Topic closed (On another forum: Unwanted new members)

[Gardener]

Morning all  WhenI'm not on Rootschat I'm usually looking at a small community site which goes in for a lot of genealogy posting and everyone is very friendly. There seems to be a possible upcoming problem with lots of new members every day. They don't post anything, just register and then go off line. There also seem to be a lot of visitors listed - right now there are over 200 but only 6 members, 2 of which are new ones.

So I was wondering if anyone had come across this on other sites? Is it a malicious virus of sorts? Our Admin is lovely but very busy at the moment so doesn't seem to have picked up on this and we regulars are getting a  bit worried

[Koromo]

... and we regulars are getting a  bit worried

Um ... are we?

Right now there are 103 guests and 117 users (members) online. Seems all right to me.

Cheers
Koromo

[Gardener]

Sorry, I thought I made it clear that I was talking about a small community website - not Rootschat! I just thought that with the wide range of users here there might be one who had come across this elsewhere.

[JK]

Another small forum I belong to also had this problem, many of the unwanted members were drug and porn companies just registering and posting links to their websites. We also had multiple guests. Admin of that site started vetting members before activating accounts. We now know that people we chat to are interested parties and strangely the multiple guest numbers have decreased too.

[Koromo]

Oh, Gardener, I'm so sorry! I didn't read your post very carefully at all.

I can quite believe that smaller forums who cannot have a moderator in attendance 24 hours a day could well be targetted by unscrupulous people.

 
Koromo

[Gardener]

No problem Koromo. I ofetn think I'm being crystal clear and then realise that I'm not

Thanks for the reply JF. The strange thing with this lot is that they don't offer any web links or anything, just register and leave. And they all have usernames which are word plus number and look sort of randomly generated. Perhaps someone is just doing it because they can?

[Lucky P]

They are probably spambots - an automated program trawling the web looking for random forums to join so they can leave an url to a dodgy site, usually gambling or p*rn or similar. Funnily enough they don't always leave an url (I have no idea why)
I think the idea is (in part) search robots will find the web link on the forum and of course, the more times a site is linked to, the higher it will be in the search engine rankings.

We run a small phpBB forum and our policy is - if someone joins and doesn't post within 24-48 hours they are deleted and if they have a dodgy url, then they are deleted straight away, no argument.

There is a quick mod (for the phpBB forums at least) that the admin can do to stop the spambots registering, but it doesn't stop real people registering, we did it and it has worked for us, also a lot of the newer forum versions are implementing visual confirmation for new registrations (type in the characters you see displayed to confirm you are a real person) which also works.

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that some people join up expecting that registered members get some sort of extra content that is hidden to guests. When they don't find what they are looking for, they walk away. 

Whatever the reasons, new members that don't add to the discussions are a waste of space 

[Gardener]

Thanks for the reply Lucky P (and I actually understood most of it  )
Our Admin seems to have stepped in and sorted the problem now and with the help of a the friend of another member they have followed the trail backwards so hopefully it is all sorted now.
It sounds a good idea to have a bit of extra security built in, if only for peace of mind.

[raa]

good afternoon i am a new member have not posted anything yet. have questions 2 ask, But have not figured out how to do it yet. so i hope im not one of the unwanted new members. Raa