I have been forced to add incremental security measures to the website.
For those that comment you will see an additional step to logging in–there will be a CAPTHA (by definition a system to distinguish human activity from machines) requiring one to identify certain pictures in the CAPTHA.
This was necessary because of a huge increase in spam and fake accounts. While the spam has been 99.99% successfully filtered out the number of fake accounts has grown dramatically–thousands of new accounts some days–my understanding is most are ‘bot’ driven. Obviously with the number of fake accounts set up it would be only a matter of time until they begin to successfully infiltrate the comment stream.
Any added security measures are cumbersome–but it had to happen–it is the world we live in.
Tim, I have been following you for probably more than ten years now, and I have to give you a great big Thank You for all you have done on your website! I have learned so much in that time and prospered well. With all the comments in this post, it just shows how much you love doing this and helping so many people. So again, Thank You for helping me and so many other investors all these years!
Puck49–you are most welcome.
Tim…I’m just curious….what is the benefit to the people who control these bots to infiltrate a site like yours?
Richard—simply to post spam–typically ads for viagra, porn sites etc. Last week I had maybe 1000 ads posted but every single one was culled out by our filter—but it is just a matter of time before a few slip through and cause havoc.
In the last few weeks I had 184,000 new accounts sign up–the lions share of course are bots. The technical people tell me once they find a site they can sign up accounts automatically they pass that word around and soon you have millions of accounts–but we got them stopped for now with the new captha–not one piece of spam in 3 days.
Awesome site Tim, you are a saint for all that you do here. Thanks.
Diddy2Scoops–thanks, but my wife would likely think maybe not yet ready for sainthood.
Thank you for everything you do. I love the site.
Steve B.
Absolutely – thank you Tim for all this work, updates, and attention to detail.
You have helped to make a somewhat opaque area of the market more transparent and accessible. Wonderful effort!
Thanks Fredson!
Bravo!!!
Tighten up the sails…
KJN–never stops. The bad guys/gals never rest.
Thanks Tim for all the hard work you put into this.
You’re most welcome Max
Tim – We’re with ya, smack down those ‘bots!
Thanks for the work and effort I really is appreciated
You’re welcome RobertCowart
Thank you Tim! Your site has quickly become a favourite destination ever since I discovered it in February. Greatly appreciate your efforts as well as those of the very knowledgeable readers who contribute so often. Thank you all!
Excellent site Tim…thanks!
A request: would it be possible to add a category for latest posts? Sure, some would not make sense, but it would save time looking at the alerts, then the new issues, then sandbox, etc.
Thanks again…and again! Best site of my 24 yrs investing online.
Thanks Tim. Your efforts are greatly appreciated my me and I’m sure the preferred stock investing community. You are a valuable resource for us.
Thanks bogiefreeround (I don’t think I have ever had one.
Thank you Tim for taking care of website integrity so we can all benefit from the content. Very much appreciate your diligence.
Thanks BlueClaw–I love doing it.
Thanks Tim for all you do…..