I am struggling these days to prevent spam from my signup form. I do not want just to prevent it from bots (with honeypots etc) but when a real human writes a script designed for my website to fill my database with dummy registrations(i do not want to use captcha). I have the following things in my mind to implement about it:
Check if email addresses exist (not only valid).I have read that you may be banned if there are lots of requests.Moreover it is possible that the script can contain valid email addresses (for instance when a university provides students email that are slightly different).
The other solution is to make a comparison between IP/Time_of_request and in case the same IP gives lots of requests for signup, consider user as spammer. For this you can set a threshold that you can consider signup request as spam. The problem here is that the script may find the threshold (e.g. 1 second ) and send request every 1.1 seconds. Moreover someone may use onion routing(?) and i will not be able to ban him.
3.What do you think about random input names ?
So what practices here are considered to be good enough to come through this situation?
Thanks!
UPDATE
I send email with confirmation link for activation,but i give users the feature to use the site for about 4 days without activating their accounts! I do not want in first step my database to have spam accounts!
SOLUTION
For everyone interested in, i used honeypots combined with a temporary database ! It seems to work fine!Thanks!
One more thing you can create a temporary registration database, and if someone verify email in 24 hours of registration, his/her data will moved to main registration database. and every entry will be deleted in 24 hours if email is not verified by user.
To validate the email address you could send a confirmation email with a validation link and the user should click on that link to confirm that is his email address and is not a boot.
In Response to OP Update: If you need to give users the option of using the site without clicking the activation link for X days, perhaps you could also send a set of two 4-digit (or just 6, but not secure) PIN numbers in the email (or separately) and have them use that as their temporary password until the account is activated via the original email link. In your database you'd notice if the PIN was used or not, indicating if it was a spam account. It could even be a one-time-use PIN.
I'm designing a user registration form and am working on sending a confirmation e-mail. The script that is responsible for adding the username/password/e-mail address etc. to the database is getting rather long and I wanted to break the code responsible for e-mails into another file. I was thinking about how the two scripts would work together; would the database script include the e-mail script or redirect to it and pass the arguments. Or do I have it backwards? Would it be the e-mail script including/calling the database script?
What happens first? Does 1) an e-mail containing an account activation link get sent out before any data is added to the database or 2)is the data put in the database right away with an "activated" field set to false and when the user clicks on the link in the e-mail the field will be updated to true 3)or some other way?
#2, this is so that other users don't take the username twice. If you don't save the information instantly, then other users can also activate their account and you'll have errors with that.
Most websites have an expire on their activation so that the usernames can't be held for a long period of time.
A column for state such as user/banned/confirmed/unactivated would be necessary to keep track of who has activated and who has not. A cron job could be used to sweep the database for old inactive users, basing on the timestamp of registration.
Every system I've worked with has just stored the user in the database until it's used, but when spam becomes an issue you can look at other answers.
You need to store the username and password somewhere and sending it in the email is going to cause issues, and otherwise the link you give the email won't know which user to activate, and doing wacky things like storing it in the session is going to cause many, many ux issues.
Other than creating a second table for un-activated accounts, and searching both for the two different calls you need to search both (creating new user/email, and changing username/email), I don't see a better solution.
Say a user registers on a site with an email address that needs to be verified first before accepting the user's registration.
The general approach is to send an email to the email address provided. The user then checks his/her inbox and clicks a link that would tell the site that the email address is valid. Usually, the link would have some sort of code embedded in it that tells the site whether it's a legit validation of the email address.
My question is about the code. What's the best way to implement it? Some ideas:
A random string is generated when a new address is entered into the site. This random string is stored in the the DB and then emailed to the registrant. The link in the email will contain the random string as part of the URL.
The email addressed is hashed. This means nothing needs to be saved in the database because the application will know how to unhash this. (My concern with this approach is if the user later changes his email address to something he previously entered, the hash would be the same. Not sure if this poses some sort of security threat.)
Some other approach?
I'm looking for general advice to this problem.
Number one, the random string, is the safest (and AFAIK, the most common) way to go: It makes it completely impossible to maliciously do things to E-Mail addresses that I haven't received the E-Mail for.
Also, you can remove the random string after successful completion, making it clear that that particular address doesn't need activation any more.
i'm using 1st approach every time
Create a random code
Store it at DB
Mail it to user with clickable link like activation.php?key=blabla
At activation page let user able to enter it manually too
At submit compare the keys
Activate user
If user change mail adress return 1
Most of the examples I see on the web create user accounts in this sequence: user comes to the site, they choose a username and password and enter their email. A confirmation email to sent to this email and if they click the link, the account gets "verified". If they don't verify, the account gets deleted after a while.
I was told about another way: get the user to verify the email first, and when they click the verification link in their email they can start to create a username and password.
Does anyone see any problems with the second way, whether a security concern or anything else? It's not common and I personally cannot find a totally obvious problem with it, but I'd prefer to use it only after many people confirm they don't see problems or loopholes with it either.
Personally I do see an issue that can be inconveniencing for the user:
When most people register with a web site, they expect that they will have to answer quite a few questions, spend some time reading the FAQ and the terms of service and then spend some more time setting up some preliminary aspects of their profile.
The traditional flow allows the user to choose the time to go through that process. Afterwards, the user only receives a verification link, which normally is a 3-second process to use and can be done at practically any time.
Your proposed flow forces the potential user of your site to spend time reading your documentation, then wait until they receive the message and then find some more time, potentially after a few days, to fill in the forms. I, for one, would find that at least slightly annoying - if not outright discouraging - especially if the mail takes its sweet time to arrive, as it's often bound to do.
I also don't like the inherent implication of such a scheme:
Traditional flow: "Oh nice, you filled in our forms, just give us an address to send you a proper verification". The user here is merely waiting to complete what is essentially a done deal.
Mail-first flow: "Oh it's you. Well, wait for a while and we will send you an invitation if we want you". Here, on the other hand, the user is left in a limbo of subconscious uncertainty until they receive your message.
I believe that the first approach is far more open and friendly to the user. It's also the current standard flow for these cases, which should be enough of an incentive to use on its own - you should avoid forcing your users into processes they are not used to, unless there is no other way.
Getting an email from a friend with an invite link to access a site is exciting - it feels exclusive and new and fun. I'm being given something - so I gladly sign up.
Being required to enter an email address in order to start using a site feels draconian and restrictive and annoying. I'm being asked to give something up as the first step then possibly (maybe?) get something of value down the road.
It's not logical - in both cases, my email address is must be verified before an account can be created. In fact, the first case requires my friend to actively SPAM me with an offer I never requested.
Do you know why I first created this StackOverflow account? Because when I wanted to contribute an answer I could click on the Google logo on the login page and start using the site immediately. No username, password, first name, last name, DOB, or other B.S.
Do you know why I never created an Experts Exchange account? Because the first time I tried to access an answer I was prompted to enter a credit card number, billing address and phone number. Before I could even sample what the site had to offer, I had to give something up.
The point is this: barriers to entry make your site suck. Account creation should be as seamless and painless as possible. Being able to access a site immediately after filling out a single-page signup form and a CAPTCHA is awesome, even if access to other features is restricted until email verification is completed. Maybe I'll even tell you my DOB and favorite color if it unlocks more features.
Personally I don't see a problem with it - its a matter of choice. I think the key point though is making it clear to the user that they must
1) enter their email address
2) wait for a confirmation email before they can get to step 3
3) sign up for the account.
It potentially removes the amount of data held and time invested by the user if they only have to enter a single piece of information (their email address) before filling in the rest of the information you require.
Personally, I'd keep it standard so users don't get confused. The amount of work is the same - get a username/password/email address - wait for users to click the link before they can login to your site.
So how many times would you allow to use link send in email?
If only once, user can't create an account if he close browser before selecting username.
If multiple times, a lot of people can create accounts using same link. Publishing this link and using password recovery feature can be nice phishing trick.
And if you check for this email in your database and allow it only once, user would not be able to create two legitimate accounts.
I could see this method being slightly simpler - when the user clicks the verify link in their email, you send them to a form with a hidden pre-generated id number inserted, and then assign a username and password to it afterwards. Blank accounts, with just and id and no other information, are easy to periodically filter out and you're not storing any details whatsoever until the account is successfully created.
However, there's probably a reason why most sites collect username and password before email - you're getting a user invested before you ask for a more personal bit of information. The account is created - now just verify your email. The other way around ask for an email address first and an account second - even though functionally it's the same, perceptually it's not. Also, the advantage of the standard "flow" is that users know what to expect - following conventions mean users feel like they know what's happening and don't get confused or lose interest.
I want to share some thoughts about second approach.
First of all, it is very similar to invite system, but IT IS NOT the same.
You have to allow to send more than one registration request for a single e-mail address. If you don't - potential user might get it accidentally deleted and there will be no way to repeat the procedure. If you do allow that some angry dudes might use this as spam tool (send as many mails as possible to one(maybe even more) e-mail address. Imagine how would you company/site look for a person who got 10k registration requests...
Standard way has one serious advantage: it allows user name reservation without confirming e-mail (user might want to register, but don't want or has no access to the e-mail server/account).
You MUST consider that your server might delay email sending for pretty long time. Possible reasons: out of memory, DoS attack, email server failure and etc. If you choose mail first approach and user don't receive that mail in 5 minutes (for ANY reason), 3 of 4 potential users will course you company/site and never complete registration.
There is a reason why it is called a standard way, as a lot of small details are considered.
Both approaches are OK - but if you're going defer creation of the account, then you're going to have to embed all the required details into the URL - expiry date, username, password and email address and then encrypt it all to prevent tampering - which makes it rather large.
Actually - you couldn't allow people to pick their own usernames - since you'd have no way of checking whether the username had already previously been requested and not verified. And if you're going to publish usernames, then you'd therefore be publishing email addresses.....not such a good idea?
Here would be my concerns with this approach.
Email delivery is not guaranteed and can be slow. If the user doesn't get the email right away, they may not complete the registration process. What if they mistype their email address or if the email gets marked as SPAM?
In my experience, it is always better to keep record of the users that try to register to a site.
The problem is that more then often the users do not get the confirmation e-mail.
When that happens they often forget the site and do not come back.
What I do is to retry sending the confirmation e-mail after a while, say one week. Often they receive the second e-mail and you end up recovering a registered user that otherwise would be lost.
As a matter of fact, I retry sending the confirmation e-mail once every week until the user confirms or it passed 30 days since the registration attempt.
Even if the user does not confirm after 30 days, I do not delete the account. Often the user comes back trying to register again. Then I just send him again the account confirmation once again and encourage the user to contact the site if he does not get it again.
All this is to maximize the chances of recovering a registered user that otherwise could be lost.
I would suggest the second option. Let the users verify themselves by clicking the link in their email. Then they can choose their preferred username and password. I hope the usernames are unique in the site.
It would be helpful in the situation where some users forget to verify the link in their emails for a long time and so their usernames are locked. Others cannot choose those usernames (until that record is deleted later). Also this can eradicate spammers from picking their own usernames and locking them for use by others.
Hence i would suggest to go with the second option. Let the user first verify his email and his existence before he picks a username and locks it for use by others.
There are actually some sites that do that.
You enter your mail
you get a
verification mail with an initial
password and verification link
once you click the link your account is
active you're directed to a form with
additional details (full name, etc.)
but you may skip them and fill them
any time in the future.
This minimal registration process will help you avoid the loss of potential customers who don't want to bother with filling to many forms and supplying data before they really need to.
What it comes down to is convenience for the user. If the only reason for them the check their email is to verify the account then it may seem like an inconvenience. Instead have the system generate a password for them, email it to them, and instruct them to check their email to get their password. You can allow them to change the password after they log in if they want. This method also help to make sure "strong" passwords are out there initially.
I've built out most of the functionality, now I'm getting stuck...
I am creating a private, web application that has an invite only registration system. An admin user sends an email invitation to a user, the user clicks the link, and takes them to a page where they can create an account that has been linked to their email address.
When the form is submitted and does not have any validation errors, the data is inserted into the database for the first time. The email column of the invitations table is unique, so this is the token that the user needs in order to verify that they have permission to create an account.
The situation that I am confused about is when the admin user tries sending an invitation to the same email address. The email address column is unique so there is an SQL error. I don't know if I should do a check for that email address before inserting that record in the database, or what I should do.
I want to create a re-send invitation feature for emails that get lost, or accidentally deleted. Which is why I didn't want the admin user to be able to send a duplicate email to the same person, rather, they should use the re-send feature.
I hope this is all making sense. Any insights would be appreciated.
I use paper and pen to visualaize what I realy want. If the flow is clear I think you can make it ;)
I would definitely add a check to see if that address is already in the database before you attempt the insert. You could trap for the exception, but I would prefer to explicitly test for the presence of the email address.
An idea for you... When the email address already exists, you could make the system resend the invite. If you did that, you may be able to reduce some code repeat by not having to write an additional 'resend invite' function. Just call the same 'send invite' function on the initial invite request, or a 'resend invite' link described by others.
I also like the idea that others have already mentioned of the "Resend invite", especially philipnorton42's implementation.
I would use a validator inside your form, so the emailaddress is checked against your allready stored emails. So there should be no duplicate entry. Also i would implement an action that lists all your entered accounts and the creation- and activationtime in a nice table. Of course the action and view will support a pagination, so you can easy navigate through your data. If an entry has not yet been activated there should be a link, maybe an icon too, to a resend-the-email action for this special entry. And another action which resend the email to all not yet activated entries would be handy. Last but not least i would implement a reporting action so i can easily figure out whats going on.
I would say that Valter is correct, you perhaps need to draw out what you want to accomplish.
However, you appear (from what I can tell) to have all of the information in place for a "Resend invitation" button that the admin can click on to resend the invitation. I would create some reports in the backend that would allow me to view invitations that have been sent, that converted into users and that haven't been answered yet. Adding a button to the haven't answered yet report that resends individual invitations shouldn't be too hard.
Hum, i would create an view where all "Activations" are visible, with an button to just resend the invitation ? Without changing the record inside the database.