Why does our newest member keep changing?

[mirafioriman]

Been keeping an eye on our membership numbers since we hit the big 300. Can anyone explain why the number keeps going up and down. Earlier we were up to about 308, now we are back down again. The name of the most recent member keeps changing too

[Thotos]

If you look at the post New forum registrations now moderated  you'll see why new registrations have to be moderated. There are several registrations a day which are obviously from forum spammers. These registrations appear in the Total Members count and in the Last Member list while they are awaiting approval, or as in the case of spammers,? rejection and deletion.

I'd like to take this opportunity to repeat here what I've said before about this:

There are a lot of what appear to be rogue registration attempts lately and of course they are all being rejected. If you are trying to legitimately register on the forum but your registration has not been approved, please email forumregistrations@131mirafiori.com giving details of your registration name, email address and of course interest in 131s and we'll ensure that your registration is approved.? We apologise if any legitimate registration attempts have been rejected.

[mirafioriman]

Now I understand. To be honest it never crossed my mind that some of the new members I was seeing could be spammers. I just assumed they were genuine 131 enthusiasts 

[Thotos]

Unfortunately forum spamming is extremely widespread. The newly formed FiatClub500 got so much spam on their forum that they had to close it. They restarted later with tighter security but by then nobody wanted to use it and only has a handful of members now.

We too were infiltrated a while back but luckily Kevin was fast enough in removing the offending posts before too much harm was done.

Have a look at http://www.stopforumspam.com/ to get an idea how bad the problem is.? I use that website to filter most new applications for membership.