Can you send me an example link of what you mean my in their signatures?

They're bots trying to mooch off our google ranks. Instead of trying to get members to click their links via posts or threads. They try and sneak registrations of user accounts onto our forum system. This way they can post links to their sites in their signature, and when google goes through our forums, their sites gain google ranks (aka Google mooching).

What I've been doing is banning the bot and sending their info to glowhost to help prevent them doing it to us again or other sites. Maybe when you do a new version, take consideration of what they put in their signatures when blocking spam bots.

Don't Click these! They may be malicious!
Example of their signatures:
Another example:
If it helps. My website is www.zeldadungeon.net
We've gotten really weird ones too.

Well, I am pretty sure those links have no follow tags on them. At least all the links on our board does so there is no chance of them gaining PR from that.

But what I was asking for is a link to whatever you are looking at because I dont see it on our forum where a "non-poster" can have links that are public.

Something like this?
http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/member...boutme#aboutme

We more or less want to slowdown them registration at our site.

You could hide signatures and WoL to unregistered. Then bots will never gather that info.

Well, I think Stabatha is on the right track. Except, that example appears to be a registered user.

Spam-O-Matic allows you to make a Newbies group, where all your newly registered users go. That usergroup should not have signature permissions (among other things). After 10 posts or whatever you set it to, then they graduate to the registered users group which probably should have signature permissions based on your forum's policy.

We will eventually add the thing in admincp, but in this case the problem is preventable from the get-go.

I keep getting this when using the spam-o-matic to remove users:

This does not happen on an unmodified board with a properly installed Spam-O-matic. Please make sure your installation is correct and if the issue continues you will have to disable all mods and try it. Then enable them one by one until you find the conflict.

there is several outdated code in functions_ghsom.php function calls to

fetch_template();
print_output();

will cause errors as those are 3.8.x (and lower) only

SOM doesn't use fetch_template(); anymore.

print_output(); is used in vB4 sources so it should not cause any errors.