More Spam than usual?

Since we moved to the new forum software in late 2016, I've had a mostly automated system in place that tries to validate new account registrations. The email/originating ip/some other characteristics are checked against a database of known/suspected spammers and if matched then the registration put on hold until an admin can review details. This has been catching >95% of offenders since then, with almost no false positives. The spammer database gets updated by other forums owners continuously, but it does appear that there's a new source within the past week or two. It's possible they may subside, or we can consider stronger measures.

Some available options include putting new registrations on manual post moderation status until they've posted a certain number of times, or imposing a delay between registration and first post, but new people can find these a bit discouraging.
Happy to hear opinions and additional ideas from members!
 
Fortunately the new software makes cleanup easy. Still a pain, but hopefully it will slow down eventually.

My advice to the community is to report spam that appears as a reply to an existing thread. Those are not obvious without opening the thread. The newly created spam threads are pretty easy to spot as the thread subject is usually an URL, so they don't need to be reported. Unless you just really want to report it. :)
 
I believe new members will better wait till can post or make comments, than see spam.
 
Seems like more spammers have gotten through in the past week? Anything that can or is being done to make it harder for them to access the forums?

It's a perceptible uptic, but from what I can see, only a few per day if that. It might be an overreaction to change signup rules for such a minor inconvenience.
 
It is a bother.... But If we are doing a vote I vote for letting is be as is for now. (I know how much I hate it when I find a great forum to talk about things and feel locked out because of the security).

I am hoping that it slows down as the list get's updated.
 
There's also been a noticeable increase in spammer registration attempts - I've just cleared nearly 100 new registrations that were halted based on data from the service I mentioned earlier. That's about 5x the usual volume.
 
We've been deleting them as we see them.
Between the Mods, they don't make it too long here before they are taken down.
I think they (the spammers) have to work a lot harder than we do here. :cool:
 
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