how do bots make accounts and not post?
Most forums let you create an account and then the forum automatically sends you an email that you have to respond to in order to be able to begin posting. The forum spam bots make accounts, but they can't post because they aren't able to finish the signup requirements of responding to the email. So they just keep making accounts and never make a post.
If the forum is set to allow posting without needing an email response then the spam bots are able to make posts. When I made a change last year I accidentally disabled the email requirement and the spam posts flooded the forum. I immediately turned that back on.
These days almost every forum has some sort of authentication process, so I don't know why anyone bothers to use a forum spambot anyway since they never actually make any posts anywhere.
