The Blog Pages of Kellan Meig'h

Of Spammers and Forums

I have a few forums that I administrate and it is kind of hilarious the attempts at spamming the board. Most of it is by 'Bot' that can sign up on PHPBB automatically. One forum I set a delay of one minute before it would accept a registration and that stopped the spammers cold. The other forum, one that refuses to upgrade to a higher revision, I set for administrator approval. Now this is where it gets funny.

Almost all signups are by 'Bot' so the bot chooses an avatar for the 'user'. I took the default avatar and changed it with Paint Shop Pro into the following icon-

You know not a soul would pick that icon! Well ... maybe a few would. Anyway, after I see they're using this avatar, I go to Stop Forum Spam and check their I.P. address against known spammers. If they show there, they're gone. I usualy ban their IP, too. In drastic cases, I report them to their ISP while I'm at it.

I have to do some Christmas shopping later today so I need to get ready.

Take care,

Kellan, the old warhorse