Well gang, once again the automated spam-bots are hitting this site and hitting it hard. Over the course of the last week, I've been dealing with automated scripts surfing in through anonymous proxies and registering. While the anti-spam measures I have in place prevents their vile messages from showing to you, I still have to go through and delete both the spam and the user account that created it.

As of right now, they're claiming a gmail.com user address (last time it was yahoo.com and previously, hotmail.com). As a result, I've banned any and all gmail.com addresses from registering on this website. Yes, I know it's going to effect some legitimate users, but sadly, until google is able to aggregate their fecal matter and get a handle on the abuse of their service, it's the best solution for both myself and the site. Spam registrations using their domain outnumber the legitimate registrations by a significant amount right now.

I'm hopeful that this will be sufficient to stop most of the additional work they're creating for me. But, if they decide to spoof yahoo.com or hotmail.com (or any of the other webmail services) again, I may have to block those domains as well. If this happens and you use one of these domains for your account, you will effectively be locked out. For this reason, I'm suggesting that anyone who does use one of these addresses, give consideration to editing your user account to change to a "real" email address.

I apologize for the inconvenience this will cause the few legitimate gmail users on this site. Unfortunately, you are going to suffer the most, because of the actions of a few unscrupulous individuals. If you do find yourself locked out of your account, please email me with your user name and I can update your account with a new email address for you. It would be most helpful if you could send that email from the account you wish to have your user account here associated with.

Benny