Though always a problem, there have been a LOT of fake profiles and spam posts recently, it's getting out of hand and I'm deleting quite a few accounts daily.
I may have missed a few so let me know if you come across any.

Just ignore spam posts unless they've been up for a few days (in which case I missed them).

At this rate it may be easier just to close the forum as I don't have the expertise to install the latest phpBB or any add-ons that might help.

IF it does come to closing the forum I won't do so without warning.

Now I can't see which version you're using, but there should still be addons available having some sort of CAPTCHA that prevent most of the bots.

I also can't remember if I had to active my account through a link (sent by e-mail), but that might also be a way to go.

There's been CAPTCHA for a long while. Spammers get around that by paying people a low wage to hit places that use them.

Ah, yeah. But what about something more simple and random like you have to answer questions?

I've seen a bunch of forums use this, and it seemed to work quite well. Of course, they can pay people to get around it as well.

I also bet there are a bunch of people on this board who knows how to upgrade to a newer version, or at least knows someone who does. I haven't worked with phpBB before, but other forum softwares. Though I don't think it'd be _that_ hard...

Presumably just as easy for a real person to navigate as CAPTCHA.

I personally don't have the code expertise to update the back end of the forum anyway.

(Just had to delete another fake profile while writing this btw, it's an epidemic at the moment)

Might not be the best or friendliest solution, but maybe it'd stop the spambots if new users had to wait 24 hours (or so) before being able to post?

Though I'm not sure if it will actually work, just thinking it'd be nice to keep this place open .

It would be great to keep this forum open.

I'll ask some friends see if they can give any advice...

I tried but unfortunately found out nothing I think will be useful here.

The only person I know who runs a forum only accepts people he knows or knows of in some way or other - keeps it small but he prefers it that way ....

Since there is a influx of asses spamming the site, no one stepping forward (to date) that can assist in combating them and active members that wish the forum to remain open; I would ask if there is a way to completely lock out every post from immediate posting for new members and have it be approved by a moderator before being allowed to be posted? Or is that what is going on now and I just don't see what happens behind the curtain?

I used to moderate the official forums for some century media bands, i'll do some revision and ask some people still in the know. It would be a shame to abandon the forum but i agree it is unreasonable to spend time cleaning up after nonsense. How many genuine registrations does the site receive a day? Accepting these manually might be the way forward.

Thanks Tren.


An update to phgBB 3.0 is much needed but any additional back end work (code/scripts) is beyond my abilities.

Most people visit without creating an user profile, and the forum gets a new user account every few days, sometimes more.

At the moment it's getting 10-20 spam bot account per day, some of which are posting garbage before I catch onto them.
It's gotten to be a real pain to deal with.

I'm no expert with programming, but this sounds a good idea. I'd quite happily wade through first time posts if it meant eliminating spammers.

With this new version of the software we have much better filters for keeping out spam bots.

I'm sure they'll improve in time but so far we haven;t had any spam accounts since upgrading.
Time will tell...