Whats Up With the Spammers?

[Hugewally]

Granted I just signed up the other day (finally), but whats up with all the stupid spammers bombarding this site?

[Johan]

It is probably people seeking out info on you, M r. Hugewally

[Hugewally]

[Gerald Swan]

In the majority of cases it is so that their website address appears in their profile. Then the Google bots (or similar for other search engines) that trawl the Internet find them. One of the ways Google ranks sites is by the number of links it finds to the sites, so lots of links means your site appears high in a Google Search. Of course I'm sure you spend all your spare time Googling for porn and dubious medication sites .

The people who write the software for the different Forums are in a never ending battle to get the b#*+/%ds. As Administrator I can ban people by their email address, name or ICQ so they get round that by using randomly generated details (which is why you see a lot of names like Susan123) so their details are different everytime.

Another way to stop them was to say that you could only register after making a post so the bots that do the fake registration now make posts, which explains the generic "Hello I'm new to the site, goodbye" type of posts as well as the ones with the awful jokes (I like a rude joke as much as the next man but couldn't they come up with some I haven't heard a dozen times).

Things aren't quite as bad as they used to be (my record for deletions of fake members is 43 in a day), at the moment it's about 12 a day but things are getting worse again so I can see myself (and Johan) wasting a lot of time everyday.

The other problem is I have been known to delete the odd legitimate member in the middle of one of my purges . In fact I've done it twice in the last couple of weeks so if you are a new member and you suddenly find you have to re-register it's probably because I got carried away again so just email me and I'll do my best to not do it again .

Gerald.

[Hugewally]

Of course I'm sure you spend all your spare time Googling for porn and dubious medication sites .

You say that like there are other reasons for the internet...

[Johan]

You may wish to disable e-mail notification of replies to a thread until the software change that might help the situation. The spam does not stay long, but it does generate the e-mails.

[Johan]

I sort of miss the spammers. I know they were machine based, but it was some activity at least.

[Gerald Swan]

I'll take that as a challenge Johan .

See the first round of the new Lola Quiz .

Gerald.