My World is Falling Apart

[sidorak95]

Ok, so I had some personal buisness and haven't moderated my website for some time. Today, I log on and find that my world is falling apart. I find my forums clogged with spam members and spam posts. I find cigarette cutes in my awstats, and I find some person trying to pose as me in another forum.
So I shut down my forums. I think both of the posts below have something in common. The first one is me, and the second one is some person pretending to be me.
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/graphics-forum/165362-need-feedback-on-new-logo.html
http://www.talkfreelance.com/thread61629.html

Can I save my website, or is too late?

Thanks

[shadmego]

It looks like someone just stole your logo and posted it in another forum. You can contact that forum and let them know about the thread. It looks like the second (imposter) post was done about two weeks after your post, so you shouldn't have an issue getting that post removed or that user banned from the forum.

I couldn't find any more posts by the imposter poster so I don't know if that is what this user does because I don't have an account at those forums.

As far as your forum and site goes, I don't know. Has your site been hacked? You might just need to spend some time and rebuild your forum. You can leave your forum offline until you remove all the spam posts and ban the posters. Your issue highlights an important point. You should have an active moderation team or put some hefty mods in place to help combat spam.

I don't know what forum software you use, but there are most likely several addons to automatically detect spam registrations.

You should only have to worry about the rest of your site if it has been hacked and generally taken over by hackers. Other than that, just focus on your forum.

I wish you luck and success ...

~regards

[sidorak95]

Thanks for the quick reply. No, my site wasn't hacked. The problem is, I have no active members on my forum. I need to get it out more.

[Falcon1986]

Unprotected forums are a magnet for spam bots. Since some forum software are more commonly used than others, most of these bots are written to take full advantage of security vulnerabilities and simple workarounds. Which forum software do you use? Did you ever try looking into mods that might possibly reduce bot registration?

As for the problem with impersonation, you may want to contact the website admin or a moderator directly and inform them of the situation. Furthermore, have you considered turning on hotlink protection so that your images aren't being posted somewhere else so easily?

EDIT: I'm a bit slow in posting today. Forgive me if anything posted has already been mentioned.