spammers adopt a new technique

[TerraFrost]

Recently, I've noticed people registering and then making semi-relevant posts in dead topics. That, in and of itself, doesn't really cause me a whole lot of concern - if someone wants to revive a long dead topic, I couldn't care less. I certainly do it. That said, it does seem a little spammish, all the same. Only problem is... as of late, these posts don't include any out-bound links. Atleast not when you first visit them. If, however, you revisit these posts a few days after they're made, you'll find that a signature has been created - a signature with links to spam sites.

It's an interesting strategy. People see these posts, don't regard them with much suspicion since they don't include links, and... never check them out, again. I certainly don't usually recheck old posts unless new ones have been made in that same topic.

[Drazo]

The spammers are getting smarter, or at least getting more desperate, since forums like this every new post gets viewed by at least one active moderator very quickly and thus it's very difficult if not impossible to leave lots a spam long enough for all the search bots to pick it up and up their site's page rank any length of time or get a few suckers to follow their link and take the bait....

But now every new or untrusted poster will be thoroughly reviewed until we can be sure it's a legit poster, so eventually they're going to try another new teq pretty soon....

....unless we can prevent new and untrusted members from having signatures and filling their website field.....or better yet disallow any e-mail and web addresses being submitted whether in the post or in their profile....