Spam Accounts

[Selezen]

Are we going to have a clearout of the spam accounts? I notice there are getting on to 1000 members now, and I dread to think how many of them are spambots.

The more that are registered and stay registered, the more spam is likely to be posted. Disabling or banning them is fine, but it would be nice to have an accurate count of members.

Just a thought.

[Uncle Reno]

We had a clearout fairly recently, DaddyHoggy and Captain Hespereus doing all the hard work, I think. As far as all the spam, bots and potential bots that I report goes, they are all new sign ups. I just think that a lot of people sign up but don't post.

[JensAyton]

There is almost no chance of an old account suddenly being used to spam.

[TGHC]

We had a clearout fairly recently, DaddyHoggy and Captain Hespereus doing all the hard work, I think. As far as all the spam, bots and potential bots that I report goes, they are all new sign ups. I just think that a lot of people sign up but don't post.

I just had a look at the member list, and out of the first 52 members (may/jun/jul 2004), 35 have never posted. They might be lurkers, but most probably don't visit, and have forgotten completely. On that basis you could assume that two thirds of the members are "hibernating" or don't exist any more, and that there are approx 320 "real" members.

[JensAyton]

Again… what’s the point of clearing out old members? What exactly constitutes an “accurate count”, and why would we want one?

[reills]

I agree with Ahruman. Other than preventing someone else from grabbing the particular "handle" used, a non-active account deos not hurt anything per se. On the other hand (besides five more fingers), I don't understand the reasoning behind the folks who fill out an account and then never use it