PSA: Your Account.

[CODForums]

CODForums been getting these old accounts coming back from their hiatus, only to spam. So far, @Carlos has seen about 3 or 4 incidents of this. This is NOT a security issue of the server. Carlos always updates the server to the latest version. Always. And this is NOT a software issue of the forum. Carlos already spoke to the developers of xenForo. Their response was a flat out "NO." In fact, here is a message directly from xenForo themselves...

The most likely explanation and one that we see occasionally is that the email addresses and passwords are part of some historic breach of user accounts via various sources.

Ranging from various vBulletin and other forums up to major corporations like Adobe, many of these data breaches have made millions of username and password combinations publicly available to download. Due to the tendency for people to reuse their passwords across multiple online accounts this is unfortunately a common tactic for spammers and others to take over accounts.

Various websites exist which document such breaches and allows users to verify if a particular email address has ever been subject to a data breach.

https://haveibeenpwned.com is a very popular source.

My guess would be that those email addresses that have been compromised would be listed as being part of some data breach and the spammers have found the raw data which includes their password which may have been reused across multiple sites.

Obviously we cannot completely rule out any security issues but in similar, extremely rare cases, the weakness in security has been due to a server compromise rather than anything to do with the software.

YOUR accounts are sought out because of your dead e-mail account. If Carlos see one wiff of your account spamming. He will start banning your account and locking any pathway for you to re-use the account to spam.

This is an administrative Public Service Announcement. You have been warned.

This applies to EVERYONE. Including moderators. Maintain your account(s) or face the ban. Thank you, and have a nice day.