Yeah I know, you locked the previous thread and I create another...

But this is another issue!

Last night there was a ridiculous upsurge of fake accounts, kinda like this one http://www.metalstorm.net/users/8sophiec8522rL5/profile. And I mean 200 of them. So I guess it can be a tremendous amount of work if they don't come from the same IP. But as I'm browsing through the "members" page (long of 3471 pages), I soon realise that everytime I click on a profile, it's a fake one! There's less than 1% of real users on this site. I guess the issue was never tackled... Or it's a recent one. They are everywhere. And they don't all come from the same source.

I guess they are harmless to the site. I guess it's another load of work on the shoulders of benevolent mods. I guess we just shouldn't care. But it saddens me that this site gets covered with all this junk. I don't know how they operate, but I think a capcha (or a better capcha if there's one already) would be welcome. I don't know if the fact that the site isn't https matters too, but it's been an old claim.

Also there's no button to report an user. Reporting only works for forum posts. And even if, reporting the thousands of fake accounts manually is beyond imagination.
Another idea : auto removal of accounts if they have no activity and no content. (I mean collection, ratings, forum posts, being fan of bands...) Usually they only use the "personal text" or "website" field to link their scam. And usuallly don't show up after the account creation

Speaking on behalf of the mods, I can tell you that we are doing our best to keep the site free of spam. The account creation by fake users is a problem but someone with more technical knowledge than me can answer why this has not or cannot be solved. As I said in the other topic you opened, you can report via the report button. If there isn't a report option (ie. you can't report a user), you can pm a mod; there are three mods, Craig (BitteCOld), Troy, and me. We are generally quite quick to take action, I believe, not that it is a matter of life and death anyway. As you said, there are thousands of those, the vast majority never post anything and therefore a report isn't necessary. But if there is a fake list or a fake post or, even worse, a PM like the cases we had back in May, then a report is needed indeed.

When we delete a spam post we also ban the user. If there are multiple accounts from an IP, we also ban the IP. The penis enlargement thing had 87 users from the same IP. Most times we take action before anyone notices, for example I banned that IP last night without even seeing that there was a discussion about it in the shoutbox and that Troy had already responded that he would take care of it. The only way I have found to tackle this problem from a mod perspective is to look at the users who are now online and if there is a username that looks fishy, I click on it and take the action needed (which is how I found the penis enlargement accounts). I have noticed that these users generally appear late at night (European time). But I cannot answer why they still can register and I would be against an auto removal of accounts if they have no activity and no content for obvious reasons. For an account to be deleted, it should be first confirmed that it is a fake one individually not en masse. Anyway, this is too much information that you probably don't need but I thought I'd share.