Two sorts of phpBB2 spam
I’ve just got a complaint from an user who purchased Textual Confirmation (TC). To his dissatisfaction, TC haven’t stopped spam. Investigations revealed that he gets spam in guest postings, which is outside of the scope of TC. To stop such spam, he actually needs Advanced Textual Confirmation. The following is what I’ve answered.
I’m very sorry that I’ve made you unhappy. It’s my fault that text on the site are not very clear, and I’m going to re-write them in the nearest future. Here is a short explanation:
The are two sorts of spam in phpBB:
* spam messages, and
* more subtle: spam registrations — user registers, but never posts.Textual Confirmation stops the second sort. Indirectly, for the most of forums, it also stops the first spam, because usually only registered users can post.
However, you forum allows anonymous (guest) postings. It’s great for your visitors, and I always recommend such setup. The bad news is that you need another tool to stop guest spam.
This tool is Advanced Textual Confirmation (ATC): http://bbantispam.com/atc/
See it in action in our forums (try post as a guest twice): http://bbantispam.com/forum/
If you like the approach, uninstall Textual Confirmation and install ATC: http://bbantispam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=284