Can't Block a spammer?

[KEA]

Only after multiple bans of user name and IP, deleting of the account, (They came right back), adding tougher questions appears to have solved the problem. 

Thanks for all the input! 

[Illori]

dont delete the account after banning it, this will always delete the ban.

[Dav999]

Only username triggers, not IP/email/hostname ones.

[Kindred]

actually...  if you set all triggers in the same "bundle", then deleting the user will (I believe) invalidate the entire ban bundle.

[Dav999]

Just tested it, even with a ban group with only a username trigger, deleting the user's account will just leave the ban group there with no triggers.

[shawnb61]

When I started helping out on our forum, we had installed:
  -  the Join Reason mod
  -  the Stop Spammer mod
  -  the httpBl mod

I have kept it that way, since we have had ZERO spam in the last few years.  (~20K user forum)

We have, however, had a few instances where people were erroneously detected as spammers.  The issue with these honeypot approaches is that the IP address is an imperfect way to do this.  We deal with those exceptions manually.  This only happens about once every year or two.