Are these hackers?

[obglobal.net]

I've recently had 4 members sign up under weird names, and now as I've just checked to see who's online, I see this:

AreraPinnyfef 05:27 PM Unknown Location
/index.php

What's happening here? Should I ban all the similar, odd names?

Thanks.

[ForceHSS]

Check there ip and email on this site

[Digital Jedi]

It's showing up as Unknown Location because index.php isn't a known location in vBulletin. This happens sometimes when modifications to your board add custom pages or you've made a separate vB page your main domain; your landing page.

But even so, sometimes funny names (beyond the usual weird names people sometimes pick) are automated registrations. Either a spam bot looking to post, or looking to put links in its signature to help boost a particular sites search engine's rankings. Check the user's email. If it's also some kind of gibberish, a bizarre or foreign domain name (particularly .ru, if you're not expecting a lot of registrations from Russia) and/or if his signature has some weird links to it (like links to cheap plastic surgery, affordable real estate cheap brand name products, etc), then it's probably a spam bot.

Trust me, hackers won't show up in Who's Online.

[gajinoz]

A while ago I had a rash of spambots attacking my site. They all registered with weird names, probably just random character selections. I installed the mod "spammers suck" and that stopped them dead. Have a look for it.

As somebody said, check their IP and email address in stopforumspam site and if their IP is from Russia or China especially there is a good chance it's a spammer or bot.

[Amaury]

If you want to fix the unknown location, you can create a plugin.

Title: Index.php - Unknown Location
Content:

if (strpos($userinfo['location'], 'index.php') !== false) 
{
  $userinfo['action'] = 'Viewing Index';
$userinfo['where'] = '<a href="index.php'.$vbulletin->session->vars[sessionurl].'">[Forum Name] Forum</a>';
  $handled = true;
}

The title can be whatever, of course.