Minor Website Issue

A minor issues was discovered this week with the new anti-spam software.  We get about 20 attempts a day to insert advertisements for online scams in our forums each day. 
 
The issue is with the way the anti-spam software deals with account creations, password reset emails, and posts to the forums that look suspicious.  The software goes to a third-party server in much the same way your virus checking program probably does to evaluate information against a known group of spammers.   The third party server sends back an 'all is clear' message to the OSHNA webserver or it sends back a captcha block for the user to pass through.  Captcha is those squiggly words you have to type in to verify that you are a person rather than a spamming computer.  There is a lot of jargon in there, but the bottom line is a connection is made to a third-party server which sends back the captcha block for you to fill out.
 
The problem comes in when you are behind a corporate firewall; you are at work.  If you try to post from work and your company's internet connection prevents you from going to certain websites, it is possible that it will prevent you from making that connection to the third-party anti-spam server and getting the captcha block back.  This will make it impossible for you to post to the forums from work.  It can also affect creating an account or resetting your password.  Again, this is dependent on how your company has set up their network; some companies will let this through and others will not. 
 
I have disabled the anti-spam filtering for the password reset feature.  I don't want to block anyone from getting a new password and I do not think the anti-spam feature is that helpful there anyway.  The more you post, the anti-spam server will start to recognize you and will stop challenging you with a captcha block.  I must leave the challenge turned on for new account creation, though, to keep spamming computers from creating new accounts.
 
I apologise for any inconvenience this may create.  The web team is looking at the problem and trying to figure out the best solution.