Hal,

Unfortunately, most popular forums are massively affected by this stupid spamming. But you only see a very small number of spam here on our forums. Behind the scenes, we have several people monitoring the community 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Most spam (85%) is removed immediately (a few seconds after it has been posted). A time-consuming and money-consuming process. But works far better than the automated systems.

BTW, vBulletin is (IMO) the best available forum software and worth every cent.

Friedrich