Unusually large amount of new users in the past week (bots) - page 2.

As can be seen here, it appears that the number of new registrations in the past week has been 5-6x the daily average for the rest of the month. I've included the chart below from that page as a reference:

Code:

Monthly Summary New Topics New Posts New Members Most Online Page views
January 2015 11521 297119 17388 0 59378692
2015-01-01 297 9080 207 0 2593190
2015-01-02 359 10490 286 0 2720551
2015-01-03 353 11439 331 0 2406906
2015-01-04 421 11733 259 0 2723954
2015-01-05 419 11827 294 0 2758409
2015-01-06 437 11979 279 0 2453940
2015-01-07 399 11183 273 0 2481575
2015-01-08 371 11081 292 0 2334845
2015-01-09 398 11608 258 0 2283513
2015-01-10 298 10820 292 0 2233034
2015-01-11 359 10573 331 0 2285669
2015-01-12 442 11915 459 0 2322419
2015-01-13 507 4197 419 0 725035
2015-01-14 504 13806 287 0 2604155
2015-01-15 457 11533 295 0 2209029
2015-01-16 397 11369 260 0 2034912
2015-01-17 376 9541 247 0 1800851
2015-01-18 334 9925 215 0 1716400
2015-01-19 380 10634 309 0 1911358
2015-01-20 482 11233 292 0 1997317
2015-01-21 438 9774 328 0 1792207
2015-01-22 0 0 0 0 6
2015-01-23 635 9703 1781 0 1578290
2015-01-24 313 7619 1423 0 1514065
2015-01-25 420 10796 1573 0 2022088
2015-01-26 498 12137 1687 0 2155157
2015-01-27 470 10786 1644 0 2020900
2015-01-28 382 11005 1645 0 1942642
2015-01-29 375 9334 1422 0 1756368

While at first this might appear to be a good thing, a quick look at the members list sorted by registration date reveals that these are mostly just bot accounts. Here are a few examples from just the past 30 minutes (they are being registered in a steady stream):

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/karilackj-425081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/maribelshe-425079
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dustyknopf-425077
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/carapither-425075
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dortheamcg-425070
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/chantelong-425068
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bfredrick-425067
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/craigwadsw-425066
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/claribjcna-425065
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/kimberaucn-425062
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bufordcint-425059

~~Fortunately, they don't seem to be posting, and a few~~ Most appear to have been banned according to the modlog, but it does seem rather interesting that this flood of bot accounts began right after btctalk's downtime one week ago. Perhaps some security feature with user registration was changed/disabled once the website came back up?

Topic: Unusually large amount of new users in the past week (bots) - page 2. (Read 1808 times)