Again and again i see, that we have spammers on the forum. I wonder, if IPB provides hooks, to e.g. perform some custom checks, before a user can post.
If so, how about adding some rules, that new members are not allowed to post links (or add them to their signature) if they have less than say 10 posts.
Makes sense?
I agree to this… the only reason SPAMers post is to make "backlinks" to their sites…
so it would be an improvement to restrict editing the signature to members that does not have at least 10posts… and no links in posts for the first 10 post…
One more thing that would be nice is that the links opens in new window instead in the current one… and if there are that option to use the "nofollow" attribute…
I’m with you. It’s a very good idea…
But I’m a little afraid that this will scare some new users…
It’s a common practice on popular forums…
it should not scare new users if they cannot post URL links…
It will. Isn’t it better to change captcha to custom one?
I don’t think, that these spam posts are automated. So CAPTCHA won’t help much.
I think it’s enough to simply report them. Important is that the moderators/admins really delete those posts/accounts, otherwise the spammers succeeded and may come back with even more websites to “publish”. Are there any spam-posts which are not deleted yet?
nofollow can be an option for the signatures, but for posts it’s a no-go. eg websites posted here which are created with Yii should of course benefit from the yiiframework.com pagerank/relevance.
I am with you on this one. I keep getting some love letters in my inbox I can report them to the admin if there is such section.
Below the message on the left side there is the "report" button for that…
Users that are reported for posting SPAM are promptly flagged as spammers so that they cannot make new posts… and all posted SPAM is deleted…
so the best thing to do when you get a SPAM message is to report that message by use of the "report" button
Maybe you could add Bad Behavior http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/ (to the whole site, not just the forum).
Maybe. But maybe they are automated, image recognition algorithms can defeat CAPTCHAs.
Sure about that? Just cought a spammer red-headed. Even reporting his post + the spammer himself didn’t seem to stop him from posting even more spam…
"Standard" forum users can only report a spammer and it is enough to report only one post for same user…
After that it’s needed that one of team members see the reported user to delete SPAM posts and to flag him as spammer so that it cannot post anymore…
I have just done that for this user you reported…
Thanks for reporting him…
Why am I getting SPAM messages in my Inbox?
problem is that some "smart" spammers register to this forum and send private messages (smarter ones avoiding to send it to the dev team)…
as this messages are private we (administrators and the dev team) cannot see them to check if it’s a SPAM… until someone reports that message…
When a private message is reported we are notified and can react accordingly…
Edit:
-private messages are sent to the registered e-mail, probably is that the reason why you got the SPAM message…
I got one some hours ago 
I guess there’s no option in IPB to allow privates messages after 1 post?
This time I got it too, and as soon as I saw it… deleted the user… but he managed to send some PMs in the meantime, as it seems…
I don’t know for this option, but it would be of no use… as a spammer can post one replay to any thread and after that send all this messages…
Yes true, well at least it would help a little bit in the usual times when admins/mods are online.
Why not using whitelist instead of blacklist?
I mean, instead of blocking spammers, the first time one send a PM to another, both receive an email.
The sender should click a link to confirm he/she is a regular user and a real person
The receiver should read the message to accept it
Once the message has been accepted as regular and the sender has clicked the "i am human" link, sender username/id is stored in a whitelist
Whitelisted users could send PM messages to others (obviously, respecting user’s personal block lists)
This way admins should not worry about blocking users, once it would be "automatically" done…
I have just received spam from sylvia4you
regards!
Yes, today we have an attack from a user registering with different accounts… I already blocked 3 - sylvia, sylvia4u, sylvia4you…
Your idea is still not good… as all those spammers are real humans… this is not automatic spam posting…
so even if your idea would be implemented… this spammer could click "i am a human"… send one normal message to get approved… and then send spam…