I use the built-in CAPTCHA, a human-readable question, and email verification for registration. I've also hidden signatures and profiles for guests and have a tool that lets me quickly remove all content from a user's profile and all their posts. Seems to have helped; spam registrations only happen occasionally now - we used to get several a day.
I have StopForumSpam and a super secret anti spam script (OK I can't remember what it is called) and manual verification. So far we have not had one spammer or spam bot gain access.
On many of my forums, I am just going with StopForumSpam.com modifications, Q&A and email activation. CAPTCHA is broken, I wouldn't use it anymore... unless its custom. As for the Q&A, IMO, its the best anti-spam method out there you just got to keep the questions related to your forum niche and somewhat difficult to answer. If a user has to look them up, oh well. Chances are a spammer or XRUMOR bot isn't going to be looking up the answer
Not so true any longer. Apparently some of the spam bots are capable of doing rudimentary Google searches. So 1+1+5-2= will allow the spam bot to sail on through. Enter the middle 3 letters of fools is a better question which is not so searchable.
Yes that is true, that is why one should use questions related to their forum's niche and make them somewhat difficult. Besides, even if they are hard, if someone likes the niche, they probably know the answer to it
Email verification, captcha & Q&A. Using IPB I also use there spam monitoring service which works really well.
hahaha we just added something like that to our registration question Only people who play the main game we support now can register easily, and if they don't know the answer, they'll have to probably look it up on our wiki or do research on the net Keeps the evil autobots out and filters for true game fans! gogo
Email verification Captcha Aside from that IPB's spam monitoring service pretty much takes care of it.
