A Change in Registration

December 22, 2019December 22, 2019 Joel Manzer

When we first launched over 10 years ago, it was easy for someone to register/join Autisable by just using their email address and creating a password.

This process makes it easy for anyone to join the site, but there are unseen side effects that are not constructive to our community and needs to be taken into consideration.

As a result, we’re going to share a couple of the downsides associated with creating an account with just an email address:

1. Spam/Bot Accounts

Creation of these accounts on a social site can generate false metrics, along with a poor sense of community. Often these accounts are automatically generated and the content posted from these accounts, either as a post or a comment make absolutely no sense. Content is usually filled with website links and or keywords that don’t fit the context of the website, or of the post.

Looking at user accounts on our site, we noticed there are many accounts that have variations of the same email address with poor quality content, and even worse still – poor use of the site in general.

The use of spam/bot accounts doesn’t benefit us as a community, nor does it help us update the site to be more user friendly.

2. Site/Account Security

We are working on a way to address 2-step authentication for Autisable. By just having an email address to register, the opportunity to be more secure with your account isn’t currently available.

This is why we encourage people to register with single-sign on registration. This would allow you to use your LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter account to register and login to your autisable account.

This form of login helps to both limit the number of spam accounts being created on the site, as well as promotes the secure login to your account on Autisable.

So, what to expect from us in the near future?

We will soon be phasing out the ability to register on Autisable by only using an email address. This will not impact those who already have an account on the site with access via email only… it will only impact those creating a new account on the site.

We will also be reviewing our user accounts and purging accounts from our database that are cited as spam/bot accounts. For those that regularly use twitter or facebook, we are just following their lead.

For those curious, we are looking into ways to verify accounts and to cite those accounts as verified.

What actions can you take?

You don’t have to take any actions right now if you already have an account. However, we would encourage you to login to your account, go to your account settings, and connect your preferred social media account. We would also encourage you to update your profile pic and cover photo on your account.

We have many members on the site who have connected all of their social media accounts that they can to their Autisable, so they can login by multiple single-sign-on methods. Although it’s not required, they’ve found it’s helped them get onto the site securely and easily. 🙂

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave a comment or to contact us privately via our contact form here.