Now Live! More spam protection on your Ning Network

On February 24, we released some new security measures to reduce spam on your Ning Network. As we've written about on the Ning Blog, these new measures will help us to stop spam before it starts. I'm going to provide a bit more information about what we'll be doing to eliminate spam on Ning.

As a result of our increased security measures, some members being asked to fill out a CAPTCHA when they post content to your Ning Network. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds for these members to fill out the CAPTCHA, and your members will only have to do this once. We know that some members may run into difficulty filling out the CAPTCHAs on your Ning Network, and if your members are unable to complete the CAPTCHA, then they may be asked to verify their email addresses before they can post to your Ning Network.

If you don't want your members to see any CAPTCHAs on your Ning Network, then you can turn on member approval. If you have member approval enabled on your Ning Network, then these added security features won't have any impact on the way your members access your Ning Network now.

While we're excited to release these new security measures across Ning, we've already gathered a lot of data from you that is helping us to get spam off Ning. Of course, you can keep using the suspend for spam feature on your Ning Network, and keep your Ning Network safe from spam!

Tags: captcha, email, spam, verification

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Permalink Reply by Lisa on March 5, 2010 at 12:41pm

Hey Capri!

That's a great question. The profile questions that your members see on your Ning Network are written by the Network Administrators. Because we let the Network Creator choose which questions to ask here, we don't have a simple way to standardize this to catch potential spammers.

Many Ning Networks that use their profile questions to identify potential spammers also have member approval enabled. Keep in mind that Ning Networks with member approval turned on won't have the extra CAPTCHAs.

- Lisa

Permalink Reply by Destiny Moonstone on March 5, 2010 at 8:46am

Lisa, I can't believe you could let it out like that.

DESTINY

Permalink Reply by Jayne Jordan on March 7, 2010 at 5:54am

Is this what is continually locking me and some of our members out of our accounts? (we got them back yesterday, but after leaving comments today i'm locked out yet again) as admin this is making my life hell. And yes i've wrote to Ning about it again.

Permalink Reply by AjIt█▬█( Logic Gate™ ) on March 7, 2010 at 10:39pm

Hai Ning Creators...

In Our Network www.koottam.com have some authentication problem since one week.. Some of the users cannot access their account. When they try to login its shown no user under this email account. When try to reset password its sending login pages in email inbox. Please solve this problem.. Around 50 Users Lost Their Valuable Ning Account In Our Community. Please Solve This One Immediately.. They are using gmail id's... Is it any Spam Problem?

Thanks...

Permalink Reply by Ron on March 8, 2010 at 4:00am

This is fine and dandy but it is causing problems too. I have members not being able to sign in....locked out of there pages, saying it doesn`t exsist. I hope that ning gets this resolved. I myself have never had a problem with spam on my network.

Permalink Reply by Lisa on March 8, 2010 at 8:05am

Hi Ron,

I'm sorry your members are experiencing this. I don't believe that this is related to the CAPTCHAs that we added in this release. Ask them to contact the Ning Help Center, and we will work with them to get this situation straightened out!

- Lisa

Permalink Reply by Lisa on March 8, 2010 at 8:15am

Hi all,

I see that several of you are concerned that the new CAPTCHAs are preventing your members from signing in to your Ning Network. While the release I mentioned here does not affect the sign in process in any way, there have been some other changes in spam prevention recently. I encourage you to read more about what we are doing here.

If your members are running into difficulties accessing their account on Ning, please ask them to write to the Ning Help Center. We'll straighten everything out!

Cheers,
Lisa

Permalink Reply by Jayne Jordan on March 8, 2010 at 8:19am

The problem only started with the 'captcha' release.. I'm connected to Ron as one of his admin, I am locked out, Ning got me back in for less than a day, as soon as I was on the last page of my friends list to comment to, up popped the log in box. It's no use keep telling us to tell our members to report it, we do, and they have yet we are still locked out of the site.
How about removing the 'Captcha' for a couple of days, reinstate us all and see if we still get the problem!

Permalink Reply by Ron on March 8, 2010 at 8:25am

Hi Lisa
Thanks for the reply, the problem is the members just can`t sign in at all. There must be another problem. Is there any way to take the captcha off my network and the spam filter. This has totally created a problem across other ning networks that I am associated with.

Permalink Reply by Lisa on March 8, 2010 at 9:42am

Hi Ron and Jayne,

Thanks for keeping us updated about the difficulties that your members are experiencing signing in. We are going to work with you through the Help Center to get this issue resolved on your Ning Network. I see that you submitted a ticket yesterday about this, and we'll be responding to you in this ticket (reference number: 00181581).

As I've mentioned in this string, I don't believe the difficulties that your members are experiencing are related to the CAPTCHAs on your Ning Network. If you'd like to disable these CAPTCHAs, however, you can do so by turning on member approval.

Thanks!
Lisa

Permalink Reply by 1 Cent Rudi on March 8, 2010 at 9:29am

" ... please ask them to write to the Ning Help Center ... "

Is it: there's a NING utility to tell me which members are unable to login so I can leave them a message? Since they can't, because ... yeah ... ;)

Peace.
1CR

Permalink Reply by AjIt█▬█( Logic Gate™ ) on March 8, 2010 at 10:25am

The Problem Starts when the members try to send same comment (Same Content) to different people with other sites image links. After that their account become spam stage.. Actually they are not trying to spamming.. Just sending a common welcome message or Greetings to others. Please avoid such type of spam filters. Or you can develop a spam filter same like Google Orkut one.. Just freeze account for 30 minute something like that. In that 30 minute they cannot do any activities like reply in chat, forums or comment box etc.. Develop one like that. Also wen they try to post any link other than ning just Popup a CAPTCHA Message and verify that one etc..... Otherwise we will loss lot of precious active accounts. Very few of them know our sites run under Ning plat form. So if we advice them to contact Ning helpcenter they wil not do that. Our Site privacy will loss.. I think your team can develop a good one .. Thanks for all supports........