phpBB bot shills

Blowfish

just discovered this

33,000 is a hell of a lot of forums. Obviously i know vbulletin would be safer (though aren't the other boards sites running phpBB? ), but just wondering how difficult that actually would be to stop here?

sceptre

Answer from an idiot: more difficult than it would be if we didn't have to. Having said that, even holding back the tide manually with a few admins, a few smods and a few hundred mods, any user who came on to the site and posted nothing but "O How nice" and "Wow that is cool" would probably make my mental watch list after DeV's "I'm not a nut, watch out there are shills about" thread.

Except in the Humour forum. I almost never go in there so that's a good place for shills to pretend they're normal users in advance.

Then there's Asok. I've never seen Asok but I'm pretty sure he puts on a hunting hat every time he goes near his computer.

Rev Hellfire

Most of the flaw are in php itself not phpBB2.

Worth banning the name funtklakow maybe and if you are using phpbb2 making sure visual confirmation is on.

You do get quite a lot of bots registering in an attempt to drive up a sites rank in the various search engines. But most people have mods which don't display members in the memberlist or as newly registered) until they have authenicated and/or reached a required post count.

Gone West

or how about:
This forum uses Vbulletin, rather than phpBB

Blowfish

thats what i meant when i talked about vbulettin, prob not very clear though, and the other boards sites do use phpBB

Crash

boards.jp runs vbulletin. boards.us runs phpBB though.

Asok

sceptre wrote:

Then there's Asok. I've never seen Asok but I'm pretty sure he puts on a hunting hat every time he goes near his computer.

And a dress.

Sparky

There is an Image check on vB when registering, so it would be harder for a bot to complete the process.
phpBB is easily hackable as standard. That's why you need to modify it to be more secure.
vB is payed for, so there is usually security updates regulary. If a bot shill did become a problem, I'm sure Kier and his team would be quick to solve it.

BuffyBot

boards.us is converting to vBulletin soon.

hullaballoo

Yup: http://www.boards.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=529