Up until now I've been just taking spammer activity as junk you have to deal with.

But I've a very bad day today, and I've lost patience.

The last spammer had the entire IP address banned. As in 188.everything.

Most of the spam is coming out of Russia, mainly SEO peddlers using us to build links for search engines. Or porn.

As far as I'm aware, Auslander is the only member from that region, and I have his IP recorded.

The rest are going to get IP banned as I see them now.

If you hear of anyone who suddenly can't get in, let me know. I'll try not to get people blocked, but it might happen by accident.

IP banning is never a good thing, but there is a point where you just slam the door. And I reached it today.

I got two in the last couple days from a "ChaCooro" and they're selling dynamic and rotary proxies. I'm not sure how to forward PMs.

There won't be anymore from that username.

Best way to send to me would be to quote it for reply, then copy the whole quote, cancel the reply, and paste that into a pm to me.

Can you restrict PMs to users that have 10 or more posts?

In theory, yes.

But I can't see where at the moment. I'll see what I can find about doing it.

It's come to my attention that a recent registration I'd marked as a potential spammer has instead sent out sales PMs for stuff unrelated to being an author.

If you get any of these in the future, please send me a copy of the PM if possible, or at least the username and what they are selling.

I'm not going to allow the forum to be spammed through PMs. But since PMs are completely private, I rely on you to report them so I can take action.

I had wondered what some of these registrations were for, and PM spam hadn't occurred to me.

Now I know, let's stamp on the practice immediately it happens.

This is what is called a zombie thread, I believe.

A spam post brought it back from the dead.