Spambots suck

[Mike]

A couple months ago, the spambots got so bad that I shut off new user registration temporarily. I finally remembered to turn it back on a few days ago, and wound up getting three new bots registered in the first 12 hours--which is above average, but not by a lot. This pace kept up for a couple days, so I decided to switch registration to require admin approval.

Admin approval (I thought) would mean the same work from me to delete these things, but with the added bonus of not allowing them to post before I catch them. What I didn't know is that with admin approval, it now no longer requires the bots to verify an email address. So now instead of 5 or 6 per day, I'm getting 40-50. It's only a pain because I have to delete each account individually, which is three to four clicks per bot. But I'm sure somewhere is a setting for purging users with 0 posts. I just need to find it.

Ideally, I'd also like to require email verification AND admin approval, so I only have to delete the ones smart enough to get that far. Sadly though, it seems to be an either/or situation.

#worstthingtoeverhappentoanyone

[Mike]

I may have underestimated. 20 new bots in the 4 and a half hours since I posted.

[Akiva]

How do we know you’re not a bot programmed to complain about bots?

[Phoebe]

His assignment is to enhance the perception of the power of bots. Then again, we are all bots here except for that one person.

[Mando]

How do we know you’re not a bot programmed to complain about bots?

How dare you question the motives of The Computer! Communist!!!!!!

[Mike]

Just watching day to day. I don't want to shut off notifications of new user registrations, because without notifications, I might as well just shut off registration entirely. But it's like there's blood in the water now, and every day sees more spambots signing up. The four week average now is 108 per day, but the last 24 hours there have been 220. Wild.

It's not a hassle. I take 30 seconds twice a day to scan the list for non-spam names, and then click "mark as read" and I'm done. It's just interesting.