Applying for new membership - how the process works (or fails)

[Antman]

Welcome to the Navitron Forum – the place to discuss all things renewable

Before you can log-in and post messages it is regrettable that due to continual bombardment of the forum from spambots and hackers ALL applications for membership must be manually approved by one of the volunteer Moderators or Admins. This post explains how applications can succeeed or why they may fail.

To make our life easier and to ensure that your application is not rejected by accident, you preferably use a "real" email address from a mainstream ISP. Those using disposable email addresses e.g. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, tend to be viewed with suspicion and the application will be rejected if there is any doubt whatsoever.

Applicants can be roughly divided into three categories and it works something like this:

1) If you have a sensible username and email address that appear to link together:
e.g.  Username JoeB   email joe.bloggs2 @ myisp.co.uk
The application will usually be approved without undue delay by the next available operator.

2) Apparently sensible Usernames but from 'freebie' email providers e.g. myname @ gmail.com  or  myname @ hotmail.com  etc.
These get checked with Google and IP searches. If there is any indication that the address or IP has been used for spam purposes, the application will be rejected.

3) Anything with completely random characters or words relating to illegal or solicitous acts, drugs, or from known spambot sources:
e.g.  Username sgdyeytekld      email  gjey4sqsbs @ 123.com   or   getviagra @ aol.com
These will be rejected outright without any checks. The Forum also operates an automatic ban system for known troublesome IPs, domain names and banned ex-members.


If successful you should receive an email acknowledgement (within 24 hours) that the application has been approved - so please type your email address correctly!
You may need to subsequently activate your account – especially likely with (2) above.

For Forum security, where a new account has never been activated by logging-in at least once after account approval, it will be assumed to be no longer required and is likely to be deleted after three months.

Please note: We are currently receiving 250+ spambot applications per day in amoungst which may be two or three genuine applicants. Therefore unless you have a genuine ISP or domain address that fits scenario  in (1) above, there is a high chance that a genuine application may be rejected by accident.

Antman

[martin]

Well said Antman! I field an awful lot of these applications, and we often get quite bolshie "WHY did you reject my application?" emails (by then we know they're probably "kosher"), which means we have to spend some minutes manually registering them an account, and penning an email to tell them we've done so..... often to the likes of "xxyzTR4@hotmail.com, username "megatroll", password "spambot" or similar....... (nothing suspicious there then!)

So please, bear with us, we do welcome all genuine applications, but if you use a disposable email address, it is highly likely the application will be "problematical" for the reasons Antman has pointed out.

Last but not least, sometimes we get an email asking why "I've heard nothing about my application" - quite often our "verification" email has been swallowed by that person's email spam software, so if you're waiting for a reply, check your "deleted" or "spam" folder......