So you can’t post?
June 6th, 2007 by bahua
It has occurred to me that instead of fielding an endless stream of emails and private messages(to which most of the senders unwittingly attach their passwords), it might be more productive to openly state, for everybody, how this site’s forum works for new users. When this forum started to get pretty busy, people with valuable information about how to get the best out of the Nigerian scams, cheap prescription drugs, replica watches, male potency, effortless money, pornography, stock tips, and various other topics saw fit to start flooding the site with spam.
I say people, but I mean robots. Robots running undetected on people’s compromised desktops all over the world, using ingenious forum-spamming and blog-spamming software to post spam “messages” beyond count, in an effort to peddle their ridiculous wares. Some people still insist on using software that makes them easy marks for spreading software virii. Software like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Kazaa, AIM, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Outlook, and whatever other damned dangerous software people unfortunately use.
Anyway, we found that the best way to combat these robots would be to require a login to post anything. That worked for a while, but the robots figured out how to register users, and then spam us. The current requirement is that any new user is restricted from starting new threads(topics) on the forum, before they have at least 3 posts. This has brought the spam down to nothing. Barring any further intelligent posturing by the robots, this will be the preferred method we use to prevent spam from being posted on the forum.
For the record, new users aren’t allowed to send or receive private messages, or vote in polls, either.
If you still have questions, feel free to email me.