Shortly after the turn of the year, I experimented a little with the way I had been hunting spammers.

Using IPs in the Admin Index log, I learned that spammers are far less organized that I had originally imagined, and as a result easier to ban before they even spam the board.

stiv wrote:

I suspect (but don't know) that the best way to deal with this is via the back-end database. Maybe with a script that could read a text file of naughty folk and do the necessary DB work in batch mode.

Turns out there is a function for this built-in to phpBB called 'Prune Users' however it looks like you and I do not have access to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NDJBusMSZE

Maybe talk to the powers-that-be and see if we can get access to that?
Or I will supply them with a massive text-file full of spammer usernames and they can cut&paste it in themselves?