Due to increased spammer activity, we have been left with no choice but to disable the user registration form for new membership requests. Guests with a genuine desire to register at The OutPost and join discussions here should contact a staff member directly at top.staff at theoutpostforum.com (without the spaces and with the @ sign). We reserve the right to consult spam databases and refuse membership at our discretion.
We have tried to find a balance between allowing people to join and keeping spammers and hackers out, and have been quite successful in doing so, until now. We were using a system where we allowed user registrations, and these registrations were first checked automatically (i.e. by a program). That kept 98% of the spammers / hackers out. We then manually vetted the remaining 2%, which is a process of some minutes per registration.
Slowly, however, the amount of spammers / hackers trying to get in, has been increasing. At present, we have reached a point where we are getting between 4 000 and 5 000 attempts per day. This effectively means that it has become a half-time job to keep the spammers/hackers out.
We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to return to automatic registration at some point in the future. Thank you for your understanding.
UPDATE 31 March 2016: note the new email address!!!