Due to the recent surge in inappropriate messages from spam bots using .cn (China), .ru (Russia), .pl (Poland) and gmx.co.uk (UK) accounts, users with email accounts from these free email address providers have been blocked from joining the forums.

Please do not take this as a personal ban, it isn't. The entire domains described above have been banned from this forums, and you can thank the free account providers for allowing their email addresses to be used as a safe-heaven for spammers.

This ban does NOT affect previously registered users.

The ban affects users with the following domain names in their email accounts:

* gmx.co.uk
* .cn
* .ru
* .pl

Please use another email address or contact Winstep support if you are a legitimate user with an email address described above and you wish to participate in the forums while the ban is effective.

Thank you,

I would recommend you to also block the .co.cc domains as you can create free domains with full DNS control (and thus also receive/send email with it. I know from experience ).

Just a dumb thought, Jorge...but how are they gonna post if they're banned? How will they write to support if they're banned? Can they log on?

If they can still write to you, what does 'banned' mean?

Maybe you should make an automated popup telling these folks what the problem is, and how to contact you for an alternative?

Maybe make a notice on the Home Page?

They can use a different email address (the one given to them by their ISP, for instance) or they can write directly to Winstep support.

The ban is only effective on this forum, i.e.; if your email address is, say, JoeUser@gmail.com and you try to sign in, the board will not let you because the whole Gmail domain has been prevented from joining.

With Gmail being so popular, this was not a lite decision to make (spammers are counting on that), but it had to be done. Everyday I was waking up to a board spammed by more and more messages originating from Gmail accounts.

Until Google gets its act together and starts actively preventing spammers from using Gmail addresses to spam other forums, the ban will remain in place.

EDIT: The Gmail ban is no longer effective, thanks to PHPBB3 and reCaptcha.

Knowing the russian scene, I recommend you only ban the actual webmail providers, not the entire .ru namespace (eg. mail.ru, bk.ru, pochta.ru, etc.) Cuz the way it sounds even someone with legit .ru address won't be able to register... (btw, I have a bk.ru address myself and I totally agree that they blow... )