Mass Forum Registrations Coming to My Inbox...

milehigh

So...at around 3PM today I got a "Bienvenue sur Forum CSHOLDING" email for a forum at this address: smf.csholding.fr....Didn't think much of it, figured it was spam that got through, however, between then and 5:07PM I've gotten four more of these "Welcome to forum x" emails. From the following sites. I don't even know what the top line is, but I got two emails that look like that, the entire emails aside from the link shown...

هذه رسالة تلقائية لا تقم بالرد عليها
(link in that email is: http://www.saodiat.com/vb/private.php)
RichardGarten.com
http://www.hostmiyo.com/forum
http://www.cherokeesar.org/forum

Some of them have similar user names registered...Is this harmless spam, could it be one of my friends trying to mess with me? Or, my primary concern, could this be an attempt at something more malicious? Crazy stuff, any advice is welcome...

milehigh

AHHHHHH, just got another one from: SVCNDA Forum

There's no consistency to any of these, which makes it all the more confusing, according to Google the above is some coalition to revitalize Duluth, Minnesota.

Edit: And another Celebrity Pictures and Video Forum

The usernames seem to be common with the name Jacob, this one came as Jacobzulf....

Hevach

Change your passwords, do a full security rundown on your system - make sure all security software is up to date and functioning properly, run scans and all.

Check the forums you're getting registered at, too. See if they require email verification to activate a new account. A lot don't, and they're popular targets for spam bots. If they don't, chances are some spammer just got your email and is having his bots feed it into sites. As the accounts get banned for spamming your email will become useless for that purpose and they'll switch to another. At that point the worst of your problems is that you'll need another email address if you ever want to help revitalize Duluth.

milehigh

...Well that's awesome. Running a full scan with Microsoft Security Essentials right now on both my machines...Haven't had to think about anti-virus/spyware/whatever for awhile, anything else I should be running, is MSE adequate for this purpose?

Edit: Checking several of the links they either aren't activation links (they go straight to the forums), or they deliver a message like this: "No details of the user you want to see. ", "User does not exist" ect....

2nd Edit.....A quick scan of a lot of these forums shows nothing but spam posts. They're like a bunch of spammers just blew their collective load and there's no actual discussion going on. Duluth is in serious trouble it appears. Perhaps I do need to take up the cause.

Hevach

Sounds like your address was just being used by a bot, to be honest, nothing but spam pretty much sums up forums that don't require email confirmation. Some do at least check to make sure the welcome email didn't bounce, which is why they used an email off a list and not haha@notadomain.lol. Does at least sound like you don't need to go into security panic mode.

Is it still happening? In my experience (responded to a couple calls from people thinking their computers were being hacked from something along these lines), it'll be heavy for a day or two and taper off, usually stopping entirely after a week or so. Eventually your address is banned on too many forums to be useful.

Also, let this be a preemptive lesson if you ever set up a forum: Always require an email confirmation click. If you don't, you'll end up like Duluth.