We used to have a huge problem with spam bots on our phpBB forum. They were able to defeat the captcha mechanism easily and either make spam posts to the forums, or more commonly just create users and leave spam links in the URL field. Which I assume they do so the user list page gets indexed by search engines.

However, a couple of months ago we upgraded the forum software and installed the Anti-Spam mod from Lithium Studios. Since then we've not had one spammer get through to either the forums or the user list, which is a welcome relief.

Pls note th1s 1s NOT a spam message said the woman in the corner, queitly pianting cheese and ham gardn.s

V1agra $200 from a farmacy.....

Sorry couldn't resist tempation....

I also run a phpBB2 forum, and had the same problem, until I added an extra required field to the registration form (a little Turing test:). I also added a mod that hides the URL in the userlist for users who haven't posted anything (I don't check all new users, but I do read all the posts, and instantly delete spammers), so the userlist is no longer useful for boosting rankings.

I'd be delighted to see captchas permanently cracked. The problem is that, although machines can sometimes read them, human beings usually can't!

So, if this particular security device is broken, I shan't miss it.

"it contains a long list of computers whose IP address can be used as proxies"

So the thingy comes with the seeds of a new blacklist. How nice of them to include that. Of course it's sad that users of the proxies can no longer access any blogs, but then I always thought anonymous browsing was meant to protect against Big Brother, not to sell V!4gr4 etc...