Lots of visitors trying to register for an account.

[Lester_]

My SMF forum is a specialist area (for English speakers learning the Slovak language, in case you were wondering). It will not be a busy site. It has only been running for 6 months and has 16 members.

I notice that I get a lot of traffic, with up to 46 visitors online at the same time. When I look at who's online I can see that many are registering for an account, except they are not as these do not evolve into additional members or even members awaiting activation.

I have registered with another name just to check that the registration process does still work ok.

With so few members this additional traffic is the majority of the site's traffic. Is this normal? Are these hackers or bots that visit in large numbers but do not actually complete their registration? I am curious. What have you noticed on your forum?

[ApplianceJunk]

What do you come up with when you search the IP of these guest?

[Arantor]

If you feel comfortable, would you mind sharing some of the IP addresses, even? We can help you identify the source of some of them.

[Lester_]

What do you come up with when you search the IP of these guest?

When I click on the IP address it just tells me which continent the address is from.

If you feel comfortable, would you mind sharing some of the IP addresses, even? We can help you identify the source of some of them.

I had not kept a list of them but a quick look now shows that of 38 guests and 1 user (that will be be me) currently on the forum:

123.125.156.134 - registering for an account
124.207.99.61 - registering for an account
200.174.44.37 - registering for an account
202.108.50.15 - sending an email to another member
200.174.44.37 - sending an email to another member
58.147.17.185 - logging into the forum
60.217.248.130 - logging into the forum
202.108.50.20 - logging into the forum
130.34.209.33 - requesting a password reminder

None of those IP addresses matches the exising 16 members.

I did not think that guests could send emails to other members. Display of email addresses is off.

I am not worried, just curious. I can only think that someone (or some bot) is trying something mischievous but SMF is so well built that they are not succeeding. My forum has no mods installed. It is running SMF 2.0 RC2.

[Arantor]

The 'things they're doing' is based on them trying to do it rather than being explicitly doing it.

IP addresses seem to be split between China and Brazil; none of the major known engines. Could be an email harvester or two. I keep seeing China Unicom listed, so not sure what to make of that.

[busterone]

I get about a dozen of those a day. I get a lot of attempted spambot registrations too, but they never get past the registration security.  The China ones also make me take a second look sometimes, but no harm is ever done.