Anyone else seeing an army of spammy new user registrations?

[tjjeepjeep]

I too have to approve everyone , so far it's just been annoying and not damaging. I have the other admin looking into the vbstopspam but I appreciate the tip on the custom Q&A.

Thanks, Zachery!

[Chiron]

Indeed also here an enormous increase in registrations by spammers. Switching to Q&A too.
Does vbStopForumSpam also work on VB 4.1.0 PL2 ?

[Chips]

I just installed the vbStopForumSpam add-in product and this has successfully stopped most of the new registrations - it works by recognising known spammer user names, IP addresses etc.
It's quick & easy to install, and way more effective than messing around with CAPTCHA/Q&A or additional registration fields.
A few are still managing to register, but it's a lot better than it was.
18 sign-ups prevented in the last 90 mins.

Why the sudden attraction to an almost three year old vb forum?

Trying this plugin on my forum. Something has to stop this madness. I though every person in Eastern Europe got a spambot for Christmas. Somehow this latest generation of bot can breeze right passed the re-Captcha. I actually had gone a very long time without spammers until the start of this year.

This plug in looks like the key... I have compared i.p.'s, usernames and emails against stopforumspam for some time but the sheer volume of new registrations was taking up a large portion of my day.

Running fine on VB 4.1.0 PL2

Thanks for sharing!

[Zachery]

Switch to Question and Answer verification instead of recapcha for the time being.

[1kether1]

Switch to Question and Answer verification instead of recapcha for the time being.

Hi Zachery,

Is there instructions for the "Regular Expression" field? I saw this post when searching to figure this out, and thought I understood until I see the blank below my newly created question that now wants an answer. ?? I just put the answer in that blank again, but should I remove the "Regular Expression" Mine looks like this: ^[mM]$ from the example with a different letter of course.

Thanks for your help.


EDIT: Just found this: Increased Spamming Attempts... and see no mention of the Regular Expression field so looks like I can just skip it.
K

[Grae]

I've also seen a huge increase in spam registrations and came to vbulletin.com to see if others were suffering similar issues.

Switch to Question and Answer verification instead of recapcha for the time being.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[chrismk]

I just installed the vbStopForumSpam add-in product and this has successfully stopped most of the new registrations - it works by recognising known spammer user names, IP addresses etc.
It's quick & easy to install, and way more effective than messing around with CAPTCHA/Q&A or additional registration fields.
A few are still managing to register, but it's a lot better than it was.
18 sign-ups prevented in the last 90 mins.

Why the sudden attraction to an almost three year old vb forum?

I too have installed it and so far have had zero registrations since doing so!

[bplinson]

Trying this plugin on my forum. Something has to stop this madness. I though every person in Eastern Europe got a spambot for Christmas. Somehow this latest generation of bot can breeze right passed the re-Captcha.

These registrations are not from bots. The are humans being paid to do the work.

[Boofo]

These registrations are not from bots. The are humans being paid to do the work.

And you know this...how?

[bplinson]

It is pretty obvious and the method has been in use for quite a while.

In Russia they are paying people to register on sites and spam them. - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/14/captcha_serfs/

Here is a place hiring them - http://www.whydowork.com/searches/captcha-buster.html

http://allforfreelancers.com/getafreelancer/2010/03/Captcha-Busters-and-Qlinks-and-many-more-captchas-nbsp-Articles-BPO-Data-Entry-Data-Processing-Excel-646966.html

[chrismk]

So why are they split between those awaiting moderation and those who have bypassed this stage?

[listerdiesel]

We have changed over to Q&A, and have generated 15 or so special questions that are specific to our location/country, like 'What is the Country Town of Bedfordshire' and things like that.

The only standard question in there if you change over is: "4+4=", which may or may not be easy for a 'foreigner' to work out.

Nothing in so far today since we changed over, we have had two or three hundred over the past week.

Peter

[vbull70]

Switch to Question and Answer verification instead of recapcha for the time being.

I did this yesterday per your suggestion. So far I've had zero spammers. Thanks!

[tjjeepjeep]

Added vbStopForumSpam to mine yesterday and have none get through since..

[China-Rising]

Been getting them as well on Both my sites.

I turned on the question and answer option yesterday and not had one since. So it works if folks are thinking about this move

It's not just Vbulletin though, I know a couple of phpBB forum owners who are having the same problems. It started around the 27th December.