As many of you may have noticed, we have recently been having a problem with "Spambots" plaguing the forums. They come in all different types and names, and do a very poor job at disguising their true purpose... but they are pesky nonetheless.

TestowySsie made a thread listing about 300 different webcam sites. ADAMa listed a whole lot of pron sites, and more recently new user KettyKink. The threads are easily identifiable by the awkward usernames and the obvious thread titles, such as "Michelle Trachtenberg Booty..." and various others.

This probably goes without saying... but the FFF Staff would like to send out a warning to leave these threads alone. There is no need to reply to them, as funny as your comments can be sometimes. And you definitely don't need to post anything like "this can be closed now" or any other backseat moderating. And most importantly... Do Not click Any links that the Spambots post. After making sure my anti-virus/anti-spyware and firewalls were up to date, I've tested a few out and they are loaded with malicious software that attacks your computer.

Unfortunately for us, these Spambots have also been posting at weird times of day when no Staff members are online. Due to slow activity as of late, we'll probably notice these threads almost immediately after logging in, but you can also help out a little by using the "Report" button. I think it should automatically send a PM to the next Moderator/Admin to login so that the problem is brought to their attention right away... but it hasn't been used in forever, so I am unsure. Use it next time and we can find out.

And now that I am in danger of making a TMC Quality post, and we can't have that, I shall go ahead and post this.

-Relient A, FFF Staff

ive reported a couple of the spambots, dont worry about not being able to tackle them straight, im glad they arent just neglected for weeks upon weeks :) Spambots are a pain in the arse, but they are just a passing phase, ive seen forums have 10+ a day for weeks, but in the end they just leave, when they realise they arent getting any traffic from the forum/site they are posting on. So the less clicks, the least likely they are to spam

Another excellent reason to not click the links. If people ignore them, it renders them harmless, obviously, but we like to make sure we run a clean establishment here. That, and we aim to protect our members from the potential damage to the computers that will follow from clicking any links accidentally.

I have seen them attacking other forums too, funnily, one that just died.

Woot woot Reliant. I've totally been meaning to make a topic similar to this...and if there was a big spam attack that I missed this weekend I'm going to be a bit agitated...the one weekend I'm not working and spontaneously decide to go somewhere after originaly deciding to stay home...

I always thought the report button emailed and/or PMed the Admins...might do the same for us Mods, but if nothing else a PM at least. The best way to find out is to use it...

And as already mentioned while it may be fun to reply to spammers with sarcastic comments it's much better to ignore them. When a spammer gets no attention they often get bored and leave since thier main motive is to stir up waves...a spambot is a different story, but is still best ignored and reported.

Rezzing this but I just found out why we were gettting so many Spam-bots in the past few months.

WHen registration was enabled, it was not confirmed through email validation. What I mean is that instead of having to verify an account here through e-mail validation, the spam-bots were just registering on here and able to post right away. I switched it back over to e-mail validation only.