These days, it is getting common for spambots to no longer post any ads in topic or reply form on forums, and instead, send private messages to entire member lists or put advertisments in their forum signatures or website links fields. Some will even use their AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo fields to advertise, as well as their personal bio, when avaliable. These bots are harder to spot than regular spammer bots because they do not post new topics so the staff won't notice right away. This is made even harder due to the fact bots also rarely add these advertisments (which can often lead to malicious or innapropriate content) right when signing up on forums and can even take weeks to do so. While some people may consider these less visible advertisments less harmful than conventional ones, they can still cause problems if a member click the link when browsing profiles and the more time they're linked to, the higher their search engine rankings are.
A few months ago, we have solved the issue of PM spam by disabling the PM system for members who have less than 5 posts. Now, in order to filter profile ads, the only profile section that will be editable for members who have 0 posts will be "Account Related Settings", where they can change their e-mail address and password. While this will not prevent the increasing wave of bots from registering on Omnimaga, this will make it much harder for them to advertise, as now their only way to do so will be to post, which will alert the staff and the bot will end up banned and posts deleted.
We are sorry in advance for the inconveniences this might cause for new members. For new members who have questions regarding the website, we recommend the "Feedback & Questions" sub-forum at
http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=13 and as always, the other appropriate sections for other kind of questions (and obviously, the search engine, in case the question might alerady been awnsered).
