Website/forum warning!

[Pernicious Atavist]

As all of you who sign up for sites and forums know, most require a user to sign up and get approved, most often via a return email to which they must respond. I do this in CSM.

Today, it failed.

A 'person' who signed up turned out to [seemingly] be a robot. I checked the location [I require City, state, country] and it was [seemingly] bogus. here's the info in the order I just mentioned. I ADVISE YOU DO NOT CLICK OR ACCESS THESE IN ANY WAY!

User Name: CheappOemSoftwware
Email: oem2@accommodationmalta.info
City: DOWNLOAD AutoCAD OEM SOFTWARE FREE AutoCAD 2008 download for free
State: DOWNLOAD AutoCAD OEM SOFTWARE FREE AutoCAD 2008 dwg downloads
Country: DOWNLOAD AutoCAD OEM SOFTWARE FREE AutoCAD 2008 trial download

I have to go to work, but intend on sharing this with other forums and webmasters. Please consider doing the same!

The bastards are going to defeat us if we let our guard down!

[seedy]

You might see if you can incorporate the Bad Behavior script into your website. This blocks lots of bad crap and URL's. Using BB and Spam Karma keeps my Wordpress install free of any spam at all.

[Bruce Hooke]

Yup, until I put in place a system to block this sort of garbage I got tons of these sorts of things via forms on websites I manage.

I always delete the these messages, but I figured it was just annoying advertising. It never occurred to me that it might be an attempt to spread malicious software so that is good to know.

In this case the link in the message is an email address so it is hard to image what could go too terribly wrong if you clicked on that (unless in the process of copying and pasting the message to the forum a URL got stripped out).

Thanks.

[Pernicious Atavist]

Bruce, my concern was that this 'person' gained access to my forum and could then flood it with crap. I could easily fix the problem, but I'd rather not if I could avoid it! Now, I did write to the email used and asked if they [it] was human. No answer yet....