Your opinions in the forum of the hardwarecentral.com online site caught my
attention.
As associate editor of im-ur, I have been scouring the forums of online
sites for intelligent and active contributors like you.
I would like to invite you to express your comments and opinions at im-ur,
a site that is quickly on its way to becoming "The Daily Newspaper of the
Web."
im-ur has revolutionized the concept of the media on the web by creating
a newspaper that is written by its users. The New York Times wrote,
"Few challenge the status quo as much as im-ur.com."
im-ur represents the ultimate in freedom of speech and democracy.
What you write appears immediately in the pages of im-ur, as soon as you
post it.
The readers decide the hierarchy of articles contributed; the more an
article is read, the closer it gets to the front page. It's that simple.
Incidentally, we are giving away $500 every month to the person whose
article attracts the most readers.
anybody else get this? im not "active" or "intelligent" ( i havent been here for ages but the email is dated 28/12/00 and ive only posted a couple of times around then)
Yes, it's spam. Unfortunately the losers at Im-Ur have worked out how to harvest email addresses from HWC. You can hide the email link in your profile options (link just under where you get the Post New Topic and Post Reply links at the top), but that hides it from everyone. It does appear to stop the spam though - despite everyone else getting one ( http://discussions.hardwarecentral.c...ML/004891.html ) those of us with hidden email addys were untouched. You can try complaining to their ISP if you like, dunno how successful that will be. Their IP address is in a block allocated to 9netave.net, which eventually points to www.concentric-newyork.com and then www.xo.com. abuse@xo.com appears to be the address you want to email.
Yes, it is spam. They harvested email addresses from several of our sites' forums, including these at HWC. I have emailed them, asking them to stop, and am taking measures to try to prevent this from happening; but unfortunately, there is no foolproof way to prevent it from ever happening.
Housen, did you see my thoughts in an earlier thread on how it might be stopped or at least heavily curbed? I don't mind if you think it's infeasible or something, I just wondered if you maybe missed the thread. http://discussions.hardwarecentral.c...ML/000415.html
In addition to requiring that a number of scripts be rewritten, which would obviously take time and effort, that would also end up inconveniencing our members just to prevent spammers from harvesting the addresses of members who specifically chose to display their email addresses to forum readers.
I agree with you that I'd love to see this type of stuff stop and have never worked for an employer who used such tactics... but I don't want to hastily go with any solution that would end up being more disruptive than the problem. And any other measures I take (believe me, I am trying to deal with the problem as well as we can) might deter some spammers, but won't ever prevent determined individuals or groups from doing it.
So alas, the best thing that can be done is what has long been done by those who are getting fed up with spam. If someone is sending you unsolicited email, you should read the full headers to make sure you know where it is originating, find out who the appropriate person is to contact about it (typically someone in the customer service/abuse department of the company that provides the offending site or user with connectivity), and send a nice, detailed, politely written letter of complaint to them (if you rant and swear, they'll just delete your email and ignore you).
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