It's getting a little bit crazy. I only delete in forums where I'm moderator and I can't delete users (happy to help more, Brad, given the proper permissions).

Tom, the solution you proffer sounds reasonable but I don't think anyone around here knows the program. I think Chad did most of his own programming and it seems too pricy to farm out.

With all the geeks around here (I'm including myself in that category) I'm surprised there are no programmers amongst us who can tackle this!

I'm pretty sure its not a program but rather understanding what the platform offers and how it works.

Cleaning things up takes a lot of time! There must be an easier way but for now I am going through all users one by one and deleting those that appear to be spammers. Sure a few will stay and maybe I delete a real user (doubtful) but it should clean things up. If one of the moderators looks at the activity... I deleted 1-200 accounts already!

GMTom wrote:Cleaning things up takes a lot of time! There must be an easier way but for now I am going through all users one by one and deleting those that appear to be spammers. Sure a few will stay and maybe I delete a real user (doubtful) but it should clean things up. If one of the moderators looks at the activity... I deleted 1-200 accounts already!

Been doing that as well. Looking for help on PhP

Done!
I eliminated all the spammers I could find, I added several bans for certain emails that are used often in series. (using the * allows for this)
we now have REAL members (maybe a few non-people are still included but they are now few and far between. We have a lot of inactives but I left them alone, we want them back!

This is kind of odd, we now have the forum back under control, Brad and I had been deleting user after user after user, I alone whacked several hundred alone! The member list is now consisting of real people (some may have registered and never came back but they are real and COULD come back).
I can see by moderator activity that he and I are doing this several times every day and we are keeping the spam under control as well as these "fake" users. But I am wondering out loud, WHY do we have dozens and dozens of new users every day that never post anything? I can maybe understand why they post advertisements but registering and never using that account??? Anyways, any nonsense looking user name, it gets killed!
username rtgnsht2765 ...killed without even looking!
user name tomthy27 ...I check the IP address, if from China ...killed (almost all our spammers are from China). Anyone who took the time to set up an avatar and all that ...they are real! I'm getting this down real well so that i can delete them with ease!

GMTom wrote:This is kind of odd, we now have the forum back under control, Brad and I had been deleting user after user after user, I alone whacked several hundred alone! The member list is now consisting of real people (some may have registered and never came back but they are real and COULD come back).
I can see by moderator activity that he and I are doing this several times every day and we are keeping the spam under control as well as these "fake" users. But I am wondering out loud, WHY do we have dozens and dozens of new users every day that never post anything? I can maybe understand why they post advertisements but registering and never using that account??? Anyways, any nonsense looking user name, it gets killed!
username rtgnsht2765 ...killed without even looking!
user name tomthy27 ...I check the IP address, if from China ...killed (almost all our spammers are from China). Anyone who took the time to set up an avatar and all that ...they are real! I'm getting this down real well so that i can delete them with ease!

Isn't there any kind of manual verification process so that bots cannot simply generate accounts on the fly?

we did mention some ideas but none of us knows the system that well.

GMTom wrote:we did mention some ideas but none of us knows the system that well.

Well, what version of PhpBB are we on?

It says version 3.0.11

GMTom wrote: But I am wondering out loud, WHY do we have dozens and dozens of new users every day that never post anything? I can maybe understand why they post advertisements but registering and never using that account???

Because it is not a real person that created the account. It is all bots run by computers. The program creates the account, posts the spam and moves on to the next website. When it comes back around to this site, it is easier to rinse repeat then program the bot to remember the old account names.

I get that part but they post no spam ...nothing but an account. Maybe the bot comes back at a later date? They have one setting accounts and later another posts the spam???

GMTom wrote:I get that part but they post no spam ...nothing but an account. Maybe the bot comes back at a later date? They have one setting accounts and later another posts the spam???

I've looked at the official online PhpBB documentation and its discusions on "Captcha" and SPAM settings to help rebuff bots. (https://www.phpbb.com/support/).

The Documentation is the official manual, so it seems, and goes over all of the admin controls. The Support Forums look like really good sources for anti-spam, anti-bot techniques, such as the topic discussion "Undefeatable Captchas and security measures." Several (or most?) of the built-in Captcha options have already been defeated, so the current thinking is to use recommended 3rd-party sources, many of which are free.

FYI, we have seen very little in the way of spam messages of late. Or at least you guys reading this have seen very little? I have logged on 2-5 times a day constantly deleting nonsense users. Some of course get a posting in that stays up until I whack it but not for long. To date I must have deleted well over 1000 fake accounts. probably 10 or more a day plus the several hundred several weeks ago to clean the site up. As I said before, If the user name is nonsense, if the the email address is nonsense, if the users IP is from China, these get deleted! (if someone has a seemingly real name and seemingly real email, then I will ignore the Chinese IP of course). You should SEE some of the crap I see when doing this, I got it down to a science! Is it 100%? Heck no, but we may now have 3-4 fake users? ...so what?

Wow, that was pretty impressive!
I logged on to clean the site of fake/spammer user accounts (we still get about a dozen a day or so) and while logged on, there was one of these obvious spammers (just a bunch of random letters for a username) and he was online at the time and already had 5 posts made!
Not only did I catch him at the right time but Danivon and Sloterp each deleted spam postings he was making at that same time. We all nailed him as it was happening!
...Great work boys!