Membership Numbers

[neddy]

It's the first time I've ever been involved with running a forum, and I thought I'd share the following with you.

Every day, DNT receives between 2 and 10 requests for membership from spammers. Fortunately, (thanks to Soj),
membership now is not automatic - it needs to be verified.

So every day I do a quick search on IP addresses, and sure enough, the majority are applications from India, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, Phillipines, Romania etc. Got a got feel for spammers now - invariably their user name is a word combined with
a number. Here is most recent example: ryanchristopher70@gmail.com (Bangalore).

I notice some forums have a lot of these type of "members" - the spammers obviously do it for SEO and to get a signature link.
The forum's perhaps do it to boost membership numbers?

 

[payattention]

It's xrumer.. fantastic for profile links and other forum based spam. I don't think any forum owner wants to boost members unless it's a new forum; DNTrade is established so that's not the case.

I'm not sure what value these profile backlinks have anymore. I use to use them quite heavily but they no longer seem effective.

 

[snoopy]

There is a vbulletin addon for adding challenge questions to the signup process (may even be standard feature now). If you had some very Australian focused questions perhaps also focusing on domain names you could weed most of it out and maybe consider automated again,

Eg,

Who regulates australian domain names? a_ _ _
Australia's best known domain registrar? me_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Australia's proposed broadband network? _ _ _
The extension nobody uses? n_ _._ _

 

[neddy]

There is a vbulletin addon for adding challenge questions to the signup process (may even be standard feature now). If you had some very Australian focused questions perhaps also focusing on domain names you could weed most of it out and maybe consider automated again,

Eg,

Who regulates australian domain names? a_ _ _
Australia's best known domain registrar? me_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Australia's proposed broadband network? _ _ _
The extension nobody uses? n_ _._ _

Good points - will look into it. Thanks Snoopy.

 

[Honan]

..........
The extension nobody uses? N_ _._ _

lol

 

[Billy01]

nobody uses the extension???

ridiculous. Snoopy you must be chained to your pc.
Still the most undervalued extension in the world. We'll catch up with the rest of the world eventually Snoopy