Do something against the bot spam...

[Nvizion]

Been many years since i admin a phpBB forum so i can't really remember the steps to fix the spam bot problem, but as far as i remember setting up a custom Q&A on register page solved it for me, and i remember it was rather easy to do also. Info here: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2122696

Here is also a quote from Kevin Clark(Support team member):

The link that you were given explains how to use Q&A captcha instead. It's built in. It will replace GD for you.
As long as you keep GD on there, you'll get spambots.

How to configure Q&A

• Admin CP> Spambot countermeasures> Installed plugins> click the dropdown box and select Q&A (it will be greyed out)
• Click the configure button then click add.
• Add your question and answer (you need a Q&A for each language you have installed) click submit.
• Click “back to previous page” then click “back”
• Select Q&A from the dropdown box (again)
• Click submit at the bottom of the page.
• Done.

Good Luck

[eyebo]

Thanks for the input! I've forwarded your post to those who might be able to do something about it.
Very kind of you to write it up.

[steeffeen]

the kitchens are back!

[TMarc]

yeah, also noticed. the spammer must have been in vacation the past weeks but unfortuntately it is over

[steeffeen]

the spam is strong with this forum

[TMarc]

but the spam fight as well

[TMarc]

grrr
it was relatively quiet but today it's ugly, the spambots are even to dumb to see that they already spammed one topic

[The_Big_Boo]

Btw, could you stop posting in each topic you deleted a spam? I know why you're doing that but imo it just makes things worse when looking for new messages...

[TMarc]

Those messages I will delete as soon as there is a new message, because otherwise,
the users who have subscribed topics will get a notification that the topic doesn't exist, which is wrong in fact.

Or do you prefer that we don't delete the spam anymore?
Perhaps this would incite the admins to improve the registration process...

[The_Big_Boo]

As I said, I know why you're doing this but in both cases they're opening a page for nothing (a wrong notification or a single message saying there were spams).

Nevertheless, it makes a difference on the "unread messages" page because you see a full list of topics and you can't know which ones have a real answer (you're sometimes contributing to many topics in a row) whereas the list would be clean if you simply deleted spams.