Hi all,
Ted Kaehler recommended something like the following to deter human registered spam:
# Post Queueing - phpBB 3.0.3 introduced a new feature which allows admins to queue posts if the users post count is lower than a defined value. Administration Control Panel > General > Post Settings > Enable queued posts. This means that your users will not see the first X number of posts by spam accounts and you can remove them and deactivate the accounts without disruption to your members, but legitimate users will be free to post once that number of posts has been approved.
Unfortunately, we need to use phpbb2 because our mail sync program (mail2forum) doesn't support phpbb3 (they're working on it.)
More solutions are here:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1437125
I think though that post queuing is the only one that seems able to stop human spammers.
Any thoughts are appreciated. If this keeps up, I'll make it so only mailing list subscribed people can send to the mailing list (which means all forum-only posts won't be seen on the mailing list).
Tim
-- Timothy Falconer Squeakland Foundation http://squeakland.org 610-797-3100