Yeh, someone is probably just sending from your email address. More than likely nothing to do with your phpBB forum.
Yes, it appears that some of your members are spamming other members. Go to your Administrative panel and do the following: Locate General Admin Select Configuration Go to User email via board - check disabled to prevent members from emailing each other. Allow them to send privates messages, but not emails. That should eliminate the problem.
This is now obsolete, believe it or not! A forum of mine (www.massdebation.com) was recently overrun by spam bots, who got past the visual confirmation. I've subsequently installed the "Anti Bot Registration" mod upon recommendation by one of my members (also a forum owner), and so far so good! It also adds a question to guest posters if you've got that turned on, which I'd naturally had turned off. I'm trying it now on one forum to see how well it works, but I don't expect there to be any problems.
Did anybody see the Spamper thread on phpBBhacks.com? The author claims that if used by many boards, it could eliminate memberlist spam altogether.
The idea of Spamper was very, very bad. Aggressive fighting (DDOS attacks) is: * illegal (I think), * self-suicide for unexperienced fighters. It seems Spamper's messages are deleted both on phpbb.com and phpbbhacks.com forums.
I also got similar problem and got spam accounts with unreadable letters topics. I am now starting a smf forum and let see whether these spam bots could come.
There are some hacks that can be installed and will stop the spam. On phpBB.com there were some topics with a list of nice hacks that would kinda cool down these spambots. The problem is that all scripts are now targeted. I have a huge influx of spammers even on my VB forum and the only good thing is that I have a hack installed that makes it impossible for a new member to post images and links if not having 5 messages posted. I see them register and try to post, but cannot do this. Then i just delete them. Now I need to find a way to stop them from registering at all
Now that somebody seems to have finally come up with a solution, all I hear is "but I already reduced spam with those ten hacks I constantly customize, and those ten registrations a day that I still get, well, I just delete them manually." Does this sound right?
In PHPBB, you can do following things to 'reduce' spam . 1. Disable guest posting 2. Enable user verification (Verification mail sent to them, usually spammers/bots dont use proper email id's. Without verification they cant post). 3. Increase time between posts 4. Use MODs like cspam which will add nofollow to outbound links 5. Add word censors 6. Take some time everyday to moderate, ban spammers. Add their IP's to ban list
Usually is the keyword here. There already are quite a few bots that do. How exactly does that stop spambots? V14GR4? TR4M4D0L? Ever heard of dynamic IPs? Nearly perfect. Better yet, shut down your board. 100% proof solution!
I've found that deleting the spammers is much easier with a userlist for the admin panel installed. Stopping them from even registering would be better but they are pretty determined...
Damnian, please post a link to your blog when you're done. Lately there has been spammers who post about 20 topics. Can't they just spam all their links in one topic? That makes it much easier deleting it.
What mod are people using for word censors? The regular censor doesn't actually block posts - it just changes the word.