Forum Update and SPAM

All news regarding the website or the forum will be posted here. This will include website updates, features and anything else considered suitable. Only Forum Moderators may make new posts here, but all registered users may reply.

Moderators: XtC, BuZz, menace

Post Reply
User avatar
BuZz
Site Admin
Posts: 569
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2002 12:52 pm
Location: Didcot, Oxfordshire
Contact:

Forum Update and SPAM

Post by BuZz »

Hi Users,

First I want to apologise for the SPAM PMs received on exotica forum.

Unfortunately our CAPTCHA was shared by spammers and abused. Some spammers signed up and did PMs to all users. The server was not hacked or anything - just I didn't keep on top of the spam and forum updates.

I have now:

Removed all spam accounts and also all accounts with no posts.

Updated the forum software to phpbb 3.3.3 - (was on 3.2.7 before), and switched our custom Q&A captcha to google invisible recaptcha (not perfect, but the problem with Q&A captchas is the the spammers share the answer in their databases and then it's easy to automate. Google recaptcha at least is harder to automate)

I have added an extension that uses Stop Forum Spam that also will help.

Future:

The forum isn't used much right now - if you want your account removed let me know. But maybe it's time to make it read only - let me know what you think.

If you would like to become a moderator please let me know also. I just lack the free time to keep all of my project up to date at times.

User avatar
AmigaMusicLover
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:16 pm

Re: Forum Update and SPAM

Post by AmigaMusicLover »

BuZz wrote:
Sat Feb 22, 2020 3:05 am
But maybe it's time to make it read only - let me know what you think.
+1 for not making it read only. Thanks for the updates.

Post Reply