Spam Posts

Web site updates, comments, ideas for this message board.

Spam Posts

Postby Perry » Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:21 pm

We've been getting a few lately. Please send me an email if anything significant happens (Yahoo email is cactus2clouds. On a related note: if you post email addresses that way, then spam bots can't read them and put them into a spammer's database.) In a month or so when I have time, I'll modify the PHP code so that only a real person (not a computer program) can post as an unregistered user. If you're already registered that won't affect you if you're logged in. If it's too much trouble to modify the code, then I may need to just require registration before posting. :( The unregistered spam posts were probably a computer program, meaning there wasn't a real person visiting the forum. The recent spam post was likely an actual person who registered. That person was using a dirty method to improve search engine listings for his web site. The idea was to get people to talk about housing prices, then the link in his signature would help his web site for those keywords.

In case anybody is wondering, I am NOT using this message board as a search engine optimizer for my business web page. I'm just cheap and don't want to pay for extra web hosting, so I bought the domain name MtSanJacinto.info and set up masked forwarding (frames). All of the links go back to the main forum file "phpBB2/index.php" which does NOT link to my business web page.

To clarify, it's not a big deal to mention your business or put your business web address in your profile. Sometimes individuals go a little bit further in promoting their businesses on message boards, in the same way that people leave business cards in summit registers. Some other people may be offended by this, and it really depends on how it's done. Please keep in mind that some people visit the wilderness to escape commercialism, and those people may prefer to make friends with others who aren't trying to push a product or service. However, I won't delete these kinds of posts unless they are disruptive, totally off-topic, or if enough people request that it be deleted. If somebody just casually mentions their real estate business in conversation: no worries.
User avatar
Perry
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1518
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:01 pm
Location: Palm Springs, CA

Postby Perry » Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:53 pm

It appears that spammers are getting around the visual confirmation. I'm working on the problem and will probably switch to a more advanced visual confirmation. That last post was definitely not appropriate for this forum. Please let me know if anything else happens. My cell phone is (760) 808-2205.

-Perry
User avatar
Perry
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1518
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:01 pm
Location: Palm Springs, CA


Return to Announcements & Feedback

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests