Thanks to “anonymous” for the tips on keeping spammers out of the Teen Challenge forum.
Anonymous said:
I’ve found that the easier way to deal with spammers in phpbb involves changing the signup page so they (a) can’t find it in google or (b) can’t use it properly. The best hack I’ve heard of changed the page to include an extra “website” field that wasn’t visible to regular users (but would be filled out by bots) and then any user who filled it out was automatically rejected…
Unfortunately if Google can’t find the signup page then no one else (legitimate users) can either so I can’t use that one but I am definitely interested in the second idea. I’ll have a look at the phpBB mods and see what I can find.
Hi Kylie
I’ve been using phpBB for about 8 or so years, and even worked on some of the security stuff around version 2. I ended up moving off to another forum software (SMF) to stop spammers.
You have a couple of options on how to combat spam, take a look at this post to the phpBB forums
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=427852
If you need help with any of this, let me know and I’ll lend you a hand.
Steve Walsh
IRC: evil_steve/clug_man on freenode
Thanks Steve,
I read the article. I’ve done two of the main things suggested now I just have to back up and update the forum. It’s going fairly well now, after I’ve updated it I’ll see if I need any mods. If I have difficulties I’ll yell.
TIA, Kylie
Oh, sorry, anonymous was me. I was in a hurry and not logged in.
I’ve been *told* that just putting in a robots.txt so google won’t index the signup page is sufficient, but I didn’t have much luck with that option myself.
Also, a friend mentioned to me the other day that for some software, just renaming the signup page to something else (eg: the file becomes nospamsignup.php instead of register.php) will actually cut things down to a manageable level. One of these days, I need to search out the software they must be using so that i can find many many ways to break it…
Hi Terri
Thanks for your tips & comments 🙂
I had a look at the url Steve posted above which recommended:
Keep your forum updated
Set activation to ‘user’ or ‘admin’
Enable visual confirmation
Disable guest posting
I still have to backup and update my forum but I’ve done all the other things.
Kylie