Anyone else getting an increase in spam?
 

It looks like bots, it sounds like bots, but there are no links!

Its well strange, getting around 5 a week, signing up with mad email addresses and making 1 post, and thats it.

I must admit, 1 of them was quite clever, and it said has anyone seen 'something'

So I did a google search for that word, and then clicked on the top link, and it took me too some software site.

But I just dunno how they are slipping through, and I can't ban them, as some seem like genuine posts, as they are asking for help, or saying hello and complimenting the forum!!

Catch 22

Anyone else getting posts like this?

The above was gthe software one, which when I done a search I did find it on other forums, but others are quite difficult to spot.

Thoughts?

Watson

Been going on about two weeks. Check this out. https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=183917

I've had a huge influx in what I think is human-powered spam. I.e. I'm fairly certain it's a human registering and posting and spamming. We're talking around 2-3 a day.

Used to get this when I ran phpBB. A bot would sign up and ask for help with something. A few days later, another bot would answer it with a link that was actually advertising.

Rapscallion

Its actually really clever how they do it.

Cheers noppid, but I was sure I already installed that. Will have another look

We did recently, but we added a hack here on .org to prevent bot registration, it's worked so far.

See also: Forum Robot Spam Prevention Recommendations

It's nice to know the vBulletin.org/.com staff actually helped people by posting that announcement (which is something I did not actually expect from the company). But in all, I haven't had that much spam recently, and I can probably count the spam members I've had to ban per week on one hand.

I had this spam a few weeks ago, there getting better.

I did on two of my forums I co admin on, then I installed a few of the spambot stop mods the best one of which is the VBstopforumspam mod which imho has been invaluable!
it has stopped 99% dead in their tracks.