Dear all,
Recently I posted a message about Forum spam becoming more prevalent, and that I therefore require manual activation of members. Someone asked me if their e-mail address was safe from spammers, and should they not remove their e-mail address.
First of all, forum spammers aim to post messages to medicines or pron sites, attempting to get clicks to these sites. They are not after e-mail addresses.
Secondly, if you remove your e-mail address from your membership, we have NO way of contacting you, and you have NO way of getting back into the forum. It is actually impossible as changing your e-mail address requires you to validate your e-mail address. Which you can't if you've entered an invalid e-mail address. Finally, it is in conflict with our terms of use.
However, there is an option in the profile which I recommend all of you employ for safety: go to Account related settings and then set the tick mark behind Hide email address from public?. Now the system will not share your e-mail address with anyone.
People can still communicate with you through private messages, but they cannot e-mail you. We recommend that you set this.
Peter
