Spambots don't post?

[Gizmo]

Seems I've got four spambots or something on my forum with usernames as

- taifermfemi
- kledstripst
- Gentolase
- futhhintous

Just want to know what people think of them as they actually don't post but their usernames are slightly weird.

 

[AnAccount]

Spam bots are spam bots and they shouldn't be posting. If you know they're spam bots, don't wait until they do something... if you know they're spam bots you should ban them before trouble even starts! Also, just because people come up with odd names, doesn't always mean they're spammers at all. This is one of those things where you really have to use your best judgement.

 

[Nuke]

I've been seeing this quite a bit since I moved to MyBB. Deleted them at first, then realized they aren't getting their accounts activated, and stopped. Most of them stopped when I stopped.

 

[Kaiser.]

Thats actually normal, some spambots join and spam, while others just join and and dont do anything but have a website in their signature. If you click their profiles most likely they are linking to a site in their signatures.

 

[mikehawk]

I always wondered if there was any rhyme or rhythm to their naming. Or are they just pounding the keys and see what comes up.

When I see those types of names I just delete them. No sense giving them the chance to spam bomb my forum.

 

[Nuke]

@Kaiser: Yeah, I remove their signatures, too. Forgot to mention it 😛

@MikeHawk: Yes, I've noticed a pattern. But not all conform to it.

 

[Gizmo]

Thats actually normal, some spambots join and spam, while others just join and and dont do anything but have a website in their signature. If you click their profiles most likely they are linking to a site in their signatures.

Funny thing is that they have nothing in their signatures.

 

[Nebulous]

Some spambots join and stay dormant for a while. Then all of the sudden BOOM you are hit hard all at once.

I see these members as innocent until they've done something wrong. A suspicious username & email address isnt grounds for account deletion until they've confirmed the fact they are actually a spam bot by posting spam.

Spam is easy to clean up as we can delete all of a person's posts & topics with a single click in the ACP. The second click would be to delete the account. So, there you have it.. 2 clicks and the spam bot never happened. 😛

 

[Gizmo]

Should I suspend or moderate them just in case they do say happy early birthday?

 

[Kaiser.]

Should I suspend or moderate them just in case they do say happy early birthday?

They most likely are spam. Check their emails to see if they are using any weird ones, and their IP's as well.

 

[D]

Sometimes they wait like a month and then they just start spamming one day when you least expect it 😱

 

[Fergal]

Thats actually normal, some spambots join and spam, while others just join and and dont do anything but have a website in their signature. If you click their profiles most likely they are linking to a site in their signatures.

I had so much profile link spam on my business forum that we had to disable the homepage field in member profiles. It's not something I wanted to do, because I would be delighted to see genuine members have a link to their sites in their profiles. However, we just got too many people signing up for the sole purpose of linking to viagra, pharmacy and adult sites from their profile.

 

[AnAccount]

Should I suspend or moderate them just in case they do say happy early birthday?

I would moderate them for a bit, and then if it really gets out of control, then do an outright permanent ban, as spammers in any shape or form are not needed or welcomed. So keep an eye on them, and like someone else has said, also check their profiles out too. If they're linking to Viagra or any crap like that, then you can safely presume that their only intention is to spam the crap out of your site and you definitely shouldn't put up with that.

 

[Teejay23]

The spambots come about one every few days (1 week old forum). I have put some more upgraded registering filters in and so forth but the bots register and then not activate.

They usually have funky names - but i tend to google their names first and usually their names are added to some spam sites and then i just ban and delete. Also IP block if they are the same.

I treat it as a little game, whack the spammers, the joys.

 

[CyberFreak]

The game will soon become boring. Especially when the spam level increases which it will do over time. The best way to stop/dramatically reduce spammers is to have various layers of protection and not just rely on 1 layer. We are a pretty big forum here at FP but the amount of spammers we get is pretty minimal. Most issues we have are with banned members trying to ban evade rather then actual spammers.

 

[el canadiano]

You know, if they're there to just get backlinks and whatnot, you could always just nofollow sig links and whatnot.