Blocking BOT Signups

[fileserverdirect]

Hi Every one,
I am currently using phpbb (a free, open-source forum program written in 100% php) and I have had last month over 50 bot sign ups on my forums, eating away disk space on the Hard Drive. Anyways, there is a "visual conformation" thingy when you signed up, I did some research on how they get past it. They use the same software as handwriteing to text programs. Is there any possible other way to stop bots from "flooding" the drive besides visual conformation? Any Replys will be greatly thanked

[thetestingsite]

Make your forums to where only admins/mods can allow users to be activated, or you can use email confirmation (or both). All of these can be set up in your Admin Control Panel. Pretty sure that is all you could really do to stop the bots, other than using CAPTCHA or other items to that effect (which to what it sounds like, you already have set up).

Hope this helps.

[fileserverdirect]

phpbb doesn't allow email confirms or allowing admins to sign up users unless I remove the sign-up page and have you request a sign up, no user is going to want to do that. Is there any other way?

[thetestingsite]

In the Admin Panel (unless you have an older version) of the BB, there is an option in the "General Configuration" settings that's called "Enable account activation". This can be set to either none, User, or Admin. If you set it to Admin, the admin can authorize the activate the user once they sign up. If set to "User", then that same as above except it is done by the user. Another thing you could do is disallow certain names (even define them using a wildcard).

Either way, hope this helps.

//EDIT: As I said before, not sure what else can be done without Human Interaction.

[fileserverdirect]

Thank you! I hope this works now for preventing bots
Added a "Thanks"