Spam threat once again

[Ramidel]

First Thoughts Forum has just been attacked by a spammer (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20841.0 among other threads). As if we haven't attracted enough spam already this month.

Now that we've apparently hit the list of some spambot maker...Ron? Clinton? Is there anything that can be done to stop this invasion short of shutting down the Forge?

[Thomas D]

Luckily all the spambots are flagging thier posts with an icon that make them easier to spot and delete.  Once everyone gets back from Indy, you'll probably see all those posts vanish. 

[Lance D. Allen]

Either Ron and Clinton are so on top of things when they're here that I rarely notice, or there HAS been a sudden influx of spam posts.

I don't know about the technical specs of these forums, but from what I've seen from phpbb2, there's little that can be done to stop this, aside from requiring any new members to be manually activated, which would be a real pain in the ass for the moderators.

Do these forums still require you to click a link in an automatically generated e-mail to activate your posting priveleges? I know they used to..

[signoftheserpent]

How is it possible to spam a site you aren't a member of?

[Ricky Donato]

The spambots register themselves automatically.

Anyway, it seems that Clinton and Ron have cleaned up the First Thoughts forum, so thank goodness for that.