There's a
thread at the Hullabaloo about this same subject, and I thought it would be prudent to capture the essentials here.
What to do if you see a spammer post
If it is a new post, do nothing. Please don't click on any links in the spam. Just go on to have fun elsewhere on the board.
Originally I asked that people send me a private message with a link to the spam message, but it turned out that I was spending much more time answering notes about spam than actually dealing with the spammers.
On the other hand, if a spam message stays around for a few days and you see that I have been active on the board, it probably means I have overlooked it. In that case, sending a PM to me about it would be good.
What to do if you suddenly find that you're banned for no apparent reason
You have my apologies in advance if this happens. I have a very long list of IP addresses that are commonly used by spammers, and those are blocked by the BBS.
I regret that we are blocking nearly all traffic from Russia, the Ukraine, and several countries' top-level domains. There's nothing I can do about it. Until the ISP's in those countries stop being a haven for spammers, we cannot allow any users from those places.
At the moment, I'm trying to find an anomaly where we seem to be blocking an IP in the United Arab Emirates that I didn't intend. I don't think we're blocking any domains in the *.ae top-level domain (though of course we might have to in the future), so I don't know how that happened.
If it
does happen to you and you can't get back in after you have reconnected to your ISP, try sending me a PM on another board. I'm on Insim almost every day. On
Insimenator.net I'm "Chairman Greg" and
Insimadult.net I'm "Greg". I'm also "Greg" on
M and M Needful Things. I check those boards fairly regularly, but give it a couple of days just in case I've not been there.
What to do if you are a spammer
Well, obviously, you have very severe psychological problems. The first thing to do is to admit that to yourself.
Self-help books aimed at teaching you to build your self-esteem might be of some use in recovering. If that doesn't work, seek professional help.
If you are a spammer and
can't admit to yourself that you are exhibiting severe socipathic behavior that you want to stop, then the best thing to do would be find a way to kill yourself that won't cause undue trauma for the sane people around you. Take heart, you are making a significant contribution to the human species by removing yourself from the gene pool; and that ought to be worth a lot of self-esteem.