General Discussions

**Curtis** · 03-16-2010, 08:06 PM

Hey everyone,

I have a site I developed but never did much with, it remained inactive for some time and today I decided to log into the admin panel, and I noticed I had a new user. Before, I was the only one. Not only that, there were 44 new users since my last visit...

According to my traffic logs, I get maybe a couple stray hits a day. Ive never advertised it, nor do I try to get traffic there.

Most the email addresses are @eusermail.com, @freeeeemail.com, @foryouremail.info, etc. All spammy looking.

These users have not done any contributing (its a news publishing site). However I am alarmed someone took the time to create these accounts. There are different ips for the accounts, but the most account activity (creation of them) has been between the 11th to today...

Should I be alarmed? Should I close registration? I wasn't quite sure where to post this message but I would like some user input on it. Thanks!

**ThailandForum** · 03-16-2010, 08:12 PM

Probably automated sign ups, stick one of those real hard to read captcha things in or a question that needs to be answered on sign up.

**vangogh** · 03-16-2010, 08:13 PM

Sounds like those users are automated spam. No one really took the time to create the accounts since it was all automated.

I wouldn't worry about it though. Something I've discovered with most new sites is first the spammers find you and then the search engines find you. You may want to delete the accounts you think are spam or you can just leave them. The spammers will probably try to post some useless stuff at some point and you can catch them when they do if you prefer to wait.

**Curtis** · 03-16-2010, 08:19 PM

I have a capcha enabled, do you think it needs to be harder to read?

**ThailandForum** · 03-16-2010, 08:41 PM

Maybe just change the the file name of the captcha? supposedly some can be read by bots, if they can then I could do with one of those bots to help me on sign ups.

**Curtis** · 03-16-2010, 08:49 PM

Thanks for the input everyone. I'm going to start working on the site again, I was just a little alarmed about all the random signups.

**vangogh** · 03-19-2010, 06:01 PM

Captcha's were broken awhile ago. You can try recaptcha, though I'm pretty sure that's be broken as well.