Help Regarding Phpbb2 - URGENT PLEASE ! ! ! ! !

Hello Friends, I Need an Urgent help.I had installed a phpbb2 forum onto my website and i was having it perfectly alright.But Unfortunately i found that many of the users who have joined are because of spam , those spammed users post all pornographic content and so on.The thing which puts me down is that inspite of the code verification in the signup page of the forum how come these spam enter into my forums ? Moreover now i have ennabled admin approval during registration but still even though i dont approve them i see their names in the board and their profiles are avalilable until i manually remove them. Is there any way to stop this ?? so that i can maintain a clean forum . Please help me ! Moreover instead of Phpbb2 is there any other forum like IPB which Trap uses for free of cost ? Thanks in advance for your kind help.

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Can I have a link to view your forum? I have had a similar issue way back with phpfusion. I just want to see the registration process users have to go through in order to sign up for your forums.

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Well the script kiddes have been getting smart on the captcha, meaning they have found ways to bypass that aspect of the sign up process and get in on the system. I would recommend upgrading to phpbb 3 to see if they were able to stop that, which I doubt since even IPB is having problems with that. I would say try out SMF, AEF to see if that will help you out in that area. Other then that the only way to really prevent most of the spam is to start IP banning through admin section of the forum, or through the cpanel of your website.

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I agree - upgrade to phpBB3 to get the better CAPTCHA, which should help prevent spam accounts being registered. There is no real reason for you to stay with phpBB2 now, unless there is a modification you are using which hasn't been updated yet (which would lead me to believe it was abandoned). Upgrade and use the new security features to protect your forums.

Use the username filters to ban certain words in usernames, which should also help stop spam accounts. Look at the common words being used in the spam account usernames and add those to the list of words not allowed in usernames. When they try to register they will just be presented with an error. Adding things like ".com" and ".net" are also quite effective, as it stops spammers advertising their websites in their usernames.

Use the word filter to filter out the spam/pornographic words from posts, replacing them with something like *** or *BLEEP*. Also use it on any domains they put in their post, any website titles they use - anything key to their advertising/spamming. Spammers will soon abandon your site when they realise their advertising isn't having any effect. It's like removing the brand name from a newspaper advert - the advert becomes pointless.

You can also look into using modifications to add more questions to the registration form. For example, there are modifications that add questions like "What is X + Y?" where X and Y are replaced with random numbers. Because this isn't a 'standard' part of the form, many spammers aren't ready for it, so move on to an easier target forum.

 

 

 

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I tried downloading many hacks for my PHPbb2 forum , but none worked now i understand that all i need to do inorder to avoid these spams are i must change the format of my registration form and add some questions like what is 1+1 etc. so that spammers cant use Bots and spam my forum ,

But i am unable to install those hacks and stuffs in my forum , can anyone help me in doing this, If i let you know my Cpanel Login information , please can some one do it for me and give , if so kindly PM me pleasee , Im not wellversed with this , so i need to get rid of these spam ..Some one help me please some one...

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I suggest that you upgrade to phpBB3. You can set the 'difficulty' of the CAPTCHA from the admin control panel there, and you can make it harder if it's being bypassed.

IP banning would be a good idea also.

A quick google revealed an anti-bot script here: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/8475 - there's probably an installation file to guide you through the installation (for phpBB3 - if you intend to stick to phpBB2, then you'll have to find your own! Also I can't guarantee that the script works, seeing as I haven't tried it..)

Lastly, it's probably not a good idea to pass out your cPanel login info - if someone decides to delete all your files, there isn't much you can do.

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