Account Cleanup

[Kevin Pascal]

Spam has been, and always will be, a problem for websites such as this. Anywhere that someone can create an account for free and make a post that members of the public can read.. you will find spammers wanting to create accounts. Sometimes spammers create accounts in order to post messages containing links to other websites (i.e. porn, drugs, money scams, marketing schemes, etc). Other times spammers create accounts and never plan on making a post. These accounts often contain information in their profiles or signatures that benefit the spammer when search engines index the terms which raises the value of the spammers product or website.

Fighting forum spam is a daily part of forum administration and something take seriously. Accounts that are clearly spam accounts are immediately removed and accounts that am not 100% sure about are left for a period of time before I take action. Today was a 'take action' day. I searched our entire userbase for accounts that have never replied to the new account verification email we send out and deleted them all except for the last couple. If you have not verified your forum account in a week.. chances are that you never will. I will be continuing this effort after I post this email and will be removing all verified accounts that are more than 1 year old and have never made a post. A few of these accounts may belong to real people but I figure that anyone who simply wants to lurk will be able to do so without an account.

Thanks to those of you who are active on the site and to the few who have shown their support. You are the reason this site is available to the community!

Cheers!