People Looking Around

Every time I log into the forum, I check out who else is online. Tonight while browsing the “General Chastity Chat” area, I spotted a lighter blue Google [Bot] icon. Hovering over it didn’t make it turn red like the other members’ icons did when you mouse-over them. Looking through all the other sections showed no such sign; this only appeared in the General Chasity Chat part. I verified it twice. I wasn’t sure if there was any cause for worry, just wanted to share what I saw.

Search engines dispatch 'bots' or 'sniffers' that crawl around looking for keywords to index; this is why you get answers so fast when entering a search query. The main issue involves the dozens of Russian spammers (not exclusively from Russia, though many are) who constantly sweep through forums like ours. They use scripts to join and register automatically in order to post messages. These scripts have become quite advanced, which is why we now require that a new member's first post be manually approved so we can confirm they are real humans. The tricky part is figuring out how to delete or ban these spammers effectively. You likely notice each morning a list of new members with rather strange names. Many spammer scripts create fake names using semi-random letters, mixing vowels and consonants together, but I'm also noticing some that look *almost* exactly like the nicknames someone might pick for themselves on a forum, so we have to examine those carefully to avoid accidentally banning an actual person.