Anyone else seeing an army of spammy new user registrations?

[use-ip]

Seventy spammy user registrations since New Year.
I changed registration from ReCAPTCHA to Q&A this afternoon.
It made no difference at all - they keep registering.

[Loco.M]

search around, there are many ways to prevent spammers

[chrismk]

Seventy spammy user registrations since New Year.
I changed registration from ReCAPTCHA to Q&A this afternoon.
It made no difference at all - they keep registering.

Same here. Very frustrating.
Why, all of a sudden?

[bplinson]

I am getting them also. Most are coming from Russian and Ukraine IP addresses. I am banning their network ranges as they come.

[TheWizardGuy]

im getting alot of polish signups, links in sigs and nonsense profile info lol

[Super Cat]

This is what I'm getting. I took most steps I can without getting rid of quick reply

I am getting them also. Most are coming from Russian and Ukraine IP addresses. I am banning their network ranges as they come.

[use-ip]

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?

[AndyN]

Spam registrations up dramatically - several year old forum. I have had ReCAPTCHA in place for years so they get around it somehow (any ideas?). Guess vbStopForumSpam is my next step (over the weekend instead of playing ...)

AndyN

[LaBella]

I too am getting HAMMERED all of the sudden. 7 year old forum as well. Random or basically is there something about 3.8? I just outright do not like the look/feel of 4 enough to upgrade but that is another issue completely.

[CK]

There has been a story running in the news about a drastic and sudden drop on activity from the 3 largest bot-nets that produce spam emails. It's been suggested that a sudden stop would be a sign that their controllers are switching plans and moving to try new methods of generating money via spam. Could this be what's happening here?

I've got an awesome question and answer that hasn't allowed a spam registration in over a year since I put it in place. I'll keep an eye to see if anything gets through though.

[Sean DeMerchant]

Seventy spammy user registrations since New Year.

Yes, about 1 attempt every 10 minutes. Starting on January 5. I added an unsearchable totally unrelated required registration field that has only one obvious valid answer which seems to have stopped this short term. But they have bypassed the recaptcha somehow and may have cracked the email validation.

Running 3.8.6 pl 1

[tjjeepjeep]

I'm getting hammered too on mine. Do you guys ban the ones that get through or delete them? I've seen multiple threads on it and I typically just ban them but the volume is killing me and I'm thinking of deleting instead. Thoughts?

[DDrolet]

yes, we are getting flooded with new registrations. Luckily, before Christmas started, I always set the forum to have moderated new users, so I've not accepted the users as someone who can post, send PMs, etc. I'm going to delete these accounts and install vbstopforumspam now.

[vbull70]

I too am getting a lot of these spammers from other countries (Russia, Netherlands, Taiwan, etc). But I have to approve each new member before they can see anything on my site.

[Zachery]

I would suggest everyoen take a look @ changing away from recapcha to their own custom Question and Anwser verification.