Artoonix

Out of curiosity, I decided to spend a few minutes browsing the memberlist. I soon noticed that vast numbers of members have never posted onto the forum, despite having registered - but that's OK if they're just scanning it for tips and ideas. (Even though I often do post ideas and comments, I also and equally often just browse for any ideas that are being put forward).

Then I took a closer look at member names.

Lots of them are just incomprehensible jumbles of letters .... exactly the type of thing that's generated by an automatic web-surfing spambot.

Then I took a look at some of the more comprehensible names of members who have never posted into the forum.
On ONE page, these stood out as being rather - er - 'unusual'. Maybe they're genuine, or maybe not. But they look very odd.

fordrugsus
onlineBusiness
onlydrugsa
Dr.pillus
securedcreditcard
usdrugpill
YanTpills
hottyGirlxx
uscapills
Mr.drugscv

and if you want even more obviously suspicious names, I carried on browsing and found these on 3 other pages (and this is only a small sample) ...

buyviagraus
FreeXXXMovies
Freeadultsexx
Freeadultnow
adultdating
bigcasinobonuss
sexy woman
CashAdvance
gamblingbonussa
casinosfreebonusesv
casinbons
casinobonuscode
casinbonuscod
gamblingbonus
casbonusnodep

There is obviously something seriously wrong here.
Interestingly, I belong to a writer's forum which uses exactly the same phpBB 'engine' as this one and they were heavily spammed. So they cancelled ALL memberships, sent emails to those who had previously registered and required them to re-register. Checks were made (and are still made even now) before anyone was allowed through as a newly registered member.

On a website which offers software designed for young people, and in a forum which is therefore open to young people, there look to be wide-open doors for people who have no interest in the program, only in contacts that might be made.

Hi, KayNine
We actually have the most up-to-date anti-spam forum protection available for phpBB forums. Believe me, if we didn't, the forum would have been flooded with spam messages. Unfortunately, the protection is still not ideal, so we still have to manually filter both usrs and sometimes messages. The latter is our priority, of course, while users list is filtered every half a year or so. The users that do not post and have offensive names are deleted/banned.