phpBB 2 - fighting spam

Article published on:19 March 2007, 20:31

Hello!

I have made some changes to phpBB 2 for the CIA forum. These changes try to fight against spammers who register and post spam on the forum.

We have enabled registration confirmations, such that moderators will approve each account, however that is not enough. New accounts, even if inactive, are public and the profile can be viewed. Spammers also abuse the profile.

Once the patches I have made are applied:

• inactive users will not show as the "newest registered user";
• the members list page will no longer show any profile information for inactive users;
• the profile of inactive users can no longer be viewed.

  This practically makes account registration useless for spammers.  

The package contains 3 files:

• memberlist.diff
• includes/functions.diff
• includes/usercp_viewprofile.diff

For these patches to be effective, enable registration confirmation in the administration module.

Tested with phpBB 2.0.22.

To install the patches:

• On Linux use: patch <filename.diff in the given folder
• On Windows: you figure it out :)

Download the package.

Published in: phpbb.