Spambots are terrible annoying. Is there anything we as users can do to prevent them?

Actually there is a way to stop them, or at least -most- of them. There's a plugin filter which ome forum coding can use which stops them signing up. Something to do with their ips being all zeros, I think. Also there's the option of having a Capcha on signups which can also be plugged in. I can't remember if I had to fill one in when I joined or not. I'll see if I can find the link.

Thanks for the info, but it won't help. The new forums already use Capcha for new sign-ups. These particular bots don't have all zero IP addresses, they are random.

Forgive me, but what's a Spambot?

Andy.

Forum spambots surf the web, looking for guestbooks, wikis, blogs, forums and any other web forms to submit spam links to the web forms it finds. These spambots often use OCR technology to bypass CAPTCHAs present. Some spam messages are targeted towards readers and can involve techniques of target marketing or even phishing, making it hard to tell real posts from the bot generated ones. Not all of the spam posts are meant for the readers; some spam messages are simply hyperlinks intended to boost search engine ranking.

Most forum spam consists of links to external sites, with the dual goals of increasing search engine visibility in highly competitive areas such as weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, and generating more traffic for these commercial websites. Some of these links contain code to track the spambot's identity if a sale goes through, when the spammer behind the spambot works on commission.

Spam posts may contain anything from a single link, to dozens of links. Text content is minimal, usually innocuous and unrelated to the forum's topic, or in a very old thread that is revived by the spammer solely for the purpose of spamming links. Some text is included to prevent the post being caught by automated spam filters that prevent posts which consist solely of external links from being submitted. Full banner advertisements have also been reported.[by whom?]

Alternately, the spam links are posted in the user's signature, in which case the spambot will never post. The link sits quietly in the signature field, where it is more likely to be harvested by search engine spiders than discovered by forum administrators and moderators.

... The spambot can often bypass many of the safeguards administrators use to reduce the amount of spam posted