Email addresses in posts
 

A modification has been made to the forums software. Any email addresses in posts are replaced with a link to this announcement.

The Internet is full of programs referred to as "Spiders" or "Bots". These programs crawl web sites, scooping up pages for various reasons. Some are positive, such as university research projects assembling databases.

Others aren't and are the reason why we remove email addresses from posts. Ever wonder why you get so much spam and where spammers get your email address? Post your email address or someone else's on a web site and you've just made that email address a target for a spammer. Bots are continously slowly crawling sites such as FTE and when they find an email address they go crazy and scoop up as many pages as possible in a short time in the hopes of finding more email addresses.

So, posting an email address has two negative side effects:

1. more spam for you (or someone else if you posted their address)
2. additional server load on FTE

We can't stop all the Bots. They disguise themselves as regular browsers. By the time we recognise their activity its too late.

So now we've taken proactive measures and remove all email addresses from posts. If you need to contact another user via email please use the contact link in their profile. This will contact them via email without exposing their email address or yours. If you want them to have your email address, please include it in your contact to them.

Thank you,

Nice mod. Ken - I for one thank you for lessening the sources these spammers have for flooding the 'net with their crap.

Thanks for the modification. I really like that :)
Prob not to easy to code that, but hey, it's worth it :)
Thanks again

I really like the guideline link in the quick reply box. Also nice to see the BIG No email line ther too. Goodplace for it boss.

Only problem is for us newbees...real frustrating!

Post more in threads (with great content).... and become an un-newbie :)

I understand its frustrating. We had to put the contact policy in place because the "Nigerian Cashier's Check" scam artist was registering on the site and contacting users to rip them off. I wish there was a better way to stop him but he's persistant.

If you break up your email addy, will it still get caught by the bot?
(say put the first part of your address on one line, and the @ on another)

The system is in place to prevent bots AND scammers. Only established users (25 posts and 30 days) can contact off-site in order to help prevent hit and run scammers. By-passing this defeats the purpose.

I don't personally have a problem with my email addy being on the internet as it is easily accessible from my website. Plus it's posted on tons of forums already. I woudn't want to encourage the bots though as I see you point about their using up the bandwith. This is the only forum I have frequented that removes email addresses.
I don't fall for scammers. Me and GEN BOTHA MONBULLA have done the money exchange many times!

Unfortunately, few sites proactively fight spam and take measures against scammers. Most don't bother to have such standards because they aren't willing to put in the effort to implement the features.

We used to remove addresses in the old forum software for a long time. We switched over in January to this software --- adding it to this software has been on our "to-do" list since then.

Users can contact you through the contact form, sending you their email address privately that way, and visa versa. This is site policy.

un-newbie? Does that come between New User and Freshman User? :)

I figured if people can type things like:

Prolly,alot,and lots of others,then I can interject with a minced word as well every so often. :)


Unless you hold me to a higher bar .

Prolly is the one that gets me. It isn't even close to the true spelling and pronunciation of "probably!" :-X15

'Coz' drives me absoultley nuts. I stop reading a post as soon as I see that. I don't know why, but it just bugs me!