I have users constantly emailing to get their passwords reset. I don't know whether this is entirely new, or partially because I instituted the use of emailing initial passwords (rather than letting them make up their own when they register). In any case, I have this one member who is either a really good spoofer or someone who simply cannot type. In any case, she can't retrieve her password because she spelled her email address wrong when she registered, therefore any password emails bounce back to me. While I'm working on that, I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent this fiasco in the future-- namely, is there a way to simply add a "Confirm email:" field in the Registration so people can be sure they're typing their email address right? It might not solve the problem, but hopefully it'll help-- after all, do people really type their emails wrong twice in a row? I'd like to think not...
Does anyone have any other suggestions for these kind of scenarios?
ETA Okay, this user has attempted to register no less than four times, all from the same IP address, using different emails-- all of them bad, apparently. I get the same sort of message regardless of email address when the message bounces:
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:www.goodekl@yahoo.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host b.mx.mail.yahoo.com [66.196.97.250]: 554 delivery error:
dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (www.goodekl@yahoo.com) [0] - mta190.mail.re3.yahoo.com
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:www.lisad.dena@yahoo.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host b.mx.mail.yahoo.com [66.196.97.250]: 554 delivery error:
dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (www.lisad.dena@yahoo.com) [0] - mta182.mail.re3.yahoo.com
Now, this one is one I tried thinking the user simply misspelled 'carolyn.' But fixing that didn't fix the problem, as either Comcast doesn't like me (which I've read Comcast blocks a lot of emails, and has from eFic before) or the member simply doesn't have a Comcast account under that name.
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:www.carolyngj@comcast.net
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<www.carolyngj@comcast.net>:
host mx2.comcast.net [76.96.30.116]: 550 5.1.1 Not our Customer
This one is the name that was originally typed in the user's email box:
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:www.carloyngj@comcast.net
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<www.carloyngj@comcast.net>:
host mx1.comcast.net [76.96.62.116]: 550 5.1.1 Not our Customer
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:www.goode.kimberly@yahoo.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host b.mx.mail.yahoo.com [66.196.97.250]: 554 delivery error:
dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (www.goode.kimberly@yahoo.com) [0] - mta150.mail.re3.yahoo.com
As you can see, all the user's bad emails start with "www." I don't know if the user wrote that in themselves or it's somehow getting appended to the script-- registration on my site is slow, but as far as I know, I've never had this many registration/password issues before.
In the meantime, what I've done is lock all the accounts that this user is registering under; the user can't access them anyway. They have contacted me using the Contact Us form, but they didn't provide a working email-- they just provided the ones that bounce back, as above. So I have no way of getting ahold of this member and finding out what their real email is, if any.
I'm at my wit's end-- do I block this person's IP address, assuming they're a spoofer or spammer? If I wanted to do that, is there a mod out there for it already? I'm assuming the script isn't somehow appending www.'s to email addresses, since I have other members who have registered from other IP addresses and emails, and they seem to have logged in and gotten their passwords just fine. But for this particular (incessant) user, I don't know what to do.
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
I once had a user I couldn't get into contact with, who kept trying to sign up. They even e-mailed me and my e-mail back to her bounced. I ended up posting a message in the shout box. I don't know if they got it, but they stopped trying to contact me.
Whoever said nothing is impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
url: https://www.potionsandsnitches.org/fanfiction
php: 7.4.33 msql: 5.6.51-community GPL
efic version: 3.5.5 latest patches: yes
bridges: none mods: challenges, tracker, story end, beta, word
Try putting a notice in the rules about everyone must have a valid email?
I was pretty sure that I already had- I mean, it seems so obvious, given that the system for sending out passwords is through email. I even made a new announcement making the change. The person in question tried using the Contact Us form, but because they can input their own emails, they once again put one that apparently doesn't exist. She told me to send the email with the password to one associated with a particular user account; I sent out a test email, but that, too, bounced. The user keeps trying to use the Lost Password form to reset; I've had to lock the accounts because none of the emails are valid, and the user apparently has no other way of contacting me-- or no other valid email address. Either that or they're stupid, I really don't know.
Archive: Dragonfayth
eFiction: 3.5.5/6
Latest Patch(es): Yes
bridged?: No
modified?: Yes
PHP: 7.4.25
MySQL: 5.7.32-35-log
I'm thinking they are none too bright. Why do they put "www" as part of their email address?
You could maybe test one of those w/o the www part like goodekl@yahoo.com or carolyngj@comcast.net and see if those work.
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Mucking around in eFiction since circa 2001 (ver. 1.0)
Now running v.3
