Tip - Beating The Private Message Spammer

[Mike]

Spam is one of the most annoying things there is. I had a problem with a new member on one of the sites I manage, who was spamming all of the members on the members list, except administrators and moderators, with a budism message, through private messages.

How do you stop this from happening?

I created a new user, whose username starts at/near the beginning of the members list. I have his profile set to send an email if he receives a private message. I use an email address that I check every day for a registration email address.

If someone starts spamming the members list, I get an email right off the bat ;)

[Mike]

There is also a hack at vbulletin.org called Can't Use Private Messages Before X Posts (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=155308&highlight=pms+for+new+users).

This hack allows to you to put a certain number of posts that a user should have before Use Private Messages but the can still send to staff groups .. admin, moderators, super moderators