This is getting ridiculous. I think I have tried every banning/authorization tool, but that does not prevent bots from just getting on my member list.

Trying to keep that clean is getting ridiculous. It is not click and shoot, you can only do 2 or 3 per minute sitting there doing it manually, and I got 60 spam bots over night in my forum (after removing 40 yesterday).

am I missing a trick here?

Please, include your forum URL.

ok

LVCF, it is normal to have a few spambots a day/week, but 60 in 1 day is just unbelievable! I can understand this is frustrating..

Have you tried this yet? It is something Kana3 posted ages ago on the Dutch support forum, but I think it works pretty well.

Kana3 wrote:

I'm not any good at Dutch, and my on-line translator is even worse, I suspect ! This is a copy of some notes I wrote on ForumUp.DK: kana3 wrote: I'd advise against following any of those links. Other Users have reported their computers being trashed, as soon as they landed on the site. You need to analyse the various elements, to create parameters for your Ban and Disallowed Names filters. For example: Disallowed Names. Code: *!*, *@*, *$*, *.*, *-*, *_*, *=* *0*, *1*, *2*, *3*, *4*, *5*, *6*, *7*, *8*, *9* *admin**adol**advert**auto* *babe**barga**basd**bigbo**bigti**breast**bride**buy* *cams**cash**casino**cigar**cigs**core**credit* *dating**dick**doctor**drug**dvd* *ence* *free**fu_k* *girl**guy* *hack**hard**health* *invest* *jobs**jote* *lamer**loan**love**luver* *medic**moderator* *nurs* *olam**online**order* *penis**pharm**phen**pill**porn**profit**promo* *rape**review**roid* *service**sex**slot**slut**spam**surg* *tard**tram**teen**test**tits* *viag* *wage**www* *xanax* E-mail Ban. Note, that these parameters are the product of an analysis of several hundred members e-mails, including both Spam-Bot, and real Users. It also represents a particular Domain, and the same spread of legitimate and false e-mail domains, may be different for .DK. If there is a reasonable probability of these parameters blocking real Users, you should not use them. Code: *@*.acc *@*.biz *@*.buy    *@*.cc    *@*.fm    *@*.info    *@*.low      *@*.mu    *@*.org    *@*.su            *@*.tab            *@*.ua                            For Domains that have legitimate e-mail use, you need to break it down. For example, You have four e-mail addresses; spam@yellow.com user@yahoo.com spam@yak.com spam@yolk.com We can't use *@y*.com, because it would also block all Users that use Yahoo. Likewise, that is the reason we cannot block 'yak' using *@ya*.com. So to block the 3 spam, but let through the Yahoo Users, we use; *@yak*.com *@ye*.com *@yo*.com The reason we don't use *@yak.com, without the wildcard '*', is because the Spam-bots often use incremental names. eg; spam@yak.com spam@yakka.com spam@yakyak.com spam@yak1.com spam@yak2.com ..and so on. Not using the wildcard, would miss the other 'yak' variations. But when casting your net wide, always be careful not to cover areas used by legitimate e-mail providers, else you risk blocking a range of potential Forum members. Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, gmail, etc.

I've tried a lot of stuff, but unless I'm missing a trick, all those bans keep accounts from being authorized and posting, but I don't think any of them keep signups out of your memberlist.

Admins?

The easy fix here is a click and point account delete, or at least one a lot shorter than the current method.

The current one is get to the member admin screen, type in wacky name, page down to bottom of member screen, click delete, authorize click, click back to admin screen, type in new name, etc.

And of course the names are designed to drive you crazy with typos, like:

l1!||il0L7o0o383 whatever....

So it always takes 2 shots.

<sigh>

What you're asking for is not possible, this is a MOD and forumup currently doesn't install mods. So you'll have to do with one of the creative "tricks" for this.

If you ban a specific email, people with an email like that can NOT sign up. The same counts for when you disable words in a username. So that trick does help a bit.

As for the deleting, I always copy the memberlist to Word (or whatever program you use for that) and then copy the name with ctrl + x to the control panel, you can't make any typo's on that way and as ctrl + x "cuts" it, you can easily see where you were.