Being notified of replies....

[Bo]

... when there are no new replies.... It is not the first time this happens. Is it a bug? Sometimes people might post a reply and then delete it if they don't like it, but it is not the first time, so it is a little bit strange.
Has this happened to anybody else?

[pied_piper]

The forum has been getting hit pretty hard with dozens of spam messages every day. The spam flood started last Friday but the moderators are working hard to delete them as soon as possible. Most likely what you are seeing is because a spammer posted a message in a thread you follow so the board notifies you of a new message. Since we are deleting the spam, you never see it, but the notice of a new message goes out immediately after a new message is posted.

[Bo]

Thanks, yes, I understand now.

[Zevang]

Guys, is there a way to include a field to be manually filled, when posting here, like the solution that was adopted at the 8notes forum?
This would at least avoid the automatic kind of spam that seems to be crowding our folders here.

No spammer wants to have the trouble of entering manually any data, I guess...

[admin]

We just upgraded the board to the newest version and changed the registration verification method, in hopes this will help with the recent increase in spam. The verification used to be an answer to a question (single word) and has been changed to reCaptcha, which should be stronger and harder to "break". Hopefully this helps.

[Zevang]

Great news!

Make our lifes a lot easier.

Thanks

[pied_piper]

That's good to know. It's always good to keep current on the latest software version.

While the spam was coming hot and heavy, I researched the topic a bit. Older versions of phpbb were more vulnerable to the spambots so the new version should help. I read some postings on the phpbb forum which indicated that recaptcha has been conquered by one of the big spambot programs (Xrumer) and it is an inconvenience but does not stop them. I hope that the use of recaptcha stops the spambots but only time will tell. I just removed one spam message a few minutes ago, but that was probably posted by a human.

[Bo]

That's great, thanks!