Is your phpBB forum being overridden by spam-bots? Standart recommendation is "go to their support forums and install modifications or hacks", but they don’t work! It`s simple. All common solutions will not work. If someone public a common solution, the spam bots will adapt to it very soon. Robots have adapted to captacha images, email verification, and other common defenses. Solution is simple, all you have to do is be unique. One simple tip on how you can do that and keep the spam bots at bay.
It is my best guess that the image verifications are the hardest to crack, so in theory, if you tweak that, the bots will not be able to adapt to it.
Make sure you have the latest version of phpBB installed (given)
Enable image verification, and user activation
Open up phpbb/includes/usercp_confirm.php
Find tweakable values. Some examples are $total_width, $total_height, $img_width, $img_height, $width, (you get the idea)
Preview as you tweak to make sure the images are still readable, yet make sure you are making noticeable changes.
I tweaked the $width variable on line 87 to the point where some of the letters were getting squished together and getting cut off by a few pixels, and that was enough for me.
I tried this method on a board that was getting 10-15 spam registrations a day. It’s been spam free for almost a month now.
If you find a method that woks, post it, but generalize it. If you get too many people start copying you exactly, it will make it work the spammer’s time to adapt to it. Remember, the key is to make your board different from all the others.
http://www.pr0gr4mm3r.com/entry/25/How_to_Stop_Spam_on_a_phpBB_2x/
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