Reply To: Weird spam surge on my forum lately

[axelrowan]

Yeah, same here. Usually it’s not “smart” spam, it’s just a burst of garbage accounts hammering the same weak spot until they get bored or blocked. If they’re getting past signup, I’d look at the first-post flow more than the registration form. That’s where I’ve had the best results too — approval queue, tiny post delay, or even just a stricter filter on links/keywords for brand new accounts. Making signup a pain just seems to annoy legit users more than it slows the junk down. Also worth checking whether it’s one or two IP ranges or a bunch of rotating junk. Half the time it looks like a huge wave, but it’s really just a few scripts cycling through proxies and reusing the same patterns. If you’ve got logs, the fingerprints usually stand out pretty fast.