visual confirmation and spammers

[sarahcyn]

I have just taken over admin of a board that is meant to be for members only of a professional association and i am getting ten or more spammers joining the board every day. I have to go into user admin and delete each individual one. I have enabled account activation - admin only but it does not stop them getting in, it seems. I have been reading past threads on this issue on this board and I don't have the technical knowledge to understand most of it, but I would like to know how I can include visual verification - I don't seem to have it on my admin page.
Can anyone advise.
It's doing my head in.

[drathbun]

This KB article might be a good place to start:

http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article.php?article_id=329

[sarahcyn]

Thank you very much for this. Unfortunately the language of this article is too technical for me and therefore useless.

I am sure it would be perfectly easy for someone to rewrite it in terms that the ordinary lay person can understand.

[espicom]

Actually, I spent a lot of time making that article as non-technical as possible, while still giving you the information you need to check and fix the problem. If it's over your head, you are going to be in for more trouble later on... technical problems do not get much simpler.

Essentially, it's a script to check your system for whether or not it has the pieces to run Visual Confirmation, and how to fix them if it doesn't. You will have to edit files to put the needed instructions in.

Or you can contact the template author about getting a version that is 2.0.21-compatible, since there are many more changes to templates than just Visual Confirmation over the last 18 months (yes, that's the minimum time your template is "out-of-date").

[Dave Bean]

Here are the standard basics (standard part of phpBB):
(1) Require registration to post
(2) Require email / user activation
(3) Require visual confirmation of image (admin panel / general configuration:
"Enable Visual Confirmation
Requires users enter a code defined by an image when registering." - what version are you running?

Here are anti-spam mods (provided by others) that we have done:
(1) We don't list members in the memberlist or as newestmember unless they have posted to the forum (many spammers register, but never post to get the url link to their website)

(2) We notify admins on each new post and they remove it as quickly as possible if inappropriate

Remaining to be done:
We need a trusted vs non-trusted member status where trusted members can post immediately and posts from non-trusted members are reviewed by admins or moderators before the public can see them.

Spam is a big deal - good luck!