> I run a forum using phpBB and have it so new members must be approved by > the admin, so as to stop porn spammers. > > This was perfect for the first couple of months, but now I get up to 20 > membership applications a day that are just spam. I have to look through > them to make sure there are no legitimate entries and this is becoming a > major pain. > > Can anyone tell me how I could possibly stop the spam, I was even happy > to stop applications and just add people myself, but it doesn't seem to > be an option in the admin panel. I really don't know anything about > phpBB other than how to set it up.
I've had really good experience with Photo-Recognition Visual Confirmation module/plugin, which we nicknamed Kitty Captcha: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=472754&st=0&sk=t&sd=a It displays by default 20 pictures of animals or cars. The user has to select which pictures are animals. I modified it to output only four pictures so the user wouldn't get bored. phpBB has a new version (3.0) which has a new captcha on registration. Not sure if spammers have found a way around it yet. My colleagues has determined that one of the easiest ways of defending against spam on web applications is just to step away from the default. For example by installing a non standard module/plugin. There is no way a spammer will be able to compensate for all plugins. -- Simon Males <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
