all this spam.

[jogrebe]

Linda, if sexman was a spambot like ilya believes it is it probably harvested your email address from your profile in the process. To prevent other spambots from doing the in the future I'd recomend remiving your email address or at the very least spell it out like username at provider_name dot com to hide it from bots.

[yresim]

Linda: you can not remove your e-mail address from your profile. However, you can hide it from SpamBots.

From the profile page, scroll down to the "preferences" section, and change "always show my e-mail address" to "no."

If you need your e-mail address to be available to others on this board, you can spell it out in your signature. Something like this:

linda at teachat dot com

but, of course, using your real e-mail address. The spaces and lack of symbols (@) helps you to avoid detection by bots.

You can also "mangle" your address by adding a word to it and then leaving instructions on which word to remove. Like this:

linda spam at teachat dot com
to send me an e-mail, remove the "spam."

This further helps to avoid bots, because, even if they detect your e-mail address, they may miss the extra word.

~Yresim~

[peachaddict]

Out of curiosity, what's a spambot? Is it like something that reads people's profiles or something? What does it do?

[Warden Andy]

A spambot is a program that will do the work of the spammer. It will flood a forum with spam, and aparently will search for any email address, and spam them.

[yresim]

SpamBots can be programmed to go through any forum or web site and just look for e-mail addresses. They then place any e-mail addresses they find into a database. The spammer can then use the database to send spam, or sell the database to other spammers.

~Yresim~

[peachaddict]

Thank you, Andy and Yresim! A program to put spam on forums and then look at the forum for email addresses, put them in a database, and possibly spread it to other spammers is terrible! No wonder people have to be careful when posting their email addresses for friends.

Those nervous about the prospect of this happening should try to follow Yresim's advice on hiding email addresses from these things by disguising them.

It's sad to not have the guest posting, but it was necessary. Thanks, Ilya.