Gotta make a captcha to try and stop these spammers/bots.

[Dragonborn]

As you can notice if you caught the 53 threads that are virtually visible here on the site, I think it's best in mind that we create some more security here.

I propose that upon the first day of creating an account, they can only make 5 posts.

Because seriously, 53 threads taking up 2 pages is really :evil:

 

[Americanbad1]

Excuse me but

Wth is going on with these idiots in chinese/japanese/asian/oriental posts that are taking up all this room. You got hackers David.

 

[DavidBVal]

Re: Excuse me but

It's just spam bots, the plague of every board. Working on a solution, please don't reply to their posts.

 

[DavidBVal]

They come from Korea, apparently. Takes me a minute to delete it all, but they make the forum unusable for hours, so working on the countermeasures when I can (out of town now, this is from mobile)

 

[Dragonborn]

They come from Korea, apparently. Takes me a minute to delete it all, but they make the forum unusable for hours, so working on the countermeasures when I can (out of town now, this is from mobile)

You probably should when you get back, limit new members to one thread per day.

and then it progresses from then on.

 

[feldon]

47 pages of spam topics...seems like whatever we are trying isn't working.

 

[ArrowsFTW]

What if one of the members are doing it???

 

[Azog]

Forum turns into circus halli galli...

 

[Don Da Cruz]

Well poop. I got to the party late. Done sent pm's trying to figure out what was up. Hopefully it gets resolved soon :shock:

 

[DavidBVal]

I added more complex captchas, changed registration questions, and still happened, so probably it's a human spammer. Oh well.

 

[Alan_SP]

First two questions should stop bots, but it looks like real people spam.

Installing "stop forum spam" can help somewhat with this: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... orum_spam/

Can't see images on phpBB site, but vB version allows to report spammers to their database. So spammers would have harder and harder times to register.

There also could be type of questions that asks something only EK players should know. But, that also could affect normal users. For example, if you ask who's first NPC you meet, someone maybe wouldn't know that Adaon is correct answer.

Controlling usergroup permissions also can have its set of problems. But, it can be achieved: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2371211

First usergroup can't post links (spammers basically love links), only content. After some time, or number of posts, user can be automatically promoted to normal usergroup.

Fighting spam is always hard and time consuming.

I also found this: https://cleantalk.org/price https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2183830 They ask for money, but not too much. Not sure how good they are and probably it doesn't stop real people, they say so.

This is official phpBB guide how to fight spam: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1861645