Do you delete spam users?

Every day there are a lot of users (bots) that sign in into my forum just to post spam. And i delete them right away. But I noticed some forums keep those users (inactive) to make their forum look bigger. How do you handle that?

 

I used to ban them. But that didn't seem to slow them down. So, now i just delete the spammy posts. If i see repeat offenses from the same user, i ban them.

 

I'm doing the same.
Also noticed once that I deleted a user, and he signed up later again with the same username.
So now I just delete the spam posts. And if it keeps returning ban the spammer.
But most of the time they just post once and never come back. So be useless to ban them anyway.

 

I ban them so I can track the email account domains to ban site-wide, but I have installed an anti-spam tool which has gotten rid of all the spam.

 

I delete most since they have weird names ...

 

What do you do with the profile of the users if you don't ban em? I mean some are even happy if the can post a link in their signatures and all the other fields they can fill out in their profile. I must somehow count as a backlink otherwise they wouldn't do it I guess.

 

You gotta use email confirmation, it really takes their away their heart.

 

Email confirmation wont stop it, if you delete the username the same username will be registered again so often the best way is to remove the spammy link added into their profile.

 

Delete posts and ban, simpler to keep the ban in place that way, nothing to do with member numbers.

 

I keep all my members, also none of mine ever post. They just make accounts.

 

I just move the spam posts into a forum called "the black hole". I have it set to where no new threads can be created in there but posting replys is still allowed in that forum. Gives the bots something to look at.

 

I assume you remove the links they post

 

I delete all spam posts and users, they clog up server performance.

 

no i dont remove the links, i just apply the no link attribute in that forum.

 

Just now I deleted 20 spam ID's and 5 pharma topics. PhpBB has become a heaven for spammers.

 

If it's obvious they are a spammer (multiple users from the same strange domain, or using a .info or .ru domain) then I delete them. If I'm unsure if they're spammers or not then I'll leave them.

I have email verification turned on, and a SpamBot hack that is supposed to help stop spammers, but I'm still getting too many spam registrations

 

I used to not make users confirm there email address and I would get alot of spam. Now that you have to confirm your email address I get hardly any. Then i ban them, there email, and there ip since most are from other countrys and I like the bulk of my forum traffic to be us based.

 

i let the spam users keep signing up and i've integrated the no link mod for Vbulletin, and users must post a min of 1 post before they can post URL's

this allows the forum to look bigger by bots signing up and i spend less time deleting the spammy posts...

 

I enabled admin confirmation for every sign up and added a warning to the sign up form asking to put the site name to one of the fields. Every day I confirm registration only for those users who have my site name as their last name (this can be changed after registration).

It's the only method that works 100% against spam bots, and I dont have to remove spam posts.

 

I got a hack where the URL and signature field are invisible for human users. So they won't fill in something, but bots will and get removed automaticly
But I still get human spam "bots", but only very few compared to the time before I had this hack.