Lots of spammy users signing up?

[Aussie Bob]

So what's the deal? We're getting lots of spammy usernames signing up, and they never post. They just sign up and go away. Is this part of a larger picture? I don't get it. :iunno:

[Tyler]

NoSpam! (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124828) should fix that quite quick for your vB board, Bob. :)

[SoftWareRevue]

Yeah. That's what we use here.

We don't get no more bots. :fu:

[Aussie Bob]

Thanks! :notworthy

Darned those spam bots. I didn't think they could get past the VB CAPTCHA. :dfingers:

[Jan]

They are certainly a pest aren't they :S

[Aussie Bob]

Went through and deleted 250 usernames from the forum, with spammy sounding usernames. :S

[Jan]

This is one I can't figure out, I don't know if they have been to your place yet, but I was browsing a forum I rarely look in one day and saw they had three disappointment2 usernames who had visited in the last 24 hours. After scratching my head for a while, I figured it must be a forum setting that they had overlooked.

Then the same "thing" signed up twice at GV. I stared at the names to make sure they were spelt the same, looked in admin and found they were indeed the same, but with different email addresses. Still haven't figured that one out :crazy:

Seems "it" gets around though. http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-05,GGLJ:en&q=disappointment2

[Jan]

Heh :)

http://tomsblog.net/boards/memberlist.php (3 there)
http://www.businessforum.net/memberlist.php?ltr=D&pp=0&sort=username&order=asc
http://www.showmotive.com/forums/memberlist.php

And on it goes :S

[Aussie Bob]

Yes, I deleted an 'disappointment2' username from the Dotable forum.

I ran this past Steve, my biz partner and all around sysadmin genius :notworthy and he reckons they're either going to spam, or waiting for a VB exploit to do something more devious.

We had a LOT of @cashette.com and @gawab.com, being used for email, in the spammy accounts that signed up. Wierd thing is they didn't confirm their signup, and were in the "Users awaiting email confirmation" usergroup, so I deleted all members in that usergroup.

Lamo scum sucking spammers gone. :)

[Jan]

Yeah I have banned those @email addresses from a couple of forums. Another two are @burnacouplemore.com and @getamusic.com.

[Aussie Bob]

Update -

We installed Nospam! (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124828) and no more lamo spam bots signing up. :clap:

[SoftWareRevue]

All hail NoSpam. :bow:

[Tyler]

NoSpam! is quite nice addon. :) I just hope it doesn't get too popular, and the bots figure a way around it like vB's image verification.

[bear]

They'd have to be damn clever to figure out random Q&A to get registered on various forums. Great hack.

[Aussie Bob]

Yep, I can't see their bots being able to answer a specific question like that. It's a dead set simple way to keep out the bots. :bkick:

:bclap::banana2::bclap:

[Jan]

Give em time, then the vB gurus come up with another solution :love:

[Lurker]

What's the prognosis of nospam after having it installed a few days?

[SoftWareRevue]

No spam here after installing nospam. :)

Can't wait to get some other forums upgraded so they can use it too.

[Jan]

FWS has it now and looking good so far :) Doesn't stop the phone spammers though :mad: Guess they are real spammers :S

[Aussie Bob]

What's the prognosis of nospam after having it installed a few days?
No spam accounts. :D

[bear]

Same here, no spam accounts, but a few that were already signed up were caught by the moderation filter (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129390&highlight=spammer) automatically. Nice combo!

[HostFrog]

They are certainly a pest aren't they :S

That is an understatement. I have recently been getting slamed with spam bots signing up and posting all over the boards about their medicine products and what not. Becoming quite frustrating.

[digioz]

So what's the deal? We're getting lots of spammy usernames signing up, and they never post. They just sign up and go away. Is this part of a larger picture? I don't get it. :iunno:

The reason they keep signing up and never use the account is because either way that's a link back to their website, which will improve their search engine ranking! I get about 30 to 50 of those a day on my personal forum, so I have modified my memberlist to only show users where number of posts > 0 and user_active=1. :talk:

[adb22791]

I think their doing what that mikeyboy crap did a long time ago; signing up and sitting in stasis before doing one large attack. I don't know why anybody would do it this way, but thats what the mikeyboy bot did.

vBulletin's image verification has been cracked, a fact which I'm not too sure the vBulletin dev's want to acknowledge. Hopefully they will fix it soon though.


Alex

[Aussie Bob]

The reason they keep signing up and never use the account is because either way that's a link back to their website, which will improve their search engine ranking!
I don't get how signing up to these forums improves their SEO. Sounds like a possible SEO myth. :sickface:
I get about 30 to 50 of those a day on my personal forum, so I have modified my memberlist to only show users where number of posts > 0 and user_active=1. :talk:
We don't get any spammy users signing up with Nospam (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124828) installed. :yippee:

[KiwiJenn]

Thanks to this thread, I too have NoSpam and it's working great!!

[digioz]

I don't get how signing up to these forums improves their SEO. Sounds like a possible SEO myth. :sickface:

With PHPBB 2.0.x forums when someone signs up, regardless of the fact that they may not be validated / activated they show up in the "memberlist.php" page! So either way they get a link back to their site from the profile page and the memberlist.php page, which in turn improves their search engine rank! :goggle:

[jerett]

Excellent! I appreciate someone posting this quick and easy mod to help with the Spam issue.

[D'Godown]

I believe on IPB its a bigger problem then anything, on a forum i receive atleast 30 new joinings daily and most of days all 30 are spammers, I have activated email validation, text validation but no check on spammers joining, This is all because of autopostbot is being spreaded on warez forums and lots of people just exchanging the forums list they have. http://getmesmileys.com/smilies/character0079.gif Sorry my smiley is offtopic, but i was just willing to use it somewhere.

[jerett]

I actually like IPB alot because I am use to their Admin area but unfortunately they are extremely limited on the amount of plugin / mods they have.

[Scott]

There are lots of unofficial ones out there. I'll agree it's probably not as large as vB, nor as easy to install mods.

[D'Godown]

i can give u any mod you think of IPB, invisionize is all about mods, every mod available, but not nospam yet :(

Yes I am also in love with IPB a lot. Going to update to version 2.2 anytime soon.

[jerett]

Actually that is because IPB doesn't need the mod. I just did some research and found that you can add a custom profile field and have it require a set answer that works exactly like the no spam mod for vb. Yes! This will help alot!

[SoftWareRevue]

phpBB has a mod that works pretty similar as well. New registrants are presented with instructions on where to find a code they need to enter on signup. Works quite well, indeed.