Cathryn Symons of the Camden Kiwi blog writes about her experiences with the phpBB Bulletin Board software — apparently it's not very secure by default. Securing a bulletin board:

First of all, read this very good post on the phpbb forums. Spambots, which automate registration and then try to post junk on the board, are constantly laying seige to boards which allow self-registration, and there are ways of keeping them at bay. Our big problems were having the membership list visible to anyone who came in, and spambots registering themselves. The standard software allows you to stop the spam registrations from posting, but can’t prevent them from registering.

Spammers are a well-known problem on bulletin boards and forums (as well as everywhere else, sigh). If you can stop them from posting spam in the first place then you won't have to spend hours each week cleaning up after them.

Visit Cathryn's post for details and links to useful information. I your community organisation already runs or is considering running a bulletin board, then this is useful information to have on file.

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