I have never accessed this site before today, 69.4.xx.xx

69.4.192.252 is not on my firewall, you are not in my DenyHosts block list and you aren't on my Fail2Ban list.

We get so many idiots trying to post garbage on the site that I have installed just about everything known to man.

This morning I installed SMF Web Firewall and Bad Behavior for good measure. I just switched them both off. Try now and see if you can Register. If not I'll investigate further.

Thanks for telling me or I might never have known.

I tried this morning too and got an access denied message, claiming that I either had a virus or trojan (not very likely) or that I was engaged in some form of access-bypass (don't think so). I was able to go to the main site: http://techsup.corp.networkingtechnology.org, but as soon as I clicked the forum tab, I received the forbidden message. I too had never been to the site.

I looked in the logs and according to the log there have been 137 Bypass Attempts today. It would seem to me that the SMF add-ons, Forum Firewall and Bad Behaviour are causing all the problems.

I have now switched them both completely OFF, so if you try again now, you SHOULD be able to login.

It's very difficult, because we are basically offering FREE help on quite a number of topics, but we have blocked over 10,000 IP addresses thanks to fail2ban and DenyHosts. We have Captcha, stop spammers the lot, but I still get 10 or more emails telling me that a new Registration needs approving and they are 100% known spammers. I've now added questions to try to stop the scripts and it seems to have worked, because now I'm down to 2 or 3 a week, always spammers, that's why I tried these two SMF add-ons.

The only other option will be to close the Forum completely, I'm just sick and tired of processing these morons. Computers have gone from being a help and a pleasure to a daily chore and an absolute pain in the butt.

Don't be surprised if the Forum disappears in the near future. I'm sick to death of all the work it causes me.

It works great, thanks!!

I registered on your site, thank you for allowing me access, I want to be rid of the woot/woot messages and such.

thank you again

I too was able to access the site fine, now.

I am sorry to hear that you are, or were, having such trouble with spammers. You said you have it down to 2-3 per week now? If you are still having trouble, I am sure that LQ-Security can help you come up with a solution. I would hate for you to give up on the venture because of the idiot spammers. I run a small (soon to be) ecommerce site for my wife's business and it has reached the point of attracting a lot of spam too, mostly by email. Some of it has been a real challenge to try and stop. I would often ask myself why are they bothering with this and I think your statement about turning from a pleasure to a pain is part of the answer.

Your site looks quite interesting, especially in that you have a decent amount of traffic and information on less common subjects like Groupwise and Zen, which are still in use in some places.

The info sections were very informative, like the above post it is sad that people cannot post information sharing without others trying to disrupt it.