New members auto registering.

[ColinEssex]

I am going to admit my ignorance on this subject.

I have read on various posts about auto registering and hacking and you can't do this or that until you have x number of posts etc.

How can people auto register and what is the reason?

Why do people have to wait x number of posts?

What harm do they or can they do?

Col

 

[ColinEssex]

Odd that nobody knows the answers, I thought it was just me.

Col

 

[ChrisO]

Col.

I don’t know about the auto-registering thing.

As for the post count limit…
There are people who register for the sole purpose of placing a link to some other site. We don’t know what that site may be but, generally speaking, if the sole purpose is to post a link then the link is not wanted.

By having a post count limit it means that the new member has to run up 10 posts in order to post their link. The posts they post are usually rubbish and very often within 2 minutes of each other. So if the moderators, or any of the other members, see that trend we are forewarned of something about to happen.

So the limit gives time for some action to be taken. Almost always, a run up of the account post count, with useless posts, will get the user banned as spam.

Chris.

 

[ColinEssex]

Thanks Chris, I follow that.

Why do people post links to other sites? Why not just block it as a not possible thing to do.

I recall one of the members here had a link in their signature to their own site, maybe that was for monetary gain via adverts or sales or something.

Col

 

[ChrisO]

Col.

There are some links which I regard as okay.
For example, I have a link to a SkyDrive site which I consider to be a Microsoft site which I manage. We could quibble about words here but the proof of the pudding would be if Microsoft wanted to shut down SkyDrive then I would have no say in it.

I think the important thing is that, at least for the moment, Microsoft has not put advertising on the individual accounts. I thank Microsoft for that. But if they were to do so then I would consider closing my account. That would be a value judgment on my part and would depend on volume and type of advertising.

Chris.

 

[scott-atkinson]

Thanks Chris, I follow that.

Why do people post links to other sites? Why not just block it as a not possible thing to do.

I recall one of the members here had a link in their signature to their own site, maybe that was for monetary gain via adverts or sales or something.

Col

Col,

I'm a forum manager on an online Supply Chain discussion forum, and we tried banishing links from the forum, unfortunately spammers are pretty clever people, if only they aplied their intelligence to something better, and they were creating posts using a special html script, that within the actual letters of the posts themselves, although no link was evident, just viewing the post would register IP addresses of the viewer to a website clocking up hits...

One member posted random posts, for months, until we discovered that he was spamming the site...

We enabled links to the site after that and monitored both random activity and links...

 

[ColinEssex]

Again showing ignorance.

What advantage does hit numbers have?

Col

 

[scott-atkinson]

Again showing ignorance.

What advantage does hit numbers have?

Col

As a websight gets more hits, it climbs up the ranking in Search Engines, being on the first page of results as opposed to page 150 can be the difference of Thousands of pounds of revenue, it is a good selling point when you are dragging in advertisers to the sight..

Quite a few Spammers are used by start up companies to artificially build their on-line presence giving them a fast track to advertising...

Quite a lot of it is illegal activity, as advertising revenues are accrued for a sight that nobody has physically visited.

Quite often the illegal sights shut down once the owner has received advertising monies, never to be seen again...