Upgraded and now I have Spam.......

[crank addict]

Since I upgraded to the new 3.7 I have had more spammers than ever before. Before my upgrade I never had any spammers! Is there a way to make it a bit more secure and harder for them?

They are going through all the trouble of registering and making multiple post's as well as sending mass PM's to all my members.

[Carlos 360]

CAPTCHA, with security question.

or

RECAPTCHA works wonders.

[SAS forum]

Hey, we set up the permissions so that registered users cannot pm and then we set up an additional usergroup that allows pms. After X number of posts, the registered user is promoted to have the additional usergroup added to their account, which will allow pms.

We have pretty active admins and mods and by the time anyone gets on with the intention of doing pm spam, we usually catch them and delete their account before they get that additional usergroup added.

The pm spam that triggered us to change the way we did things was the user "James" that was able to spam everyone with some message about Buddha.

Other than that, we have also added some additional required fields in the registration form. If the fields have something to do with the topic of your board, then it would be a lot easier to check out a new user and see if they have any idea what they are talking about when they fill out the forms.

Other than that... When I was younger, if we missed a phone call, my mom would always say "if it's important, they will call back". We allow the admins to delete anyone that is shady and the way we see it, if they really wanted to join up and had good intentions, they will come back.

Good luck man. I know a board that seems to have found their way onto a spammer "easy target" list and their life has been horrible since.