont seem valid. And i also tried to email one of the users but the email didnt exist. could some be signing up with false account? and why??

thanks

[leatherback]

hahahaha..
Oh sorry. Just thought you must be the first person I have met in a long time that does not realize that people do this 😉

Yes. People will sign up with wrong names, wrong email. Even automatically. They do this because some people just have nothing better to do than spam forums. Unfortunately.. It requires some skill to get rid of all of tem. However, getting rid of some of them is easy, by adding things like a 'CAPTCHA's

[ucffool]

To make sure they are valid email addresses, don't let them sign up if it is not valid:
http://fightingforalostcause.net/misc/2006/compare-email-regex.php

However, if it is valid but doesn't exist, don't let the sign-up go through unless they reply to a link that you provide by email. If they never reply, their info is never moved from the temporary database to the actual real database.