Yeah...I got tired of deleting them - the more I deleted them the faster they were recreated...

This is the ONLY forum where I see this happening and I frequent 4 others regularly - they don't have this problem. What the heck is going on?

Looks like the epidemic is spreading.

This is annoying as heck.

Guess I'll stay away for a few weeks - see if it dies down and gets corrected.

I see it's gone..thank you Andy!!

My guess is that it's all autmated scripts as a result of security flaws in the forum software. phpbb is a bit of a target for that.

They have posted help for it, though. Andy, if it helps:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2122696

And it was discussed here:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2165850