Oh, Stop the Spam!

Some people will do just about anything to get other's ganders up, have a little fun and maybe (I don't see how they could possibly believe this one) they actually think they'll get a few extra visits to their website! One of the first emails I read this morning was from a concerned member of my message boards letting me know that someone had posted spam there. As I was getting ready to go to my boards I had noticed that there were quite a few emails there pretty much saying the same thing. By now I've figured out that these messages must have been of some magnitude because we're all used to a little spam but...what was this about?

After visting my boards I quickly realized WHY so many people had so quickly emailed me. Some non-friendly (for lack of more unprofessional words!) spammer had posted some links to websites of an adult nature! Quickly (Kara and) I found the IP Number of the offender, banned that number and of course deleted the post. I found it necessary to apologize to my loyal members for such messages to appear. I started the long process of changing each and every forum to allow only registered members to post. While I was doing this the spammer had the guts to read my apology and post many many more posts of the same nature! (Of course now I threatened to bring in the authorities!)

So, now I've wasted a good part of my morning changing the administration of the boards and making it an inconvience for someone to stop by and post anything of revelance with out first registering. I didn't want to have to resort to such measures but, what choice do I really have? I'm not stupid enough to believe that that this will stop the spam but I do believe it will put a little more control over it. It's a shame that I'd have to do something like this! I mean did this person REALLY believe that a bunch of work at home moms were going to visit this site?