New users?

[TerryRitchie]

I've noticed that the past couple of new users have only spent a few seconds on the site and then left with their accounts not being activated. A few seconds is not long enough to humanly create a new user account. Are we being spammed by a bot perhaps that creates new accounts? Very strange.

[SMcNeill]

I would guess, from the name of the latest member, that it's a bot of some sort at work.  


datingmannn -- This just sounds like the name that one of those, "Hi! Are you lonely? Pathethic? Looking for a sexy young teen girl to spend ridiculous amounts of time with you online, who will find you irrestibly attractive and charming? Come over to Dating Man Website and sign up now for the low, low, low introductry price of 99 cent for a three day trial membership! (Normal rates of $999.99 per second apply afterwards, with cancelation fees of $2500.00 being charged for anyone canceling this membership.)"

If I had to guess, I'd say the bot went through all the sign up process until it got to the last stage, answering our excessively hard question about how to display text to the screen in BASIC!! It couldn't complete the question, and is now awaiting some manual activation, which.... well... Pete is missing... and Steve doesn't log into his admin account more than once every three or twelve months... And none of our other admin care about doing the manual activations.... so.. umm... It may take them a while to finish registration for full posting priveldges unless they can complete that question and verify their email address!!

[TerryRitchie]

I would guess, from the name of the latest member, that it's a bot of some sort at work.  


datingmannn -- This just sounds like the name that one of those, "Hi!  Are you lonely?  Pathethic?  Looking for a sexy young teen girl to spend ridiculous amounts of time with you online, who will find you irrestibly attractive and charming?  Come over to Dating Man Website and sign up now for the low, low, low introductry price of 99 cent for a three day trial membership!  (Normal rates of $999.99 per second apply afterwards, with cancelation fees of $2500.00 being charged for anyone canceling this membership.)"

If I had to guess, I'd say the bot went through all the sign up process until it got to the last stage, answering our excessively hard question about how to display text to the screen in BASIC!!  It couldn't complete the question, and is now awaiting some manual activation, which....  well... Pete is missing... and Steve doesn't log into his admin account more than once every three or twelve months...  And none of our other admin care about doing the manual activations....  so.. umm...  It may take them a while to finish registration for full posting priveldges unless they can complete that question and verify their email address!! 

Yeah, LOL, datingmann was glaring at me right in the face and I didn't make that connection. What happens to user accounts that never get activated? Do they get deleted after a predetermined amount time where activation has not happened or does an admin need to manually delete them? Just curious.

[SMcNeill]

2 weeks then automatically removed.  ?

[Cobalt]

I've been popping them off as I see them, I've started banning IPs that seem to be making multiple 4-20 second accounts.

[The Joyful Programmer]

On my old QB64 forum, I would get a lot of "bots/spammers". Trying to stay proactive at removing them as fast as possible was a pain at best. Of course, that was back in the MyBB v1.6.x days. Things are a lot better with MyBB 1.8.x in my opinion.

First, at least on my new BASIC forum, I'm not sure about here, but I get a "purge Spammer" link at the bottom of each user's post.

   

It will:

   

In the "Login and Registration Options" in the admin section of my forum, I have these settings in place to help remove spammers:

   

I also have the "User Pruning" set up as:

   

I believe that if someone wants to register on my forum badly enough, they will follow through with the registration fairly quickly. I will only give them a day to do so before the system purges them.