United Cavers Exploration Team

I have noticed a few 'interesting' new users, including one today posting spammy advertising. They got short shrift from me, with the topic deleted and their username as well.

If any of the other admins spot stuff like this - just delete the topic and the user. Don't bother just banning them - that just clutters up the membership list with rubbish!

Spotted another spammer today (14/05/25). I had just logged on and noticed someone registering. They then posted spam and logged out. Spam and username deleted - I think they lasted all of 5 minutes!

One thing I do notice is new users seem to register and have a website address in their profile. They don't do anything like posting to threads and never login again. I think they hope that google/bing/etc indexing this site will pick up the link - effectively free advertising. While this used to work about 15 years ago, google et al got wise to link farms being used to push sites up in the search results and so stopped doing it.  I my spare and happy moments I will run a SQL query on the members table picking out those who list a website, who haven't posted and haven't logged on since registration. They might be eligible for some 'cleaning out'

I could make all new registrations subject to admin approval. I am reluctant to do this as it means more work for admins and it may put off curious users who might be interested in a bit more info but may not want to wait for approval before they post. It would certainly put off spammers!

Dave