[support] How to safeguard sites from unwanted users

[John Summerfield]

On 11/06/2013 7:22 PM, Kamal Palei wrote:
> For me the concern is , once a user is created, that user id is gone for
> ever.
> Next if I create another user, it will take up the higher UID.

The consequences of this are negligible. All UIDs in my table are of the 
"bigint" kind. The storage requirement for any number from 0 to 2^63 is 
the same, larger values require no more storage than smaller ones.

The problems are deleting the unwelcome guests and any data they have 
left, that's a chore, and approving those who are welcome and that too 
is a chore.

For my purposes, I have decreed that at Mandurah Chess they must be 
located in Australia to register. I use the ip2country module's data 
(note that ip2country has problems which in my opinion make it 
unsuitable for general use) for a custom module that enforces this. It 
could as well blacklist countries or be extended to use a table 
containing blacklist and/or whitelisted countries. It would be of 
limited use in China or Russia, but it seems Australians are a 
well-behaved lot.

I personally dislike capchas and am very likely to not bother you at 
all, even it it's to your benefit.




-- 
Cheers
John