New spam tricks: Bogus user registration

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Greg Stephens
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New spam tricks: Bogus user registration

Post by Greg Stephens »

I've noticed a new form of spam over the last few weeks. What happens is that (presumably) automated spam-bots will register a new user-name whose website is a link to a porn site. I've been deleting these bogus users as soon as I see them. Since the latest member names appear on the index page of the forum I thought I'd mention it here in case anybody's noticed that occasionally a new name appears, then later it's displaying an older name again (it's entirely likely that I'm the only one who watches it that closely).

Luckily for readers of this forum, this form of spam is less intrusive than spam-bots that actually post messages (there have only been a couple of those in the history of this forum, so far), but I've no tolerance for either practice. These forms of advertising are as welcome as viruses and it's amazing that they work well enough to make it worthwhile to those who do them.

There is a way to make forum registration dependant on a new user's reply to a confirmation email sent automatically by the system (I'm sure you've all seen this sort of thing before), but since actually posting messages doesn't appear to be the goal of this kind of spam, I'm not going to turn that on, since it's just another hassle to legitimate users.
Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.
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Greg Stephens
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Posts: 3862
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2001 7:00 pm
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
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Post by Greg Stephens »

That's pretty funny.
Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.
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