Human Verification

[Mike McBandiel]

So over the past few days, I've noticed that when I open the website suddenly, it keeps asking me if I'm a human, and this is happening on phone, computer, etc., so I was just wondering if it is something on my end that I need to fix or if it's something else to do with the website at the moment.

[Clarinot]

Sorry I know it’s a little annoying but we’ve had a ton of bot/spam traffic which both spammed the forums and actually is slowing down our servers, so I’ve temporarily raised the level of security to keep the site up and running. We’ve also added email address verification for new accounts.  I’m going to take a closer look after marching season to see how effective it’s been. 

[gregorydf01]

4 minutes ago, Clarinot said:

Sorry I know it’s a little annoying but we’ve had a ton of bot/spam traffic which both spammed the forums and actually is slowing down our servers, so I’ve temporarily raised the level of security to keep the site up and running. We’ve also added email address verification for new accounts.  I’m going to take a closer look after marching season to see how effective it’s been. 

Thanks for doing this!   The site is working so much faster and a very good trade-off having to take the extra step when going into the site.   It is running very quickly and working normally again!

[WanderingTraveler]

2 hours ago, Clarinot said:

Sorry I know it’s a little annoying but we’ve had a ton of bot/spam traffic which both spammed the forums and actually is slowing down our servers, so I’ve temporarily raised the level of security to keep the site up and running. We’ve also added email address verification for new accounts.  I’m going to take a closer look after marching season to see how effective it’s been. 

@Clarinot Is there any chance you could increase the challenge passage TTL so the reauthentication is not as frequent? Or have you kept it to ~10 minutes by design? Just wondering, if not Im sure you have your reasons  Better than having the bot army.

[JFNDOWBFAN]

3 hours ago, Clarinot said:

Sorry I know it’s a little annoying but we’ve had a ton of bot/spam traffic which both spammed the forums and actually is slowing down our servers, so I’ve temporarily raised the level of security to keep the site up and running. We’ve also added email address verification for new accounts.  I’m going to take a closer look after marching season to see how effective it’s been. 

I like being reminded that I’m human! 😂 Already dreading Area Day overload but appreciate having the forums. 

[Mike McBandiel]

4 hours ago, Clarinot said:

Sorry I know it’s a little annoying but we’ve had a ton of bot/spam traffic which both spammed the forums and actually is slowing down our servers, so I’ve temporarily raised the level of security to keep the site up and running. We’ve also added email address verification for new accounts.  I’m going to take a closer look after marching season to see how effective it’s been. 

No worries, I completely understand, thank y’all for keeping the website safe!

[bassboneman]

19 hours ago, Mike McBandiel said:

So over the past few days, I've noticed that when I open the website suddenly, it keeps asking me if I'm a human, and this is happening on phone, computer, etc., so I was just wondering if it is something on my end that I need to fix or if it's something else to do with the website at the moment.

Yeah Monday morning  there was a massive wave of bots spamming stuff trying to get people to call numbers. 

[Clarinot]

15 hours ago, WanderingTraveler said:

@Clarinot Is there any chance you could increase the challenge passage TTL so the reauthentication is not as frequent? Or have you kept it to ~10 minutes by design? Just wondering, if not Im sure you have your reasons  Better than having the bot army.

There wasn’t a reason, I went with the default. I upped it to 8 hours so everyone will see a maximum of 3 verifications per day. Let’s see how that goes!

Note: the verification is still per session, so if you totally close out of your browser, you might have to re-verify before the 8 hours is up.

[WanderingTraveler]

43 minutes ago, Clarinot said:

There wasn’t a reason, I went with the default. I upped it to 8 hours so everyone will see a maximum of 3 verifications per day. Let’s see how that goes!

Note: the verification is still per session, so if you totally close out of your browser, you might have to re-verify before the 8 hours is up.

Cool, thanks! You’re the best!

[JFNDOWBFAN]

On 10/2/2025 at 8:10 AM, WanderingTraveler said:

Cool, thanks! You’re the best!

What did the 🤖’s look like. I must have missed all the fun. 

[lost]

I’m just surprised in the year of 2025 there are still people running bots to spam forums like in the early 2010s message boards. Some things never change…

[Clarinot]

5 hours ago, lost said:

I’m just surprised in the year of 2025 there are still people running bots to spam forums like in the early 2010s message boards. Some things never change…

It's gotten pretty complicated now. They post fake phone numbers for banks, airlines, stores, etc on popular sites like ours that get picked up by google's index, so then when someone searches for a business name they get the wrong customer service number, call it, and provide their info to scammers. TxBands is just kind of a pawn in their game.

[lost]

3 hours ago, Clarinot said:

It's gotten pretty complicated now. They post fake phone numbers for banks, airlines, stores, etc on popular sites like ours that get picked up by google's index, so then when someone searches for a business name they get the wrong customer service number, call it, and provide their info to scammers. TxBands is just kind of a pawn in their game.

Wow! I had no idea. That’s pretty elaborately terrible.

Thanks for keeping watch for us and keeping an eye out. It’s appreciated to help keep this forum accessible and clean.

[bassboneman]

7 hours ago, lost said:

Wow! I had no idea. That’s pretty elaborately terrible.

Thanks for keeping watch for us and keeping an eye out. It’s appreciated to help keep this forum accessible and clean.

This is what they do ....