The limiting of some of the privileges reduced some of the spam, but there is still a lot of it in the forum, both in old threads and at new posts as well. I just did a quick search and found and reported to admins some 20 spammers. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg, and there are still many more of them.
Some of the spam bots use sophisticated methods to cloak in their spam links. The result is, that not only the Google ranking of the spammer websites improves significantly, but especially the links can harm the SEO of Deeper Blue, and that they can get DB blacklisted on Google, or have visitors coming though Google warned and discouraged from visiting as it happened several times in the past. And of course, if someone is carefree enough to follow those links, and not protected enough, he can get infected by viruses on the target website.
Originally, in April, I suggested banning all links in signatures (new and old ones) for all non-paying members. Unfortunately, instead of banning links, signature images were banned. That's completely useless, because (contrary to what some people may think, and to contrary what was stated here too) images can in no way harm neither the visitor, nor the server. It is a myth, there is no way a virus or active content could be hidden in an image and launch an attack automatically. More than ten years ago, there was a buffer-overrun vulnerability in certain graphical software products. Computers with those graphic engines could have been potentially harmed with some manipulated images, but that's fixed since a long time, and I do not think there are still some computers vulnerable to this issue.
So jpeg, gif, and png images are completely harmless, and it is futile to ban them in the signatures - it only harms regular members. Spammers/hackers do not bother about images. They need hyperlinks, and can only use images to hide hyperlinks if hyperlinks are enabled, but unfortunately hyperlinks in signatures were not banned, so spammer continue to flood and harm the forum.
So my recommendation is re-enabling images in signatures, avatars, and in messages (at least for those who have more than ~10 posts), but banning, instead of it, all kind of hyperlinks in signatures, in messages, in PM's, in visitor messages (there is a lot of spam on DB too), and in all profile fields. I'd recommend allowing hyperlinks in signatures and profile fields only to paying members (supporters), and hyperlinks in forum messages and PM's (not visitor messages!) only to members with more than 10 or 15 posts.
Some of the spam bots use sophisticated methods to cloak in their spam links. The result is, that not only the Google ranking of the spammer websites improves significantly, but especially the links can harm the SEO of Deeper Blue, and that they can get DB blacklisted on Google, or have visitors coming though Google warned and discouraged from visiting as it happened several times in the past. And of course, if someone is carefree enough to follow those links, and not protected enough, he can get infected by viruses on the target website.
Originally, in April, I suggested banning all links in signatures (new and old ones) for all non-paying members. Unfortunately, instead of banning links, signature images were banned. That's completely useless, because (contrary to what some people may think, and to contrary what was stated here too) images can in no way harm neither the visitor, nor the server. It is a myth, there is no way a virus or active content could be hidden in an image and launch an attack automatically. More than ten years ago, there was a buffer-overrun vulnerability in certain graphical software products. Computers with those graphic engines could have been potentially harmed with some manipulated images, but that's fixed since a long time, and I do not think there are still some computers vulnerable to this issue.
So jpeg, gif, and png images are completely harmless, and it is futile to ban them in the signatures - it only harms regular members. Spammers/hackers do not bother about images. They need hyperlinks, and can only use images to hide hyperlinks if hyperlinks are enabled, but unfortunately hyperlinks in signatures were not banned, so spammer continue to flood and harm the forum.
So my recommendation is re-enabling images in signatures, avatars, and in messages (at least for those who have more than ~10 posts), but banning, instead of it, all kind of hyperlinks in signatures, in messages, in PM's, in visitor messages (there is a lot of spam on DB too), and in all profile fields. I'd recommend allowing hyperlinks in signatures and profile fields only to paying members (supporters), and hyperlinks in forum messages and PM's (not visitor messages!) only to members with more than 10 or 15 posts.