Reply To: Spam wave hitting my forum again

[pixelwitch]

Yeah, same garbage here. CAPTCHA barely does anything except annoy actual users, so I stopped pretending it was some magic fix. The stuff that’s helped me most is boring as hell: first post approval, no profile links for new accounts, and a delay before they can edit anything useful. Once I did that, the junk dropped off a lot. Not gone, obviously, because these clowns just keep brute-forcing weak spots, but at least it’s not constant cleanup every hour. Also, if you’re seeing the exact same link pattern over and over, I’d be looking at whatever field they’re abusing most — profile bio, homepage, signature, whatever your forum lets them touch first. That’s usually the crack they’re crawling through. I’m still convinced half this spam wave is just automated garbage testing every forum that hasn’t locked down new accounts properly. Real fun. Honestly,