Some general questions about spam

[cclaerhout]

Two days ago I finished to convert one of my vB 3.x board to XenForo. Once the the redirection script activated and once my board opened to the public again, some robots immediate came. And in about 30-60 minutes later, some spammers were already registering to my website (I didn't have time to install some addons to prevent spams yet).

• How these spammers can be so much reactive?
• Why do they seem to target especially XenForo? I had nothing on vBulletin 3.x and... I didn't have any extra addons to prevent spams

In two days, 44 spammers have tried to register to my fresh converted board (this information is coming from Chris Addon: Registration From Timer)

 

[intradox]

To be honest, the major spam only started for me around 2months ago. Before then, I never had problems with bots/spammers on Xenforo. Not sure what changed but now I've had to add several plugins to block them.

 

[BGL]

How these spammers can be so much reactive?

Because it is profitable, all those advertisers pay for the spam and there is no regulation against it so it is easy money for spammers. The spammers increase their profits by taking the money from the advertisers and reinvesting in hardware and software to produce more spam for which advertisers pay them more money.

Rules that fined the spam advertisers would end the problem.

Why do they seem to target especially XenForo? I had nothing on vBulletin 3.x and... I didn't have any extra addons to prevent spams

Older forums have likely banned many of the email addresses so new forums, which all XF forums are, offer opportunity to recycle all the old email addresses, cyber recycling.

 

[cclaerhout]

So other new forums are also facing so much spams? (I don't use them, I'm just curious to see if those spammers only target XenForo or not)

P.S: I didn't understand your idea about email addresses.

 

[MattW]

When the spam started to take off on Xenforo, it also started again hitting phpBB3 (I also have a forum still on this, and the spam literally started flooding through until we installed KeyCaptcha). It's all to do with Xrumer and their latest release.

EDIT: the thread on phpBB.com https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2165645

 

[cclaerhout]

When the spam started to take off on Xenforo, it also started again hitting phpBB3 (I also have a forum still on this, and the spam literally started flooding through until we installed KeyCaptcha). It's all to do with Xrumer and their latest release.

Is this "script", Xrumer, also uses bots to get information on where to find fresh websites?

 

[MattW]

Is this "script", Xrumer, also uses bots to get information on where to find fresh websites?

I think they maintain a list of forum URLs which is constantly updated. Someone posted a text file on here of the list the other month. I posted a screen grab onto my forum which showed our site in their list



They must keep it constantly updated if they are finding new sites almost instantly.

 

[tenants]

There are sites dedicated to the lists. The XRumer lists are called LinkLists
(just do a quick Google search for "linklist forum" or "linklist xrumer")

There is also a core LinkList

Most of the data is simply slurped from a search engine crawl for phrases like "Forum software by XenForo™ ©2010-2012 XenForo Ltd"
Some of the data is spiddered from out bound links from sites like this, or directories of forums / blogs / etc
Some data is manually added

Pure link lists for XenForo have been quite popular recently since many of the core solutions for XenForo spam prevention have been targeted (both reCapthca and QAs have been targeted)
(I don't know what the core antipsam solutions for vBulletin currently are.. I havent had a new vBulletin forum for years)