How to get rid of unwanted members(bots)

My site seems to be getting too many sign ups per day and I believe 99% of the are bots. My site has been open for over a year and 70% of the sign ups have been in the past 2 weeks. I get close to about 100 sign ups a day which is a very scary thing to me considering the members just sign up and don't do anything.

Half of them get past the "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" usergroup and become normal members. They just do not post and usually never visit the site again, I don't understand if it is bots or what.

I have Captcha and a question/answer box in registration, and of course email confirmation. Is there a way to remove these unwanted members, not sure whether they are bots or whatever they are...

I checked many of them and they are all different IPs so not sure how to remove them. I want this to stop because if they keep this up, I will have more members than posts soon.

 

Hi Ashimashi,

Use the prune user tool (Admin CP > Users > Move / Prune Users) to delete anyone in the Awaiting Confirmation Group & Registered with 0 posts and less than 30 days membership.



Next you can install Glowhost's Spam - o - matic tool. This tool has stopped 95% of spammers before they even register. I regularlly clear 500+ entries in the log on a monthly basis. Make sure to enable Stop Forum Spam IP and Email address checks but DISABLE username checking as it can deny legitimate users.

Next take a look at my primer on Preventing Spam on vBulletin Forums. It hasn't been updated in a while but everything is still pertinent. Ignore the parts about install Stop Forum Spam and Stop The Bots. Spam-O-Matic takes care of this.

 

Thank you again Dan, I have never used the prune feature in the past as it was never needed. I totally forgot about that. I was about to delete a huge chunk of unwanted members with 0 post count.

As for the spam-o-matic, I have used it many times in the past in previous forums and I always thought that the proccess was a little too strict. From personal experince, I have been declined an account a couple times in the past due to the spam-o-matic.

But I have to give it a try and see

Thanks again!