Spammers

[Matt]

For those of you that noticed that spammer earlier (username: rsgold123) sorry about this. If you notice anything like this in future your best bet is to just PM myself or a moderator and we'll deal with it as soon as possible. Chances are we've probably seen it anyway but this can help speed things along as I get an email notification if I receive a PM. Thanks!

They just like our site because it gets a lot of visitors so they want to use it for free advertising . The account has now been banned.

[Matt]

To make it easier there is now a "report post" feature. It looks like an exclamation mark in the top right hand corner of all posts (where the edit etc button is). If you click this and send a report it will be dealt with asap .

[Lina]

I would like to add something here.

IF you see a spammer has started a new thread - don't reply in it.

The admin-tools has the option of deleting all posts when someone (or something) is booted out - but that still leaves any replies, thus making a bit of more work to delete.

[Matt]

Yes thanks Lina . Besides a lot of these spamming accounts are actually not real people but scripts, too - like little robots that someone has invented to go and advertise their business.

NEVER click a link in a post that a spammer has made. Spammers are clear as day to spot - the post will usually make no sense, be completely random, and be advertising something!

[Lina]

Don't know about how you made your settings - but it takes out a lot of them, if you set it to that new members has to reply to an authenticating email - lots of spammers don't work from a valid account anyways, so you're suddenly down to something like 2% that manages to get through.
Depending on the workload, you can also set it so that new members has to be activated by an admin.

I mean.. it's not like the spammers fool anyone - they are sooooooooooo easily spotted *G*