Others may have caught on to this as well, but this is what I am noticing on my forums lately.

• Spammers are registering, then leaving. - If you are like me, you pay attention to new member registrations, as do your moderators. Spammers have figured this out, so they register, leave the forum for a few days, then log back in later to infiltrate your forum with spam.
• Spammers are targeting old threads. - I am noticing that spammers are now spamming not by creating new threads, but replying to old threads. The only reason I can think of that they would do this is because vBulletin now has the feature where you can sort your forums by post date, rather than last post. Many forum owners like this method, but the downside is if you are not monitoring new posts, spammers can add their spam to your forum without you ever seeing it because the threads no longer come to the top if you use that format.

Any other techniques you have noticed on your forums?

I noticed number 1 as well and I have had spammers reply to threads. I had never seen that before.

I am paying closer attention to the second one now as I have just added over 50 forums to my ATV community for State by State trail listings. The forum threads are in alphabetical order so spam could easily be added without me knowing if I am not monitoring new posts.

I hate spammers.

i have some moderators in place that pounce on any spammers...i had a problem for a while but the brides on my forum can be pretty brutal

You should have a special user group where you keep all new users. Until they have proven themselves with some intelligent post they will remain there. From time to time verify what those suspicious users are posting.

If you want to be really bad about this issue, then any post made by the above users that contains more than 2 links shall be moderated.


Regards,
Razvan