Multiple Bogus New Members

[Steve038]

I haven't yet finished setting up my website. The only threads I have are a couple of test threads, and the only articles are the example articles that came with the vbulletin package. So there is nothing of interest to anyone yet.

But I noticed this morning 30 new members had joined last night. But when I went and looked at their profiles, they look to me to be bogus. Each new member has a wierd username that just looks like some garbled letters. Also, the only fields they've filled in are: Biography, Location, Interests, Occupation. And each of these doesn't really make sense either. Example, one of the new members has the username 'pretteplaph'. Then they've filled in the fields as follows:

Biography: Man
Location: Puerto Rico
Interests: pretteplaph
Occupation: Puerto Rico

Every one of the new members is like this, except each one has a different garbled username, and the username is also used for the Interests field.

Has anyone else experienced this? Should I be worried? If I remove them all, will I find another 30 new bogus members tomorrow?

Thanks in advance

--------------- Added [DATE]1303067522[/DATE] at [TIME]1303067522[/TIME] ---------------

Any help with this at all? I've had another 15 of these bogus new members appear overnight. Its beginning to worry me!

Another strange thing that is happening is that at the bottom of my forum page, where it has the stats, it lists there being 18 new threads and 24 posts, but in fact there are only 4 threads and 9 posts. What is happening here? It has me very worried.

[Randomm]

those would be spam bots
try installing security features that will prevent or reduce the amount of bots registering on your site

try these

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...d+Registration
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=256383

[Disasterpiece]

I noticed this too last week, I had a couple (10) bots which slipped through my Nospam verification message.

I solved this by setting a new question/answer.

[Randomm]

Originally Posted by Disasterpiece

I noticed this too last week, I had a couple (10) bots which slipped through my Nospam verification message.

I solved this by setting a new question/answer.

Yeah there's a Q & A mod that really helps. I installed it and no bots problems ever since

[Steve038]

Hey thanks to all of you for your replies. I'd done as you've listed, and I've also set it so that when a new member registers, I can choose whether or not to accept them as a member. Seems to work really well, although I worry a little bit that people might get frustrated at having to wait to be approved.

[fevredsuk]

I wouldn't bother approving members its a pain,

I found using a mod to put a question on at signup such as whats the year have stopped spam bots

[twiskus]

Originally Posted by Randomm

those would be spam bots
try installing security features that will prevent or reduce the amount of bots registering on your site

try these

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...d+Registration
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=256383

I downloaded the top option...when I open the file, there is a TON of code and writing...do I just copy and paste that entire portion into css? What area of css?

Trev