Why do some sites attract spammers so much?

[Red Squirrel]

I run several different forums, and while spammers have always been a huge problem, this one forum I run I actually have to keep registrations closed. The instant I open them, I'm FLOODED with spammers left and right and they pretty much fill every single section with nonsense crap and even bump old threads.

I made a system where I have to validate each post from a new user, when I validate the user is validated and can now be a regular member, if I deny it deletes all that user's posts + bans that user.

So I turn it on last night around 1:00am. Today I check at 12:00ish only to find out there are well over 100 new accounts that have names that make no sense, and there's 200+ new posts and they somehow bypassed the whole system. Some of them did not but most did.

Is there something that attracts these idiots to come spam like this? Maybe some kind of list somewhere? I mean, it's retarded. This shit needs to be illegal, they do nothing but waste bandwidth and deface forums and other forms of communication. Captchas and email validation does not even work anymore, they have found ways to bypass those too.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Are all of the forums running the same software? How much exposure do they have in google/bing/whatever? I think a lot of it might be related to SEO. The bigger/better the forum, the bigger the target. Also, the forum software being run can be an issue. If you use something popular there is a better chance that there is an automated registration script available for spammers.

 

[sonoma1993]

is it possible you can block their IP address? If these spam attacks are coming from a specific region, just block the IP addresses of that region.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm while the traffic is not that high as far as registered members, it is high enough and the SEO is quite up there... There are some very interesting words such as "bin" that rank me first. And filenames like ndisuio.sys.

And software, they're all running different software but lot of them are rather old. The one that is attacked the highest is running IPB 1.x which is almost as old as the internet itself. It's highly modded and too much work to upgrade it (and they charge now, so I'd have to migrate to a whole new system)

Actually think next time I'll check the logs to see how they are getting on. If it's totally random or if they searched. For a low traffic forum it does rank fairly high on google. Guess that comes with a price.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
is it possible you can block their IP address? If these spam attacks are coming from a specific region, just block the IP addresses of that region.

It's always different IPs. Though if I could find a way to just block all of china, russia, and all those spammy countries, it would help. I wonder if there's a public list somewhere of all the IP ranges and who they're owned by. I could write a script that automatically updates.

 

[Blazer]

if there is a public list somewhere its maintained by 'G.O,O.G.L.E. and/or Y.A.H.O.O.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This is messed. Now all they're doing is registering tons of accounts (about 1 account per minute) yet not posting.

I wonder why these idiots do weird stuff like this. They seriously need to get lives.

 

[n0cmonkey]

There are public china/korea ip lists out there. I'm sure there's one for russia too, but I can't say I've personally seen one.