This member has not activly participated on the forum by posting.

[Kate]

Saw that under someone's name. What does it mean?

[Steve of Lansing]

Edited to correct a mistake

It just means they have signed up and are members, but haven't started any threads or posted a comment on any threads yet.

[Steve Ashton]

Actually, this has nothing to do with any provisional status. It means that the person, while a full member, has never made even one post to the forum.

This tag under the username was started while I was going through the entire member list one at a time. I have been looking for what we call drop-box spammers. This is the type of spammer who will register to a forum and then fill out their profile with embedded links to viagra and get rich quick schemes etc. They never activly participate, in fact most are not actual people but just other computers programmed to do this.

The whole idea behind drop box spam is that they hope you will find their links and click on them. The spammers are paid a small amount for each person who clicks to the actual sight selling this stuff.

Or worse yet are lured into clicking to a site that will pull all the email addresses out of your computer and use them to send more of this stuff to all your friends.

So, if you go into the member's list you will find many of our members with this tag and another that says "This member has not logged onto the forum for at least one year." These are the ones I have actually checked.

Just as a matter of interest to some of you, I find on average 8-10 spammers each day who try to get into X Marks to spread their version of electronic junk mail. Many I catch before they even finish the registration.

If you registered to the forum in the last two years you may remember that you were asked to answer a question as part of the registration. The question is one that I hope can only be answered by a person. This is just the first step in weeding out the computer program spammers.