Bots? Spam?

[ctesiphon]

When I see the list of currently active users includes the following names, all of which were in the process of registering at the same time this morning, I do begin to wonder.

antaliagdug, APACIEBRA, eageletom, Optomoimmonee, pedssnank

Is there a reason why this might be happening? Does the forum upgrade require users to be registered for previously freely available features? I know the Search facility now has a character recognition - which is a bit of a pain, but I fully understand its purpose - so maybe the security of the site has been upgraded generally.

If any of you are real, apologies. ctesiphon is hardly the most un-spambot name in the world either.

[ctesiphon]

11:08 - GesseToobjare.

I'm guessing that this "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" prevents them from going any further.

[ctesiphon]

At this stage, I'm just saving the names for laughs.

Hi Buincchotourbss!!!

[Paul Clerkin]

Basically the spambots get caught twice - most have emails from certain banned domains or countries which stops them getting any further, and the rest if authenticated get caught by moderation. Their emails are so imaginative that you know by looking at them - for example bigboy@getviagraonline.com kind of thing

and i delete unauthenticated personas after 14 days... there's easily hundreds a week

[ctesiphon]

My hero.