Reply To: Spam bots are back again today

[pixelwitch]

Yeah, same crap here. IP blocking’s mostly busywork once they start rotating around. What’s helped me more is just making the signup boring for bots, not “secure” in some grand way. Honeypot, email verify, and no profile links / signatures / anything useful until they’ve actually posted. That seems to cut the junk without making real people jump through five hoops. Also, if the forum software lets you, add some kind of first-post moderation or new-user queue for links. It’s annoying, but way less annoying than cleaning up 40 fake accounts with casino links in the bio. Honestly though, if they’re hitting one forum hard, they usually keep poking until they find the weakest spot. So yeah, whack-a-mole is pretty much the job now.