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why can't i add my location, interests, etc. to my profile?

 
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kevin
Site Admin


Quit Date:
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Posts: 9538
Location: cincinnati, oh

PostPosted: September 4, 2006 12:08 AM    Post subject: why can't i add my location, interests, etc. to my profile? Reply with quote

traditionally, a "spambot" is defined as a software program that harvests email addresses from web pages so those addresses can be used as targets for spam emails.

in the context of a site such as ours, we can redefine the term slightly to mean a software program that seeks out publicly-accessible bulletin boards and forums and registers phony user accounts on them in order to place a link to another site in the phony user's profile (the other site is usually an affiliate link farm or a porn site).

the idea is that, when the search engines index the bulletin board or forum, the link to the spam site is found in the phony user's profile, and the spam site's "link popularity" increases (link popularity is essentially a measure of how many sites have links to a given site). as link popularity is a key factor in search engine rankings, this is a way for unscrupulous website operators to artificially boost their search engine rankings (i guess it's kind of redundant to call them unscrupulous, given the nature of the sites that they're promoting this way).

i've noticed an increasing number of occurrences of this on this site over the last several months, and put some measures into place about a month ago that prevented the spammers' phony profiles (and the links to their spam sites) from being found by the search engines, but that involved me manually checking each new account for "spambot spoor" and manually deleting them as necessary. tonight, i put more comprehensive measures into place that will save me considerable time in dealing with this. i won't go into any detail on what those measures are (for obvious reasons), but they may affect some current members, so i wanted you to know how and why.

up until tonight, when a new user registered, they were presented with a group of pulldown menus (under the "profile information" heading on the registration form) where they could set their quit date, along with a series of text entry fields where they could list their location, occupation, and interests, as well as add a signature and a link to their website (the registration form is essentially the same as the profile page).

these fields (especially the "signature" and "website" fields) are targets for the spambots, so in order to discourage them, these fields will no longer appear on the registration form. additionally, new users will not be given access to these fields on their profile page until they've made a minimum of 10 posts.

not including these fields on the registration page will prevent the spambots from automatically registering their phony accounts, and not allowing new users access to them until they've made 10 posts should discourage the spambots' human counterparts (a.k.a. "message board spammers"), who will no doubt seek easier targets.

if you already have more than 10 posts, these measures should not affect you at all. if you're new to the boards and have less than 10 posts, these measures will prevent you from adding your location, etc., to your profile until you've made at least 10 posts. however, once you've reached that threshold, you'll have access to the full set of profile fields available to everyone.

if you have any questions about this, please feel free to send me a private message or use the "make contact" link at the top of the page to contact me.
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keep choosing life!

kevin

the zen of the quit
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Ilene B



Quit Date:
March 5, 2007

Posts: 8

PostPosted: March 6, 2007 1:05 AM    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thankyou Kevin Smile ..That definitly make's sense. Ilene
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