A quick message about spam

[Richard]

In case you haven't noticed, we've been suffering in recent weeks from increases in the amount of spam that has been posted. In ever single case this has been the result of automated systems that simply go around the Internet to every forum they can find, automatically register (they have cracked the image verification system used by a lot of different forums). There are tens of thousands of sites being affected daily by this. The only reason they actually do this is not to get users of this site to click their links (as you might think). Rather, it is so that when Google and other search engines index the forum topics, they see the links to these sites and the words used in the link which increases their own rank for when people search for certain things - be it discount pharmaceuticals or whatever. Until Invision Power, the makers of this forum software, introduce upgrades to their image verification system (which are on their way soon), there is little we can do to prevent it. There's no need in posting in these topics. If you want to do something click the report link that will let our staff know. The threads are immediately deleted, the user's accounts posting them are immediately deleted, and their email address domain names are permanently banned from signing up. Just ignore them and carry on browsing the site as you normally would and we'll take care of it. It's frustrating I know (especially when I'm the one who has to delete the accounts and ban the email addresses), but there's little else we can do. Any of you who post regularly on other big forums will know that it's a universal issue.