ALL THIS SPAM HAS TO STOP!!

[Subzero]

Isnt there a way of controlling/blocking these fake accounts that keep being made?? adding CAPTCHA or something to the registration process, as i posted this i saw 7 spam posts below me!!!!

[Commie_User]

I agree. Making the first two posts per new account held for moderation could help.

[Chris Abbott]

I'm deleting as fast as I can... and log in multiple times per day. Also, Captcha won't work because these are actual real people and so would succeed, though there are ways I'm working on for my day job which might help.

I don't think PHPBB can do the first two posts for moderation thing, but what if they did 7? How would that work?

[Vosla]

It won't work as the spam slaves will circumvent that. So all you can do is delete, delete and... oh... delete.
I highly doubt that reason works - that we are likely the wrong audience for this kind of shit.
And that they are trying to ruin this little gem.

DO YOU HEAR ME, SPAMMERS? NOBODY LIKES YOU!

[Cactus]

Aren't there any plugins like Akismet for Wordpress? Checking posts from a database of spam and looking for keywords, suspicious links etc? Considering how huge phpBB is, I would find it incredible if there wasn't one.

Such as the Advanced Block MOD: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... block_mod/

[Chris Abbott]

It's a custom PHPBB integrated with another CMS, so integration is probably harder than it looks.

[Analog-X64]

I put a stop to spam on my wifes website with a simple feature.

Question and Answer verification.

The Question is What breed of dog is "doxie" short for?
and the person has to type the proper reply to continue.

Our website id Dachshund related so its not difficult for humans to answer it.

No captcha needed.

It eliminated 99.9 percent of spammers, only one got through and were not sure if it was human, or some very clever script.

If there is a similar plugin or feature I would impliment it and ask a question like.

When you power on a C64, what is the primary colour on screen?

Answer would be blue of course

[LMan]

Analog: we had this for a while, it asked for Rob... and Martin...
After a while, the spambots knew the answer. Don't ask me how.

Cactus: I'll have a look when I'm upgrading the forum.

[Subzero]

i frequent many forums on tinterweb...and this is the only one where i see spam....and it annoys me more as its not on a sandwich and i cant eat it!

[Mayhem]

We introduce the Q&A on a forum I help admin, and it also removed 99.9% of the spammer as well. Been like that for over a year now. So it does work... you just have to change/improve the question(s) being answered heh.

One other suggestion is to put all n00bs into a group that requires their first posts to be authorised, and limits them to a certain number of posts if they are not authorised. And yes, you can do that on phpBB afaik as it's another option we considered at the time.

[Analog-X64]

@Mayhem thanks for reminding.

Yes we validate all new users manually. So even if a spammer gets through we verify them against http://www.stopforumspam.com/

Captcha's have become useless, I've read too many tech articles on how they bypass them by doing OCR on the graphics, and quite easily.

[tomsk]

Here's a thought....lets just be thankful we have a forum where moderators take time and effort to reduce and remove spam. Shit happens, but it gets cleaned up by the team who work hard to give us something great for free. Spammers will always find a way unfortunately. I found the two vetted posts system worked well for me. Also, you can usually spot a spammer in the members list as they add URLs and links in their tagline (and delete their account before they can post).