Spammers

[rebbonk]

We seem to be plagued by spammers at the moment. Many days I'm removing 25+ posts, and I have no doubt that others are also removing them.

I did a screen grab that might just help identify where they come from

[Finebyme]

What others are removing them , Rebbonk?

[Lex]

I'm usually removing between 100-1,000 suspect/spamming users every day! It's got to the stage where I might have to change the registration process. How did you find the process when you re-registered Cathidaw & Rebbonk?

[rebbonk]

I found it easy, but I missed the registration email. - My fault!

The thing here is that most of the posters aren't full members. We need to stop them posting before they've been approved. My own site uses an email process to verify registration prior to letting them post and automatically the site culls 'dead' (emails unresponded to) registrations after 21 days. When we've had the odd bout of intensive spamming, added to the registration process we required that all new members to be moderator approved for their first few posts. It seemed to work and very few spammers got through.

But what you need to look out for Lex, is 'backdoors' deliberately left by the board provider for admin resetting etc. If the spammers know these they can get in very easy.

[Finebyme]

What is the actual aim of the spammers?

[rebbonk]

I'd guess that if people follow those links a couple of things could happen...

1) the poster would gain a small fee, affilliate style

or

2) You would be directed to a site that would download (or at least try to) malicious software of some sort. It might be adware, hostage virus or even a key logger so that any online banking etc. that you do could be recorded and fed back to the poster.

All in all, these people are a pain in the ar$e. If your site becomes a known affected site the various anti virus softwares will start refusing to allow access...