OT: New Users and User Names

peabody · Post by **peabody** » Mon May 29, 2006 8:47 pm

Whenever I get on the forum I always glance at the total number of registered users and the newest registered user.

Over the last day or so I've seen alot of newly registered user's. Yesterday there were like 1090 and today the total is up to 1169 so far. The latest new register is user9031.

I'm just curious because I've never seem any of these new user's post a thing. I've seen some weird names used too.

Is someone or something trying to mess with the site?

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon May 29, 2006 10:32 pm

Yeah something strange is definitely afoot. Looks like May 29 has a ton of new members, all names with either two numbers after a word or four numbers. They seem randomly generated to me.

Something's up.

nyisles16 · Post by **nyisles16** » Tue May 30, 2006 9:14 pm

indeed - everytime i get back to the site there is another new "user" but no posts...

Post by **Jared** » Tue May 30, 2006 10:42 pm

It's spamdexers...they register on the site from one IP address, then use their registration to leave spam comments on news articles on the main site. I need to fully disable commenting there to end that (deleting the comments are easy), but it's difficult to ban new users before they come up. In the meantime, they keep making new accounts, and I keep deleting them.

bdunn13 · Post by **bdunn13** » Wed May 31, 2006 12:17 am

The simplest solution to that might just be an image with random text and the user signing up has to read the text and type it in. This is used all over the place these days and its to prevent stuff like this.

I am not sure if you are using a custom login page or not, but the new version of phpBB implaments this and would solve your problem I believe.