PHPBB3 forum Spambot registration Protection
If you have a PHPBB3 forum, and recently have more spammers and spambots registering then usually, you need to increase your forums security by enabling the captcha code for registration, and making the captcha code harder to read by making the picture slightly wavy, and have more noise. Adding a registration security quiz question to your registration form for your phpBB3 forum can stop most spambots from joining your forum to spam.
Step 1. Log into your Administrator Control Panel.
Step 2. Go to the User Registration settings. In the form go to the General Options make sure you select yes for"Enable visual Confirmation for registration" then press Submit at the bottum of the page.
Step 3. Now you need to go to the "Visual Confirmation setings which is the last option on the Board Configuration section. Make sure you enable everything and change the last two numbers on the forms to 6 or a lower number. then press Subimit
Step 4. Click on the Users and Groups Tab then click on the "Custom profile fields. Type in StopSpam in the textbot then the field type will be a Dropdown box. Lastly,Press Create new field.
Step 5. Make sure you check the "Display on Registration screen" and the "required field checkbox. Type "topSpam"in Field name textbox. Type "Are you a Spammer" in the descreption field. Type"yes" then press enter then Type "No" . Lastly,press "profile type Specification Option" button.
Step 6. Make sure the "default value"and "Option equal to non entered value" is also "yes". Lastly, press save.
Step 7. Test it out by trying to register without answering your question and puting in a captcha. If you don't get two error messages telling you to respond to the captcha or registration question then you did something wrong.
If you still get lots of Spammers, try installing recaptcha for PHPBB3:: http://groups.google.com/group/recaptcha/browse_thread/thread/2adc4dd06c08db50