Mods: Can you comment re: the spammer and FS/FT?

[Lucky]

Im not nearly as active as some traders-Im mostly a lurker. But I was one of many who got spammed by that prick who harvested emails from profiles. Will this change anything regarding the forced display of emails in the profile? The email I have in my profile right now (currently hidden) is an email that I check daily but want kept "virgin"-NO spam. Any tips or comments on how we should deal with this? I could of course just put another email addy in my profile but I'd rarely check it so that wouldnt do any good.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Personally, when I'm actively trading, I don't mind showing my email address. I don't use the address for much besides trading and am used to filtering out the spam. If somebody does "pull a Tex", there's always the possibility that we can track down the steps.

In my humble opinion, I'd say keep things the way they are, brainstorm behind the scenes for a possible workaround. For me, the benefits of a trader displaying a valid email address outweigh the posibility that someone will spam that email.

Suppose we could put together some sort of address verification system and run a FS/FT mail server somewhere. I agree, it's always nice to have at least one address that stays spam free.

 

[Lucky]

Well I wasnt referring to tex, I was referring to the other guy who sent out the "headliner" email to a bunch of folks, but either is just as bad. I agree it hasnt been a serious problem, and from what I've seen the mods have been able to track it down.

Any interest in allowing subscribers with more than a certain number of posts have a hotmail/other banned email addy?

 

[Hossenfeffer]

I'd love to eventually see subscribers be able to traverse ip/email bans, but for now, the trading only addresses might not be a bad idea. If the money could be fronted to, for example, give folks @heatware addresses and ask that they use it only for trading and/or forum correspondence. Might be able to put in a few of our own id verification steps.

 

[AnandTech Moderator]

We posted this reply, in both the first post and our own message, in Off Topic, where the subject was posted, yesterday.

AnandTech Forums does not sell or give the email addresses of our members to anyone. Period. The only exception is to law enforcement agencies, etc. when a a specific member is shown to be involved in wrongdoing.

We have determined that the spammer is a member who registered on 04/02/2002 as scannert. He has a total of three posts, and all of them have a link to headliner.nl. One is in this thread, and two are in this archived thread.

We have banned the IP range for their server, and we will file a formal abuse complaint about this person. Since those who have received this spam have the actual email, you should forward it to the abuse address mentioned earlier, abuse@inter.NL.net.

We do not know if will do any good to forward it to abuse@headliner.nl, because they are a mailing list site. Writing them could possibly cause them to send more spam. Therefore, we recommend that you block all email from this domain name.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[Lucky]

Hmm...Well Im aware of who the spammer is and that he is now banned. I was hoping for a comment re: the forced display of emails for the FS/FT forum. However, since Im not getting many replies in this thread, that indicates that its possibly not as big an issue for others as it is for me.

 

[Azraele]

The forced email visibility in FS/T is there for a reason, I think the effects of doing away with it (if indeed that is what you're suggesting) would cause more problems than it would solve (for one I think it'd make things easier for trolls, who cause a lot more problems here than do spammers). Spammimg on Anandtech happens rarely. I'm not sure what to tell you others than to post an e-mail addres that you don't mind being spammed if it concerns you.