We got hit in the last day by some spam ranging from annoying to whoa . . . .

Sorry I couldn't get it all off right away; for some reason the "delete reports" tool was not letting me delete them en masse so I had to get rid of them one by one.

I'll be busy with the Easter holiday so if more spam appears that the moderators do not catch right away, the best thing is for one of you to report them by clicking on the red "!" icon on the bottom of the post. (Thanks Bob) That will at least put them in one place so I don't have to go all over looking for them. Please do not post a response (you naughty you-know-who-you-are ) as that makes additional posts to delete.

We've had to fine-tune the moderator tools before and we'll do it again to be sure we can clean up the cr*p in a jiff.

Meanwhile, just to be safe in this high-alert time of worms etc, I suggest you not open and read obvious spam and definitely do not click any links they contain (no matter how, um, enticing). And update your anti-virus software!

Let me know if want an adjustment to PHPbb that eliminates almost all automated account creation. It's served me well over the years.

phpbb is notorious for getting hit with SPAM. As this site gains popularity expect it to get worse unless you are very proactive about preventing it.

Made a change that should prevent most spams, at least those posted by bots.

There are a few usernames registered at about the same time that haven't posted anything. I deleted the ones that were obviously spammers but don't want to delete the others - they looked semi-legit.

If you see any more spams, please flag them immediately and I'll delete the accounts.

Thanks!

Quite true. I've managed four PHPbb forums, and had to get clever with a solution. The problem is that any solution you find in the PHPbb mods is something that the spammers are aware of and are working on a way to get around, so I wrote my own.

I'm just having new users answer a question while registering. No bot is going to get around that. Someone spamming manually could certainly do it, but I can't imagine it's worth it.

RR - if you want to send me your fix and installation instructions I'll consider adding it.