** IP Banned..? Please read me **

[BillMorrow]

Due to the massive spambot attacks forum admins have been banning IP's which appear to be used by these spambots..
IF you receive an ERROR message saying your IP has been banned until march 31 or any ban message please let me know by email..
if I publish my personal email here i'll get slammed with even more spam..

so, please, send me an email at the bill at thinkpads email (which gets slammed with spam already) and include your IP address being banned and i'll fix it ASAP..

it would help if you use "I get an **ERROR** message" in your subject line..

thanks and sorry for all this trouble..

[emeraldgirl08]

Bill I just have to say Thank You!!! for all the work you are doing! It is terribly frustrating period when spammers take every opportunity to find their way into the online experience! From personal emails to our beloved forum!

I do not mind taking the short time to verify my IP address with you. Anything that helps to reduce the frequency of the spammer presence on our forum!

[TuuS]

I administrate a software forum and have had to deal with similar problems. I've had to block entire blocks of IP addresses to prevent the spammers from changing their IP and returning. In some cases I had to block 65 thousand IP addresses to keep them out but usually if I block them for a couple weeks it's enough to get rid of them. I've reported the abuse to the ISP in some of the extreme cases and some will track down the customer and disable their account but it's a lot of work to prepare the proof of abuse and others don't seem to care, as long as their check clears they don't really care what they do with their internet connection.

In most cases it was nearly illiterate english posts about random subjects with links added to sell things like boots, hats or whatever. I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to buy from an ad from a person that cannot even construct a single coherent sentence, nor could I understand why someone would continue to try to post the ads over and over when they get deleted usually in mere minutes.

[BillMorrow]

when a spammer is successful at registering here that is the usual result..
a post to a very old thread with gibberish and a link..
maybe ban outside links without filling in a captcha form is a way to slow spammers even more..

we (ray, myself, jane and billb) usually find spam that does get through and we get rid of it and the spammer quickly..

i'm thinking also of adding a captcha form to even visit as a guest..

[anthony]

Thank you Bill for all that you do. I haven't visited the forum in a while. But now that I am about to buy my 4th Thinkpad (Yes, I've been around since they wore the IBM badge), I am most appreciative that you and a trusted user community are here. And I encourage all of us to hit that PayPal link on the upper right and show a little more love...