Bitcoin Forum

I do not know what is the purpose of allowing any email which may not exist in registration process but it may be one of the reason of allowing anonymous details.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less.

But if the registration process get difficult, I think we would loss potential user too.

If performing the simple task of verifying your registration email is to difficult for someone they are going to have a real hard time getting involved in crypto or anything in life for that matter. Sandy's point is valid, considering the only people this would really affect are people creating multiple low level accounts for spamming, or posting malware links.

It's simple, there is no email confirmation just to keep a higher level of anonymity. No strings attached.
This was the real Satoshi vision (not referring to the scammy shitcoin here) - freedom and anonymity!
And theymos is following this vision greatly, except for the ClouldFlare drawback but there he has no other option to protect the forum from DDoS attacks.

Is that the actual reasoning behind why we don't have it though? I don't think I've seen theymos (or satoshi) mention that.

Email verification is useless. Anyone with access to a domain name can receive an unlimited number of verifications until that service is blocked, and then they can move on to another domain name.

IP blocking works alright if you spend a lot of time building proxy blocklists, but SMF doesn't have the tools to do it properly.

Looking for this post?

I've read before some other comments as well, i'll dig more when I have time.

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less.  There isn't even an email confirmation needed to create an account so one can just put in a random anything.  At least confirm someone's registration email actually exists. I think that will help avoid a lot of junk users.  Def not foolproof but way better than not even confirming an email one uses even if it's a "throwaway" email.

But would e-mail verification really stop them? Even if the forum started requiring a unique e-mail address for each account - creating an e-mail address requires less effort than passing the captcha. Just add "+" to gmail.

Probably not worth it considering potential downsides. For example legitimate users getting their verification e-mails lost in spam filters. Or subverting the confirmations to email-bomb someone.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less. 

I created 2 accounts in less than 20 seconds and was never asked for a captcha.  I was asked AFTER they were created when I logged back in from another device


THAT would be just as good a feature.

Well, it wouldn't affect EVERYONE just those creating a lot of accounts at once. For the "real" new user it would take an extra 30 seconds to go to their email and click on a link. 99.9% of all websites do it so it probably isn't too much inconvenience for those people since they would only do it once. Of course it could be circumvented but that would take even more work. I'm pretty sure software like this would have a simple switch to turn the feature off or on already built in so it would require zero effort to enable it if it was wanted..

Nah, verifying email simply means it's gonna be attached to your identity and hence would kill the privacy you might want to have! Hence in my opinion, its a big no to this suggestion!

Well, it wouldn't affect EVERYONE just those creating a lot of accounts at once. For the "real" new user it would take an extra 30 seconds to go to their email and click on a link. 99.9% of all websites do it so it probably isn't too much inconvenience for those people since they would only do it once.

If campaign managers start to accept only Jr Members+, that would reduce this problem as you need at least 1 merit to become Jr..

It's more difficult to get a merit than to solve a captcha or create an email.

I don’t think any campaigns have accepted newbies in years. It has been nearly as long since any campaign has accepted junior members, and it is very unusual for a campaign to accept members...

I am also not sure what type of accounts you are concerned about. If someone is creating boatloads of accounts to farm/spam low quality posts with, they would still need to wait 6 minutes between posts initially.

I guess the thing is with captchas is they are too easily bypassed either through getting an automated service to do them for you or by bypassing it using the sound system that some of them offer. I'm not sure the best way of going about this. There's been quizzes that have been suggested in the past, which could have randomized answers. Although, even then this could eventually be automated by those that find it worthwhile to make new accounts.

But would e-mail verification really stop them?

I don't believe that google reCaptcha can be bypassed via the use of a machine learning model (or ensemble of models). There may be some services that employ people from third world countries to solve reCaptcha's for next to nothing, but this is a cost.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less.  There isn't even an email confirmation needed to create an account so one can just put in a random anything.  At least confirm someone's registration email actually exists. I think that will help avoid a lot of junk users.  Def not foolproof but way better than not even confirming an email one uses even if it's a "throwaway" email.

I've seen them offered for a few dollars per thousand captchas.
In my list of usernames (http://loyce.club/usernames/usernames.txt), there are 13937 usernames that start with "MrFudged" and several other usernames that have thousands of combinations. All current restrictions didn't stop these guys to create that many accounts.

You will have the arbitrary number of "lots of accounts being made" in your implementation. The use of mass email creation has been around for years and that will not change any time soon: you essentially make it slightly trickier for account spammers.

What does it prove? What is the intent of the email verification, and how does it resolve the problem? Or does it just merely shift the issue to a different problem?

I wouldn't mind if there were some minor restrictions put in place for Newbies such as being required to buy a Copper Membership or having to gain 1 merit in order to create topics in the following sections: Goods, Services, Currency exchange, Gambling, Lending, Securities, Auctions, Service Announcements, and in all child-boards of these sections, Gambling discussion excepted.

I don’t think any campaigns have accepted newbies in years. It has been nearly as long since any campaign has accepted junior members, and it is very unusual for a campaign to accept members...

If campaign managers start to accept only Jr Members+, that would reduce this problem as you need at least 1 merit to become Jr...

I remember when I was newbie, I couldn't do a thing without waiting every few minutes in between. Although, email confirmation would be helpful but don't think it's much harmful in current stat. Newbie accounts will have to work up to do anything on the forum.

When I was a newbie, after making a post, I switched to searching for another interesting topic to read and did not have to wait before making new post. Dont know why waiting 120 sec before making another post is a problem. I think that is enough time to superficially go through the topic and post, but if reading carefully (what is why newbies should do, instead of just reading last post in topic and quote), then time gap between posts is not a problem at all.

Actually getting 1 merit is not that hard. Allowing Jr.Members in signature bounty will start signature spam/shitposting just to meet weekly minimum required. I'm 200% sure in that.

But would e-mail verification really stop them? Even if the forum started requiring a unique e-mail address for each account - creating an e-mail address requires less effort than passing the captcha. Just add "+" to gmail.

Another suggestion I'd agree with is to withdraw the Copper Membership in it's entirety - Newbies just see it as a fast track to post with images and then boost their accounts with bells and whistles while lacking substance in their posts.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less.  There isn't even an email confirmation needed to create an account so one can just put in a random anything.  At least confirm someone's registration email actually exists. I think that will help avoid a lot of junk users.  Def not foolproof but way better than not even confirming an email one uses even if it's a "throwaway" email.

Registering by email or phone number will not solve the problems with fraud. There are many services on the Internet with temporary emails and phone numbers, they are either free or very cheap.

They risk losing $24 by buying a Copper Membership and getting it banned. I don't think they'll keep buying new Memberships.

Registering by email or phone number will not solve the problems with fraud. There are many services on the Internet with temporary emails and phone numbers, they are either free or very cheap.

I like this forum because we are many, if our population is reduced to thousands from the present millions,

Making new account harder to create will only scare genuine new people, and it will not stop scammers and spammers.
Even now lot of people report that they can't create account until they pay evil fee, as they probable use shared IP address.
But adding some sign up quiz random questions can maybe slow spammers down

answering 3 Questions that need a little research may work.

or better yet 3 math problems.
add three 3 digit numbers

111+123+140 =   374    

or four problems

add four 4 digit numbers

1001+1002+1003+1004 = 4010

Yeah have a script generate 4 random number tell the person add the 4.

once a correct answer is given have a 60 second clock count down to next set of four 4 digit numbers

This wouldn’t be difficult to implement, but it also would not be difficult to bypass via a bot parsing the numbers being displayed and solving the problem. Parsing handwritten numbers is considered the “hello world” of neural networks (machine learning models often used on images), and the bar to beat this countermeasure would be low.

One can create 30 accounts here in probably 5 minutes or less.  There isn't even an email confirmation needed to create an account so one can just put in a random anything.  At least confirm someone's registration email actually exists. I think that will help avoid a lot of junk users.  Def not foolproof but way better than not even confirming an email one uses even if it's a "throwaway" email.

Any arithmetic or word re-entry question would be an easy workaround for account spammers. Specific image recognition is harder considering one would have to have input material to gauge the data. I certainly wouldn't mind a "this IP is evil" marker ere to account registration, though: you might say that it would be a tool better used by those that are mass-creating accounts, but given that the difference for them is changing usernames and exit node connections for their network, I think the benefits are more in the Newbies' favor.

What would your reaction be, if your first experience signing up to the forum was to be slammed in the face with a paywall? There goes that username, by the way... unless you want to pay up!

Such junk accounts would likely get nuked eventually.

I'm not even sure people are creating 20, 30, or 100 accounts like they were back in 2015-17 when all it took to rank them up was to post regularly. 

This wouldn’t be difficult to implement, but it also would not be difficult to bypass via a bot parsing the numbers being displayed and solving the problem. Parsing handwritten numbers is considered the “hello world” of neural networks (machine learning models often used on images), and the bar to beat this countermeasure would be low.

The only real way to prevent bots from solving problems is to use a  Adversarial (https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6572) network that adds noise to images that the user needs to classify. This is difficult without knowing the model a potential adversary is using to classify the image via automation. 

Or sold, although that isn't likely to happen these days since it would take a monumental effort to rank up multiple accounts from scratch.  And given that it is in fact almost impossible to farm accounts since the introduction of the merit system, I don't really think we need to make it more difficult for anyone to register here.  I'm not even sure people are creating 20, 30, or 100 accounts like they were back in 2015-17 when all it took to rank them up was to post regularly. 

Having a bunch of Jr. Member accounts doesn't really get you all that much nowadays, right?  I guess you could still participate in bounties, but the whole reason people were farming accounts a few years ago was to maximize earnings for signature campaigns if I'm not mistaken--and the only way a newcomer can hope to control a Hero or Legendary account right now is if they buy one. 

-snip-If you want to do things fast you can give money and a traceable confirmed email.

So fast sign up is money and verified email.

Slow unknown is play the adding and timing game.

Here's the crutch:

Assume we do implement the system of "wait and calculate" where we use numbers. Actually, let's make this a steel man and say there's a bit more involvement. If there is any route for this to become automated (I have seen data entry for captchas et al from years ago) then it absolutely will be - your bottleneck is not the wait time. One would need to determine the identity of the user that is registering the accounts, otherwise you could just open the registration in a different session (i.e. switching IP/fingerprint/etc).

This is what happens when the account spammers decide to attack your method: they take the 5 minute hit, and then start pumping out accounts past that point since concurrent registration is possible.

No, clearly. But the idea is to slow them down, not to stop them.
I'd add something extra: allow creation of only one account per computer/user/browser. Yeah, it's also weak, but it'll earn a few extra seconds too.

And as long as the forum keeps IP logs, I find all the discussion about extra privacy rather useless. I believe that the ones who want to enforce their privacy will research/know what to do with or without the mail confirmation requirements.

Implement guest/anonymous posting with no account IMO..

That was possible when the forum started (Anonymous Guest (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28474#msg28474) or Guest with name (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=30.msg28279#msg28279)). My guess is it was disabled to reduce spam.

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Many websites make it difficult to use them. More and more sites even require an account to be able to read something, some forums require an account to see posted attachments, and the last site I joined took several weeks to approve my account. I'm with theymos (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5257428.msg54668975#msg54668975) on this: these barriers are terrible! Most of the time I leave the site. Don't make it harder for real users!

So then 'free' accounts would need longer timers than my suggested amounts.

And it may just succeed in normal good people saying fuck it. I won't bother.