How does the search function work?

[investigator]

I'm trying to search for a scammer by name: Ekel Franklyn

So in the search field, I put: +Ekel +Franklin

to indicate that I only want results that contain both of those words.
Doesn't seem to work. I get results containing Franklin but without Ekel.

What should the serach string be?

[AlanJones]

That's how it should work, but the search is part of the PHPBB software and we have no control over it, so I can't say whether it really works or not or what an alternative would be.

A better thing to search for would be the email address that the scammer is using as we prefer to keep posts about the same address in one topic. Just because you find another topic about "Ekel Franklyn" doesn't mean that it is the same scammer.

[investigator]

ok, thanks. That's how the phpbb documentation.says it is supposed to behave.

Now I've made that post, +Ekel +Franklin does return something, the post I just made plus the reply from AlanJones.

So I think what phpbb does is that if +Ekel +Franklin returns no records, it returns records matching either one of the search terms on its own.

To demonstrate that, if I search for +Ekelzz +Franklin, for which no record exists, 634 matches are returned matching +Franklin alone.

[Terminator5]

Use Google search engine.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ekel ... s-wiz-serp

[investigator]

A better thing to search for would be the email address that the scammer is using as we prefer to keep posts about the same address in one topic.

Yes, but that doesn't work either. I'm trying to see if there is already a report for:
[email protected]
but when I try searching for that mail address, I just get a message

The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: gmail com bankofamericaa9.

It seems the address has been split into 3 components and then rejected each one.

Is there some syntax that works?