Important Notice about Forum Holiday

[admin]

Hi All

It is holiday season and also we will be taking a break [2.7.2011..17.7.2011]

Due to the fact that the forum has recently become a target for spammers it has been decided to close down the forum for this period of time to new posts. This means that the forum will still be available for searching and reading existing content but no new topics or posts will be possible.

Also no new users will be able to register.

Not being able to post will mean that also spammers will not be able to leave what are sometimes misleading, pornographic or even dangerous links. Normally these are cleaned up fairly quickly; spammers are immediately banned based on several criteria, including their IP address, without any further formalities and all topics and posts are deleted. But there is a great risk of a flood of such posts in this perido without being able to adequately monitor and clean them. Presently there about 10 spammers being banned every day, which is a huge increase from maybe one or 2 a month just a short time ago - this is not specific to this forum but seems to be a general trend in the Internet.

Up to now registration has not been based on approval but this may be introduced later in case the situation doesn't improve. Then the spammers under the existing members can be gradually weeded out so that the forum returns to its original quality.

Many thanks for your understanding.

Regards

Admin

[Marc VDH]

Up to now registration has not been based on approval but this may be introduced later in case the situation doesn't improve. Then the spammers under the existing members can be gradually weeded out so that the forum returns to its original quality.

There's yet another load of spam messages... I think approval of new users should start right away!

[admin]

Marc

Unfortunately you are right. The situation is getting a bit silly and I spend more time banning spammers and deleting their (sometimes offensive or often just stupid) posts than anything productive.

The new members agreement has been changed slightly including sending a very short email just stating what their technical interests are before their account is activated - this will probably already put off 99% of potential (new) spammers. Probably technical interests like "activating iPhone4" will not be adequate...;-)

We'll see what happens.

Regards

Admin