1000th Forum Member!

[Ed Lecuyer]

I would like to formally congratulate "odistcoffey" as our 1000th member of the WW&F discussion forum.

Like 90% of the applicants who join our forum, odistcoffey, appears to be a spammer of some type who attempts to flood the Internet with ads for various products.

In actuality, we have roughly 200 registered members in our forum.

If you are so inclined to sign odistcoffey up for junk mail, etc., his contact information is:
odistcoffey@gmail.com; IP Address: 125.99.231.204

FYI, its getting to be a bit of a chore dealing with all these spammers. I will continue to do so for the good of our group - but I'm hoping that the recent lull in conversation within the Forum is temporary.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

For what it's worth, Ed, Kudos to you for maintaining such a professional public forum.  Your level of effort results in an extremely valuable space for our members to express and spread their interest in our efforts.  Thank you!

Jason

[Paul Horky]

Thanks Ed for all your hard work to make this the great fourm that it is, and for keeping it safe!

[Ira Schreiber]

Having worked with Ed on several projects, I can give a hardy second to the kudos.
Thanks, Ed.

Ira

[Wayne Laepple]

While working with Ed may require one to be hardy, any kudos sent in his direction should be hearty. 

Cheers -- Wayne

[Ira Schreiber]

I meant hardy as in strong and hale;  not hearty and hail!!

Cheers II
Ira

[James Patten]

Thanks for everything, Ed.  Although I have to say the forum certainly would become more lively if we let all the spammers have their way (but not in a good way).

James
Forum Manager Emeritus

[John Kokas]

Actually Ed you bring up a good idea.  Let's identify some of these spammers and if we could get everyone to "bomb" their sites, maybe the word would get out not to mess with us.  The reason most of these folks continue to do it is because they can basically do it with impunity.    Let's come up with a way to turn the tables..........  Maybe a modern day version of "Don't Tread On Me" can become our new motto......

[Henry Stahle]

How about "Don't Spam on me".  We could create a flag replacing the snake of "Don't tread on me" with rain drops shaped like spam cans falling from the sky!

[Ed Lecuyer]

Hi All,

Thanks for the kind words. Maintaining a civil, spam-free forum is a more work (and stress) than most realize. The forum I manage for work is far less active, and because it is restricted to our customers only (and not created from a standard forum library) we rarely get any spam problems.

As far as spamming the spammers, I doubt that would work. I'm sure Google shut down this guy's email account a long time ago. Going after the IP address is problematic, since they can be concealed or redirected.

There is a system (which this forum is connected to) that is supposed to identify and automatically block known spammers. Unfortunately, they come up with new IP addresses and email accounts to hijack quicker than the system can keep up. You can see a little of this by Googling our 1000th member, "offey@gmail.com" or the IP Address, "125.99.231.204". You'll see lots of references to him as a spammer.

If you should choose to spam the spammer, be sure to do so using an anonymous Proxy and fake email address. Otherwise, you could become a victim yourself. In my book, its not worth it.