Why have there been so many spam accounts recently? Maybe we need some kind of extra way to try to keep out the spammers. It gets annoying to see "oh boy, new posts!" and then find out they are all spam.

I think that forum engine is very old and easy for spambots.

I believe the problem isn't in engine, but in lack of activity of admins and moderators.

It had used to be similar in past, but actions had been taken more quickly than after a week.

BTW Happy New Year!

Why not appoint forum moderators? I could volunteer police-ing the topics.

Is it possible that the database containing email addresses has been compromised? Not sure what to do with this???
Thanks

Okay, this is a joke at this point. The entire first page of the off topic section is filled with spam topics, all from different random usernames. If possible, I suggest that all new users need to be manually approved by the admins to stop this nonsense.

Defence against spammers always has 2 parts. Automatised engine, which stops 99% bots and human action promtly removing the spam posted by the 1% of those succesful intruders. The human part is the one, which is failing. Sorry for this mess.

Why not appoint moderators to patrool the forum? Just saying - by having more members willing to help the chance of spammers breaking in to be decreased

Since the spam will go on forever, I think the safest bet is to do the following:

Appoint more forum moderators to purge spam from our form
Punish those offenders by banning them from the forum forever and by IP (many spammers go under different disguises under the same IP)
Freeze registration in the forum for undisclosed period of time. (though it may be unpopular choice, but it could be needed to clamp down on spammers)

Agree. Or if possible, require human authentication of a new user's first post or two before it appears in the forum, or manual authentication of new user accounts. The current level of spam is ruining the forum.