I run a vBulletin site and have noticed a lot of new user registrations (mainly with e-mail addresses with .cn extension) but they don't post anything. I have email address validation enabled and CAPCHA. A few of them will post spam but the majority seem to sign up and then do nothing. It's not causing a problem at all, just curious. Any ideas why they sign up?
No problem, just likely to be spambots. Even if they are not posting they may be making spam links elsewhere. For example they can make profile links, links in social groups, and possibly create calendar events too depending on your forum configuration. -Raymond
Yap, spambots.. among other things, i ended up blocking any members with a .cn in their email address.. I know i risk alienating all of my 'real' Chinese members, but it's a risk i'm willing to take..
You might wanna try a Hack (for vBulletin) named - Is Bot: Registration Time Check - which will block every registration process unless it lasts longer than X seconds. It helped me a lot. Even though I get 3-5 times less registered accounts a day on my board comparing to some of my competitors I am almost 99% sure that almost every user account (since I've had this Mod installed) on my board was created by a real person and about 90% of those accounts have got at least 1 post since they have been created. Actually, in most cases, they were even made within the first 3 days of the registration - now I face 'only' the 'make them come/post back' problem. I chose the quality. Although you might loose some real people acounts if you set your - Is he/she a Bot clock - to too high number of seconds. I learned that 18sec is too little as still some bots manage to complete the registration process where 25sec is too long for many real Internet users to be thought as a 'Is Bot'. ~20sec is a safe value where you loose only about 1-2% of real accounts (depends on how many attempts of registration process you get a day). To prevent that loss you can set up an Info message: at the begining of the User Registration page - just above the Registration Form - (more informative - I know how much time I need to spend on this page to be able to safely complete the registration process) or/and above/below the 'Register Me' button (less informative as user may have not recollect how long does he/she filled in the Registration Form so he/she waits even more). The best option would be to add some timer on the Registration Page so that registering user knows exacly how much time does he/she need to wait more to hit the 'Register Me' button. The timer should be visible next to the 'Register Me' button. It needs some programming skills and to know where to put the programming code (so far I am to noob at where certain things are stored withing vB files). Maybe someone will come up with an idea.
This happened to me when I was using phpbb board. Since the time I moved to vbullettin, i am yet to encounter the problem. Try using the recapcha feature if you want to keep them at bay.