Animation Source Forums

I'm sure you've noticed it already, there are very strange spam bots on the forums.
I'm saying "strange", because they post messages that are, most of the time, not off-topics (unlike what robots do usually)
It's easy to notice them though : they have two links to "spam" sites in the signature.

I am deleting these accounts one by one, but they keep coming. (one or two new ones each day)
And I'm starting to wonder if they are really robots or "humans" paid for doing this. I'm saying that because it should be difficult for robots to register here : I don't use the default registration process of the forums but made one myself (and, until now, it has been very efficient), and recently I have added email activation which is required.
If they are humans, of course, there will be no way but to keep deleting the accounts until they decide to go away...
If they are very intelligent robots, I can add more protections like Captcha, but I honestly hate these.

I've noticed some of the spambots,and reported them.

Put up a visible notice on the front page for a few months clearly stating "Companies that advertise on this website, forum or by other means will be prosecuted by law"? =p

Like I said in the MB, my site had these advertisers as well. Then I began threatening their companies with lawsuits if they did not cease (I had a message on the front page stating this clearly). Never saw an advertisement again.

That would be useful...if they are indeed humans and not robots! (and even then, I'm sure they don't care much...)
But that would annoy the visitors as well.


That would be useful...if we knew which company is doing this. But since they are using proxies and/or computers which have been infected and that they control, it's not possible to do it.

Well... going to the links these advertisers posts would be a start

Well I'm not the government, lol! And I have too many things to do to spend time with them. But if you want to report them, you're free
I only made this topic to let everyone know about this situation - which we can handle, at least for now. If really they succeed in invading the forums, I'll have to add some more protections when registering.

I've notest these too. If I see any, I'll be sure to inform you about them. Other than that, I don't have any suggestions.

Don't have suggestions here, but I would bet that google and yahoo bots might be intelligent. Questionable about Exabot. Look out for the top guns, though.

Those Bots are harmless. They don't post. They just scan the forums to help make the site come up in a search.

Google Adsense bots are spiders,I think.