These numbers tell an interesting story...
| March | March | Sept |
| 2010 | 2011 | 2011 |
| New accounts | 100 | 307 | 3,347 |
| Deleted | -5 | -198 | -2,153 |
| Remaining | 95 | 109 | 1,194 |
| No activity | -65 | -89 | -1,190 |
| Used | 30 | 20 | 4 |
| Lurkers | -17 | -17 | ? | - unknown—included in "no activity" |
| Posters | 13 | 3 | 4 |
If the creation of spam accounts cannot be controlled, then there is no practical means by which we can identify and delete them. This is why I suggested simply deleting all accounts for which there were no posts (spam posts would already be deleted, so the accounts from which they were posted would have no posts). Doing so, however, would also delete the legitimate accounts of "lurkers"—real people who have gone to the trouble to register, but have not yet had occasion to post. These accounts, however, can be identified as those having a
Last Active date greater than their
Date Registered. Spammers do not browse and leave. When they return after registering, it's to post spam. At the same time, real people do not go to the trouble to register and then never return. If they do return after 30 days, it's unlikely they would even remember registering the first time. Besides, the numbers prove the vast majority of these inactive accounts were created by spammers anyway.
So if spam accounts cannot be prevented, this is what I suggest:
- Clean-up the existing accounts by deleting all those for which there has been no activity since registration.
- Moderators delete spam and the accounts that post them as they are posted.
- Periodically (but at least monthly) delete accounts
- that can be identified as spam by their links and contact info.
- created more than 30 days prior for which there has been no activity since registration.
I don't know if moderators can be given the permissions required to do the deletions of steps 1 and 3. This post (from the SMF 1.x support board) suggests how those can be done.
The only other way might be to make sure you have moderation checkboxes selected in your profile and then set your page length to a large number. Go to the memberlist from the Admin area and click on Last Online until the sort is showing the oldest date. Click the checkboxes of the ones you want to delete, depending on the page size you set, you can click the box at the top of the page to select all the members on the page. The select the action at the bottom of the page.
