FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

Over the past two days, there have been 600 emails by bots, and something like 200 fake 'member' posts. So, I took steps to overcome that happening again.

1. I shut board emailing off. You should be able to send a PM to someone else who's a member, but you cannot email anyone (including me) by proxy. Neither, can I do that to you. This ends up meaning that you probably can't get notifications for topic additions to which you are subscribed. I'm not sure that's true. The board instructions are vague. So if you want email notifications of changed topics, it might not happen. This board isn't meant to be busy, but contemplative, a place you can store your posts from around the web, where you can thoughtfully debate, etc.; so depending on your skin the icon changes should be infrequent and you won't miss much.

I don't know and haven't looked at the email addresses of members, but if they are real email addresses, you can be sure there will be no email sent by this board or any guest or member of it. For the whole emailing function OF the board, is now off.

2. I changed the registration test, to trick questions. So far, it's working well; stopped the spambots entirely. Apparently the new spambot software's OCR recognition works so well, the weird CAPTCHA we humans have problems with, are no problem for them. So if you or someone is trying to register and you can't figure out the trick question, as even a guest you can post a note to me in here, knowing your privacy is protected. For all comments in ADMIN forum go on moderation (as distinct from the subforums Problems and Suggestions, which are open and public). This is how I catch the bots, but also how you can write me without joining, yet be unseen. So if you can't understand the answer to the question, post to me in the ADMIN forum.

3. I have no knowledge of 'you', beyond what you personally tell me. The board allows me to 'manage users', but I don't know passwords; I could create new ones, if you forget yours. I could also know (but haven't looked up) emails, and can know IP addresses (but I don't understand them). The board lets me delete and ban based on email, username, IP Address, and it lets me deactivate or delete accounts, posts, and it lets me move posts. But none of that enables me to know WHO the user is. In fact, since the spambots are coming from Ukraine IPs with fake emails like 'sorteeemail', 'gogogmail' 'gmaildort', I just had to ban the email endings, and all IP addresses from 91.200-300 (midrange numbers). So all the more reason to use fake name and fake email.

4. This feature remains the same: you can change your username, and should be able to change your email at will. So make fake entries for both. Do it now, if you haven't done it already.

This way, no one can know. I don't know, don't want to. But who knows if some spambot gets developed which can pierce the veneer of this board? SO FAKE IT ALL. Please. That's your best defense. This is a controversial set of forums, and protection is vital for all of us. Content not identity, is what matters. After all, if we claim to be interested in freedom and truth, then we shouldn't care about identity, but only about content.

New Update: I just renewed GoDaddy, which includes the tools to make FrankForum. I asked them if they could know any of the IP addresses or anything else 'inside' the forum, and they said NO. At best, if I paid them to investigate, they could, else I'm the only one with the access.

Well, I don't look at that stuff and have no need to pay them; I back up the data offsite, and don't even know how to read it. Even so, never use your real name or a real email address in your profile, k?