Anyone got any tips for reducing spam on a phpBB powered forum? I’ve enabled confirmation emails and changed the captcha settings a bit from the default ones, but I’m still getting lots of weird usernames registering, and a couple of spam posts a day. Anyone know of any good mods I can add? I don’t really want to approve new members manually if I can help it. Ta all.

‘Spam words’ mod.

Set it to delete all posts and block all accounts with under 10 posts that contain any of your hotwords. I’ll send you the list I use on the forum i administer. We auto delete about 50 accounts a week, maybe one a week gets through.

here you go, loaded them into a txt file and whacked it on the server.

http://media.bestkiteboarding.com/mm/spam_words.txt

enjoy.

Try adding a non-standard question to the user registration form

e.g. How many thumbs does a human have?

Easy enough for anyone registering to answer, will stop a lot of the spam bots.

http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/custom-profile-fields-as-an-anti-spammer-tool/

Second the non standard question we tried all sorts from cryptic word images to banning gmail but they stopped overnight with ‘what is 1 + 1?’ custom question in the registration section. Didn’t even have to change the question again.

I’ve modded a couple of phpBB forums (fora?) to ask for an anti-spam word as described above. Spambot registrations stopped immediately.

by ‘spam word’ i meant the mod that scans all posts for ‘spam’ words and just straight up deletes the new account and all posts, saves me hours a week.

Much better to stop them from registering in the first place IMO.

Cheers for advice all. Does anyone have problems with human spammers too or does it tend to be strictly bots?