Members email, and IP

[Misaka]

now then if its allowed this one site I use alot they have it set up for where only members can see both E-mail and IP as well as Browser

couldn't Proboards do this kind of set up?
its within boundaries and staff cannot see it but only the Main Admin could in which case the only one who would know everything would be "you the main admin/site owner"


see attachment of what I mean

Attachments:

[Patrick [ASE]]

Depends on what the law actually says when it is implemented, it may state that the only ones that have access to that are the forum providers, so the site you gave as an example would have to follow the same laws.

[Misaka]

Nov 15, 2012 14:28:30 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

Depends on what the law actually says when it is implemented, it may state that the only ones that have access to that are the forum providers, so the site you gave as an example would have to follow the same laws.

the Owners of that forum is not a Proboards forum that is [AS]

TM & © 2012 Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

AdultSwim.com is part of Turner Entertainment Digital which is part of the Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network.

and I'll be honest I hate lithium forum technology

sorry for the copyright logo couldn't get everything with that last screen show

[VS Admin]

Nov 15, 2012 14:05:42 GMT -8 fredtransit said:

have to say this may be a dealbreaker for me. I lost a 5 year old forum and have no way of contacting some of the members of the old forum. Now I am keeping the members emails off the forum just in case. Also in the early days I deleted hundreds of spammers before they posted as I could google thier emails before the membership was approved. I found it quicker to google emails than ips as one email/ID can have many IP addresses. Not happy about this option been taken away from me.
Shame as I was just getting used to the forum........

We actually provide you with new ways of contacting your members in v5. In the admin area, go to Members > Email Members.

On this page you can email any member of your forum just by typing in their username. You can also choose to email entire groups (such as all your Admins/Gmods), all of your staff, or "everyone" on the forum.

We make it very easy to stay in touch via email.

[AshFR]

It's pretty easy to do it.

[fredtransit]

I didnt break any TOS. Three servers worth of forums were 'lost' by forumer.com. I literally didnt see it coming and niether did any of the other admins so I would be a fool not to protect myself from loosing contaxt with my members. Also in the UK AFAIK its fine to keep a record of club members details as long as you stay within the data protection act and dont sell/pass it on.

[VS Admin]

Hi fred,

We keep continuous backups of all of our servers at a location off-site from the rest of our machines.

Patrick

[KT-KaBo0M]

Nov 4, 2012 9:25:04 GMT -8 moonbeam said:

If I recall correctly, they were going to integrate stopforumspam.com into this somehow. With only being able to see a partial IP and no email, I'm not sure how this will work. I haven't spotted anything yet that looks obvious.

Oh I hope they do that because for admins not to be able to see IP's we cannot spammers ourselves and it is VERY important to keep spammers off our forums. For example, if spammers are allowed to spam on our proboards then the spammers usually go spam on another forum as well and link to the proboards post they just spammed. It then affects our listings in search engines and makes members not want to be on our forums if we cannot control a spam problem.

Nov 5, 2012 14:00:34 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

We are already integrated with StopForumSpam. We query their databases constantly to block known spammers.

That is excellent! I did not know! But I wonder this as well:

Nov 5, 2012 14:11:07 GMT -8 Shrike said:

How would we report a new spammer now though seeing as we don't have the whole IP to report. Will there be an option for this when banning or something along those lines?

Sorry I am just reading about this now so trying to not multipost by putting it all in one post (and going back to edit to add in more quotes and questions).

Nov 11, 2012 18:53:37 GMT -8 Martyn Dale said:

Generally you will find that governments and regulatory offices consider them to be personal information, while companies and technically inclined users do not.

Unfortunately it is the former that makes the rules, and as such you end up in positions such as this.

Who can we talk to who makes the decisions? I realize now that it is really out of Proboard's hands and Proboards does have the spam under control. We just wish to be heard and voice our concerns to the ones that made the decision that IP's are an invasion of privacy.

Nov 12, 2012 11:06:46 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

One thought I'm having, based on the discussion here, is maybe the ability for us to query the StopForumSpam database on the pending registrations page, and display the results for you on the page? This may be possible and may alleviate some concerns, while allowing us to still protect member privacy.

THAT would be awesome! I currently have a gaming Proboard as well as have a paid for SMF site where I have implemented Stop Forum Spam as well as use a program called "Forum Spam List Checker" so I DO like to have some control as not all spammers are already listed on Stop Forum Spam but get listed as people report them. I don't use my Proboard a lot now but I still have concern over people's safety. That is my main concern. Keeping members safe from clicking spammer links .. as believe it or not .. some members are pretty gullible. It is our own responsibility as forum owners to keep our members safe. They trust us when they register and give us their info. Also I thought when they register it says that admins are the only ones who can see their info but it cannot be used in anyway to solicit them and cannot give their info to anyone else.

Nov 13, 2012 7:41:06 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Knowing your own personal information is just fine. That's why it's personal information. We aren't going to add functionality specific to users themselves. There is no where that IP Addresses display fully on v5. That makes it really easy to say we comply with any law about IPs. Compared to saying that we only show some IPs some of the time. We don't have a place for IPs to display in the layout anywhere. Adding that isn't necessary just so someone can look at their own address when it's so simple to find that out so many places else online.

We have safeguards in place that prevent your from banning yourself. So you couldn't even make a mistake regarding your own IP.

This is actually very good to hide the information even from the person themselves as it also adds extra protection incase the member's account ever gets hacked they can't get that info. However I guess if they got in through the password and email they would already know it .. but still over the years I have not had any problem with Proboards. I used to get spam when I was on it as my main forum and I did get spammers but I don't know if I just don't get any now because my forum is not listed high in search engines any more or if it is on Proboards side that improvements have made spammers less likely.

Nov 15, 2012 14:05:42 GMT -8 fredtransit said:

have to say this may be a dealbreaker for me. I lost a 5 year old forum and have no way of contacting some of the members of the old forum. Now I am keeping the members emails off the forum just in case. Also in the early days I deleted hundreds of spammers before they posted as I could google thier emails before the membership was approved. I found it quicker to google emails than ips as one email/ID can have many IP addresses. Not happy about this option been taken away from me.
Shame as I was just getting used to the forum........

True for me as well ... when I switched from Proboards to my paid forum I only wanted to invite reliable good members to the new forum. When emailing all members I have gotten some that forget they are a member and get made at me and say "take me off the list". That won't be the case again. Just saying it for something else to consider. I needed the email list to email certain members which already said it was fine to email them. In fact on one proboards that is a medical one I know that they used to have a special section where only admins could see and there was a list of contact information given through private message through member's own free will incase anyone "disappeared" from the net. They would contact and find out if they were in the hospital or what not (which was often the case with those members of that particular medical proboards).


Also I wonder if these changes will get sites like this to shut down because they no longer can stop spammers on their own. I hope this site stays up as it is very educational and I refer to it often: kasha-against-spam.proboards.com

[KT-KaBo0M]

I just checked one of my proboards and noticed that a spammer was able to register back in March but never spammed. When did Proboards start with Stop Forum Spam? Curious.

Also how do I know it is a spammer if the member never spammed?

Well I am experienced at recognizing spammers and the email is a dead giveaway as well as the spammer's email AND IP are listed on SFS. Take a look for yourself (admins can **** out any info you don't want listed here):

www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/121.97.231.132

Name: caylee
Email: [e-mail]
Last Known IP: 121.97.231.132 (appears in the Stop Forum Spam database 54 times)
(seen spamming on other forums this link: ***.personalmoneynetwork.***)
Country of origin: Philippines

Looking at this, I know to remove the spammer before "she" gets to post any spam. Will there still be a report spam button at least for spammers that get through and DO post after we are unable to check them in v5?

[VS Admin]

Hi,

We can not disclose exactly how our anti-spam system works, because doing so could reveal to spammers what they would need to do to get around it.

[Misaka]

Nov 17, 2012 15:35:33 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

Hi,

We can not disclose exactly how our anti-spam system works, because doing so could reveal to spammers what they would need to do to get around it.

this will be an interesting toy for you guys ;D ;D ;D

[fredtransit]

Nov 17, 2012 15:21:29 GMT -8 KT-KaBo0M said:

I just checked one of my proboards and noticed that a spammer was able to register back in March but never spammed. When did Proboards start with Stop Forum Spam? Curious.

Also how do I know it is a spammer if the member never spammed?

Well I am experienced at recognizing spammers and the email is a dead giveaway as well as the spammer's email AND IP are listed on SFS. Take a look for yourself (admins can **** out any info you don't want listed here):

www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/121.97.231.132

Name: caylee
Email: [e-mail]
Last Known IP: 121.97.231.132 (appears in the Stop Forum Spam database 54 times)
(seen spamming on other forums this link: ***.personalmoneynetwork.***)
Country of origin: Philippines

Looking at this, I know to remove the spammer before "she" gets to post any spam. Will there still be a report spam button at least for spammers that get through and DO post after we are unable to check them in v5?

at the moment its dead easy to spot even unreported spammers. Just google the email address. If they are a spammer and have spammed another board (even if they havent been reported) thier spam posts will show up with the google search. Dead give aways are posts in a variety of languages and obviously loads of links.Spammers tend to sign up loads of times using the same email so l find the email is the best one to check.

[Patrick [ASE]]

As Pat has said, the secure global login is not changing, the real test of how the system works is to wait until all boards are converted, and see what options you have for controlling spam.

if you happen to know the IP of a spammer, you still have the option to ban by IP

If you have registrations set for approval, when a member registers there is a message box they can fill in, you can place a notice somewhere (maybe a custom page set as homepage) telling new members to say something about themselves, and that you won't approve unless they do.


On one of my forums i have a guest board, sure i get the occasional spam, but i just hit the ban button and remove their post.
Moving forward into V5 that guest board will still be there, and i will deal with the issues as they arise
We get our fair share of spam at support too, but it is dealt with swiftly, won''t be any different in V5

[Thesealion]

I have one question which may have already been clarified, but I can't see it. I was thinking earlier about guests. What if you had a guest board? How do you block certain guests? The only way to ban them is by IP...how does that work?

[Martyn Dale]

The moderate dropdowns give options which allow you to ban the guest in question. You can even use the same functionality to see if the IP matches one of your registered members who is just posting as a guest.