Gahhh! Random spambots!

Alright-y, the perk of becoming a more active site is that we draw in more members. The downside is that we get spambots. From what I can tell, it's "someone" who posts three or so nonsensical posts and the never posts again. Usually they have two links to random sites in their signature that have nothing to do with anything. I've tried to delete their posts, but the fact still stands that we have these random members on our forums who exist solely as spambots. Is there anyway we could make the sign-ups more secure to make sure it's a person acutally signing up or try to delete the accounts that are clearly spammers?

I actually deleted one of the spammers.. >.> and other admins can too. so active admins, help~?

I don't really know how to handle spams, and how to make sign ups more secure.. (we can make the sign ups admin-approval thing, but that'll increase work..)

I can delete the member, so if you see them, delete the post and notify an admin, please. ^^

So can we alert you of bots in this thread?

I think best we can do is post the user-names in this thread that are bots and have the admins delete them.

yeah that can work I guess. ^^

Memieko wrote:I think best we can do is post the user-names in this thread that are bots and have the admins delete them.

Oh, I like that idea. I'll get to work on it...

The only one I've found so far is EmmyCail1223. In retrospect, I realize that deleting their posts might not have been the smartest idea because now I can't see their signature and be able to tell if they're spambots..>.>

I searched the user but seems it's not here? maybe it was deleted already..

Maybe we can we use captchas in our sign-ups? I have no idea if we can do that or not, or if we already are...

I'll look into possible methods of spam protection after this week is over

I'd advise just adding a captcha on sign up. I added one when my old forum was having spambot issues, got rid of pretty much all of them and made it easy enough for mods/admins to deal with those that survived.