We're getting a lot of spam accounts on our team's forum lately. Everyday around five MargaretHarris's, PlasticSurgery3's, JThomson's etc etc register on our forum...

We've tried enabling account activation by the user and even admin account activation, but those bots seem to have found a way around that as well. Grrr...
The phpBB forum software is updated to 2.0.21 recently, but also to no effect.

Question is... does anyone of you have the same and do you have a solution for it?

Thanks in advance

I'm by no way a forums expert, but cannot you just add/enable that "enter this code:" thingy?

Quote from AndroidXP :

I'm by no way a forums expert, but cannot you just add/enable that "enter this code:" thingy?

Oh forgot to mention, that's enabled too... bloody intelligent bots about nowadays

The Verify image antibot system is quit secure so it should work pretty good... It's also nice to have the activation link sent to the email entered during registration, if possible, and you will not get your forum flooded by bot made accounts...

I seem to be getting a lot of spam bots on my forum and the software I use to post news on my site. For long enough I put every bots IP on my block list so they couldn't post but I got bored of that, so now I just delete the comments. On my forum I just use e-mail acivation and I think I have the security code enabled, so they can register, but cannot post, then when I get round to it I clean up the account list.

Quote from blackfang :

The Verify image antibot system is quit secure so it should work pretty good... It's also nice to have the activation link sent to the email entered during registration, if possible, and you will not get your forum flooded by bot made accounts...

Thanks for your reply, though if you would have read my posts, you would have known I have already activated both "Verify image" and "e-mail activation" with no results.

Quote from Psycho :

*post*

Yeah I was currently following that procedure as well. Although sometimes I see bots that even get registered without approval from an admin..

Quote from Quint999 :

*solution*

Heyy thats sounds great... I got it installed and running... let's see if it works! Thanks for your suggestion!

This thread on the phpBB forums has some things you can try: http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=427852

Funnily enough, my forum has been up over 6 months and I've never had any spam bots. All I have on is the image verification thingy. It is only a small forum though...

Quote from traxxion :

Yeah I was currently following that procedure as well. Although sometimes I see bots that even get registered without approval from an admin..

Aye, which is why I'm starting to think about changing to PunBB, my uni switched (and kept their old DB which was nice), and my host has switched and recommeded I changed to it.

phpBB is well known for its security flaws. Ever thought of changing forum software?

Quote from traxxion :

We're getting a lot of spam accounts on our team's forum lately. Everyday around five MargaretHarris's, PlasticSurgery3's, JThomson's etc etc register on our forum...

We've tried enabling account activation by the user and even admin account activation, but those bots seem to have found a way around that as well. Grrr...
The phpBB forum software is updated to 2.0.21 recently, but also to no effect.

Question is... does anyone of you have the same and do you have a solution for it?

Thanks in advance

Yours sounds as bad as the bots on the sccc forum everyday a new one all about a pharmacy offering good deals for medicine and it is getting annoying got all the little security details activated even the image thingy they can make an account but can not post haha screw'em

Quote from arco :

Ever thought of changing forum software?

To be honest I haven't yet. I like the looks and handling of this forum software (although the backend could have been better). I will just await if Quint's solution works. If not, I might give changing forum software a second thought

Quote from rc10racer :

they can make an account but can not post haha screw'em

Well, it's not only the posts they do that help them, I think. I noticed they put links and keywords in their profiles, maybe that helps their Google ranking or something..

There was a very simple solution someone I know came up with.
He had a comments-system and bots kept spamming it. So he included a "Do not insert anything in this line"-field. Whenever someone wrote anything into it the comment wasn't accepted. So the users ignored the field, their comments were posted, the bots put crap into the field, their comments were ignored. Regarding the simplicity of the solution that's pretty genius if you ask me.

Vain

At Fusion we are using SMF, which we switched to from phpBB about 6 months ago. They have migration utilities for other forum software, so the switch is real easy. So far we have not experienced any spam.

this may be a dumb suggestion, but you did disable "guests may post" (or whatever it is called - maybe a usergroup setting) after you enabled account creation?

I never got around the problem that unnactivated accounts still appear in the memberlist, so when I set up my last lot of forums I used PunBB.

It's simple and waaaaaay faster than phpbb2, and so far ... touch wood ... i've not had any spam bots yet.

You can see it in action on the STCC forums found in my signiature.

Quote from Victor :

this may be a dumb suggestion, but you did disable "guests may post" (or whatever it is called - maybe a usergroup setting) after you enabled account creation?

Yeah I did Quincy's post is exactly my experience.

Anyway, so far no more spam accounts today, after installing that new user_confirm... fingers crossed

You can ban mail email address too, easy and usefull. Most used: @bigmailbox.com, @mail.com, @techemail.com, @mail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com. They are free mail so it isn't a problem to ban them, real guys have real email address. Since I have baned those our forum is cleaner.

Quote from Houba :

You can ban mail email address too, easy and usefull. Most used: @bigmailbox.com, @mail.com, @techemail.com, @mail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com. They are free mail so it isn't a problem to ban them, real guys have real email address. Since I have baned those our forum is cleaner.

lol hehe

But I dont really want to post my 'real' email addresses everywhere :X
-> spam

btw, welcome to the forums cabbie driver

Might seem a bit long winded, but a 100% way to avoid spam is to set your forum to 'Dont allow new registrations', and 'Only allow posts by registered members'.
Sticky a post or an announcement at the top of your forum asking people to PM you either here or through MSN or similar to request membership, then IF you want them on your forum, then add/register them manually, and then send them the password details that they can change when they log in.
If people SERIOUSLY want to join your forum, they will most likely understand, and will put up with the inconvenience.

As Houba said, blocking certain e-mail addresses from registering is useful, but he left out some really major ones used by bots...a couple of these are *@cashette.com, *@mail.ru

Just blocking the e-mail addresses, enabling pic verification, enabling e-mail verification, and finally using the new user moderation option (along with ONLY letting registered users post!) has cut down spam on my site to ZERO!
(That might also explain why I dont get any posts on my site at all...or maybe its cos my site is crap! )

This morning I saw some strange guests connected on the forum, I decide to trace their IP's and I found that all have the same last steep except the IP:

crawl-66-249-65-18.googlebot.com

Is that meaning that Google is the bot spammer ?????

No, it's google browsing your site and searching for valueable information so it can link your site if someone searches on google.com.

Vain

Quote from Quint999 :

Quincy !
showing your age my friend

LOL!


Just wanted to come back here to say that we haven't had one single spam account since I installed the "addon" that Quincy (:tilt suggested;
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/vie ... .php?t=437210&start=0

Thanks a lot for your help!