The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Just had a massive spam sign up and post there in the past couple of hours. At least PHPBB3 has a lot more options to do multiple user deletes etc. which make it a lot easier to clean up.

Guess I have to change the sign up question and answer now, I guess some human spammer figures it out and enters it into a spammer system somewhere

I saw it all this morning. Must have been at least 2 pages of spam threads in the general section.

Similarly I have a sticker on my letterbox on my front door saying "No commerical leaflets", but I still gets a ton of the junk every week. Next time I catch him, I'm going to point out the sign to him asking if he can ******* read, then stick it straight in the bin whilst he's watching :/

It's such a waste of time to clean it up, but like I said, easier and quicker these days. Imagine if I didn't though, the board would have just been completely filled with crap in no time at all.

In keeping with the old thread title, at least one of them had a .ru email address

113 posts in 10 hours when I looked yesterday morning...

Another one got in today with the different registration question. Maybe I should remove the hint link... Although that would mean people that don't really know about Zzap wouldn't be able to sign up easily... but than again, only Zzap fans should really be signing up to the forum...

I found a great site for checking usernames / IPs http://www.stopforumspam.com so I must check if they have a phpBB plugin for auto checking.

I just happened to notice today that messages from one of our older members (Smila) had been edited to spam back in 2010. There was around 10 of them, which I deleted. It's a bit clever of those spammers to only edit old messages so they'll be more likely to get away with it. I assume his account was compromised on his PC or email rather than the site directly since everything else seemed okay.

To try and ensure this doesn't happen again, I have reduced the amount of time you can edit your messages to 24 hours rather than infinitely.

If you happen to have a very drunk weekend and wake up full of regret on the Monday after posting messages here and it's too late for you to edit the message, get in touch and I can sort it out!