My technique is simple - While the applicant is waiting for final approval, I enter the given username and IP address into Google. if on the first page I see a reference to a site dedicated to logging Spmmer's IP addresses, I immediately delete the account. If instead, I discover that the user has signed up for a dozen or so forums in the last few days, all of which are unrelated --especially if the user signed up to forums in several different languages, I delete the account immediately. If I find references to the user that show actual posts being made in other places, or no reference at all, I approve the registration. It takes about 5 minutes or so to make a determination on a registrant at most. I do this same thing on a few boards, with the exception that I don't manually approve all member accounts. I just go through the member list like once a day. Spammers and bots aren't exactly known for their impeccable ability to choose decent usernames, either. This is late and a little unrelated but do you remember when your post per day count was like 52 when you first joined? That was flippin awesome.