Spam and New User Registrations

[Doug Miles]

We've been hit with a few user registrations which resulted in potentially harmful spam postings. These postings contain links and keywords which the user is hoping will be picked up by search engines and therefore direct more people to their site. While I really don't want to censor posts, I felt I needed to remove these posts. I have no problem with users promoting products and services, as long as he/she is also contributing to the forum usefully.

I also do not want to begin manually validating each and every user registration, but if I cannot stop the spamming, I might need to do that. I will post an announcement if that should occur.

Doug

[Doug Miles]

We've been getting more spam postings/registrations lately. Therefore, I will now be validating each new user registration. If you sign up, please be patient, I will validate new user registrations as quickly as my schedule allows.

[Doug Miles]

Also, I have disabled posting priviledges for many of the newer registrations. If you are a legitimate user and would like to post on this forum, please contact me here (I will re-enable your posting ability). Since we do not have many users I thought this was the easiest way.

Another note. I have not enabled censoring on this forum because I want people to be able to speak freely. However, the latest spam posts have made me rethink this position. The spam posts are full of explicit content, completely unrelated to Mobile Sound and Video. I may be forced to block posts of this nature.

[Doug Miles]

I have made a few changes which (so far) seem to have worked (without censoring all posts and without requiring moderation of each registration).

One other quick note. The are only 2 legitimate members that I know of here besides myself (aleuni and hiredpower). I will be (over the next few months) working on getting this forum ranked on search engines, so I would like clean up a few things. Any users besides myself, aleuni, and hiredpower, must contact me here. I will be deleting all other users to start with a clean slate.

[Doug Miles]

There have been several registrations lately which appear to be purely spam in nature. From now on I will be deleting posts and users if I suspect the post content and user is here only for the purpose of posting a link (to a completely unrelated website).

I have no problem with people posting links to their movie businesses, blogs, forums, whatever, as long as it relates to Mobile Sound and Video.