That's two nights on the trot now, about the same time, that spam has appeared. Any way of combating this mods ? We Don't Care About Pot Holes !!

I wish there was

Thanks for reporting them  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Too many for me and my iPhone at IKEA

I've called the Boss  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

All sorted, I will be added another anti-spam measure later on - will report back.

Martin

Thanks for the spam reports,

I'll get to them as soon as I can once reported  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Besides the usual antispam methods (like the reCaptcha was/is) you can additionally introduce a small script inside the registration PHP page(s) where a simple question is asked and a simple, unique, answer must be given.
Can be a fixed one, although a dinamic one is better. I've saw this in other forums...
For example:
"Compute 2x5" or "Which was the year when first man stepped on the Moon?" or "Which is the temperature of boiling water?" or "How many fingers on a human hand?", etc.
The spam engines have not (yet) artificial inteligence to know things like this....
The idea is to combine 2 or more antispam methods in the same registration process.
Just my 2 cents....

Martin has been looking into new scripts, but mist spammers counteract these safe guards asap

I'm sure Martin will appreciate your input as it's him that does thing like that Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Thanks again to those who report the spam

But please refrain from replying to them if you can, just reporting it is best Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Thanks for all the reports, and to Nick for clearing up.

Unfortunately all efforts at holding back these spammers are currently failing , they are working around the confirmation image, additional required fields, etc to still get on.

The issue is that making it difficult for spammers to register also makes it more difficult for genuine users to get registered too.

But I will persevere

Thanks Martin, can ask no more.  Don't put petrol in a diesel. They don't run well.

As an idea from another forum I've been on

Maybe set a 20-30 sec period between post, it's not alot but means you can't do multiple posts straight away after each other, and if they want to do it it takes them a lot longer Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Good idea Nick, but again it tends to normal users off

I thought that, but in real terms it would take 20secs or to read response and reply, or to read another thread and reply

If your just copy and pasting spam your not reading therefore 20 sec us a lifetime

Or can we look towards authenticating new users to allow posts or something

Or a red triangle Spam notification automatically places it into a unaccessable area, which need a mod to over look, passworded access so googlebot can't access it, therefore the spammed links would not lead nowhere which is what they are trying to achieve, this makes spam notifications a members only self moderating tool, after all it's the members who often spot these and hit the triangle (on the rare occasions Im not online), if this was abused then a team of anti spam mods could be established Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

I moderate a motorcycle site in which we have VBull set so that the first 5 posts by a new member must be approved by a mod before they are visible by the general public. If deemed as spam, I have the ability to ban the member as well as their IP.

Does phpBB have such a setting?

I'm a member of a phpBB forum that does just that (Didn't know it was called VBull though). If I remember correctly, a new members first 10 posts are "moded" before they can post directly. We Don't Care About Pot Holes !!