Some Ways to Stop Spam on PhpBB3

Spam is a big problem for everyone on the internet and forums are no different. It’s a constant battle between forum admins to prevent it and spammers to get past the protection attempts. In this short ‘forum tip’ we’ll give 3 quick and easy ways to help prevent spam on your phpBB3 forum.

Stop registrations from Baker Island Time

phpBB community user jalaln has written a very simple (1 edit) mod to prevent registrations from the UTC -12 timezone. You can view this mod on the phpBB forums here.

‘But why?’. Most spam bots will choose this time zone in the sign up process. Sure, this mod wont stop ALL bots but it is very quick and easy to install and will prevent some spam.

‘But won’t this stop real users?’ The answer is no. Baker Island is an uninhabited island between Hawaii and Australia, you can read more about Baker Island on Wikipedia.

Making use of profile fields

Using the same idea as above that bots will choose the first option on a drop down list this anti-spam technique makes use of a default phpBB3 feature: Custom profile fields. Our phpBB3 tutorial here explains how!

Moderating new member’s first posts

Almost all spam bots won’t introduce themselves and just start to spam as soon as they sign up. Moderating new member’s first posts prevents them from even starting. The disadvantage of this technique is that is prevents real users from posting as soon as sign up however if you as admin are on daily then most users won’t mind. This is a default setting in phpBB3, our tutorial here explains how to turn it on.

Hope that helps! (: