phpBB
Ever since I started a phpBB forum for support, some bots (or humans?) post topics for drugs and x-rated content. Seems that most people owning and/or moderating a phpBB board know this phenomenon. I got about 2 messages a day and removed them manually. I tried to minimize it using the Visual Confirmation when a user wants to register (captcha, you know, the hard to read image that should keep bots from creating an account). But this didn't help much. "/AITOЯ" from the "Joel on Software" forums told me why:
"The trick the spammers use to bypass captcha codes is really clever:
- get the captcha image from the site to be spammed
- put it in a p0rn site so if a user wants to see whatever he has to enter the captcha code
- post that captcha code to the original site
It's like in The Matrix, they use humans for their profit, which actually don't know that are being used. :)"
It seems that phpBB is a victim of it's own success, and the primary target of spam bots. So I could do 2 things: guard my phpBB forum with mods and other addons or use a different forum software. I chose the second option and after some searching I found Simple Machines Forum (SMF). The forum software is easy to install. Even easier than phpBB, cause I don't have to change any file rights. Best of all, they have several conversion scripts which will put all your phpBB topics on the new SMF forum. It only took 1 hour to have the new forum software up and running including all the posts from the phpBB. I only hope that the spam bots have a harder time with SMF. Fingers crossed.
(Note: SMF does not pay me to say this, this is my own opinion).
"The trick the spammers use to bypass captcha codes is really clever:
- get the captcha image from the site to be spammed
- put it in a p0rn site so if a user wants to see whatever he has to enter the captcha code
- post that captcha code to the original site
It's like in The Matrix, they use humans for their profit, which actually don't know that are being used. :)"
It seems that phpBB is a victim of it's own success, and the primary target of spam bots. So I could do 2 things: guard my phpBB forum with mods and other addons or use a different forum software. I chose the second option and after some searching I found Simple Machines Forum (SMF). The forum software is easy to install. Even easier than phpBB, cause I don't have to change any file rights. Best of all, they have several conversion scripts which will put all your phpBB topics on the new SMF forum. It only took 1 hour to have the new forum software up and running including all the posts from the phpBB. I only hope that the spam bots have a harder time with SMF. Fingers crossed.
(Note: SMF does not pay me to say this, this is my own opinion).
posted by Wouter Dhondt at
22:03
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