Some friends and I have a blog that is just out there to give us a place to say things...not really for any money making purpose or anything like that. Since starting it, I have been inundated with spammers signing up as new users. It's obvious that these people are spammers just based on their usernames and email addresses.

Anyway, to the point of my question...

These "people" sign up and never post anything or interact at all. So then I wonder...if they aren't dropping links or posting ads....what is the point of it all? What are they gaining by wasting their time signing up as new users?

Of course now, I've started deleting them as they sign up but it all just irritates me.

That is weird. The whole point of spamming is to spam. Signing up and then doing nothing, is odd. You don't have to sign up to read the blog, right? You only have to sign up to post on it. So why bother if you're not going to post anything?

This type of activity is often a two part spam bot.
Firstly they sign up and stay dormant, but then the next wave comes and they post like mad things.
Better to limit them while dormant that deal with a wave of spam.

Problem is that there are so many accounts registered that many get lost or forgotten about.

So they wait and then hammer the site later? Ok....

It's still a small enough number that I am able to remove them as they sign up right now so I will just stick with that.

Do you use captcha for new users? You could implement to prevent most bots from signing up, nothing to say for the human end. If you want some implementation information try here

You can also block their email addresses, possibly their email domains if they're something purely proprietary. Blocking IP's can work well at times also. You can also try implementing a time delay between posts, much like this site here, you can only post once per minute or 30 seconds or whatever to prevent overloads from over looked users.

Many of these features are already coded into a fair share of CMSs and Forum/BBCode Packages.

Just some helpful info!

It's a Wordpress site so, without plug-ins, I can't block users. I have it set so that they can't comment without it being approved first but it hasn't even come to that yet. I will look into captcha plug-ins because I know that it isn't a standard feature on Wordpress.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

Can they as members, access contacts of other members.

Good question, Fr_Chuck but I have just checked on that and no, they can't. Never thought about that though.

Maybe they join and then are just too busy to comment.
Either that, or they're building a giant robot army.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheWalrus

Maybe they join and then are just too busy to comment.
Either that, or they're building a giant robot army.

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If they manage to make the robot army I'd really like to ask that they send it to my house to clean, shovel snow, clear the gutters, do some laundry, cook. Should take robots only a few hours, then the can go do whatever they want to do. :)

As I said in my original post...it is obvious that they are spammers based on their user names and email addresses.

I have added a captcha as was suggested and that took care of one problem.

The newest problem is that I am now getting attempts to login under my user name from Turkey and Russia. I've grown tired of the BS and decided it just isn't worth it.

Odinn, sad, but you, it doesn't sound like it's worth it. It's only worth it to those that have the money and knowledge how to stop this crap. :(