Dear 49ers Paradise Faithful,
(please take a moment to read in entirety)
There are two issues I would like to address regarding circumstances surrounding 49ers Paradise. Not coincidentally the two issues are strongly related.
Many of you probably received a SPAM personal message today, that may have also been delivered to your email address (depending on your profile preferences). I assure you that 49ers Paradise does not send SPAM, and takes every measure to prevent such events. So what happened?
As 49ers Paradise has grown and become more popular it has become subject to SPAM attacks. These SPAM attacks come in a number of forms. Sometimes, individuals or robots will send emails from an email addresses that appear to come from an @49ersparadise.cjb.net or .com address. Other times, individuals or robots will try and post messages on the forum, or shoutbox telling people to check out a certain site. And in this particular time, a individual or robot attained an account with 49ers Paradise and used it to send mass SPAM personal messages to all the forum members. All of these users are banned immiediately, but unfortuantely that is a retroactive active.
These attacks lead my site host to censor my account (the second issue) until I remedied the problem and contacted them. Actually, I managed to remedy the account before the host censored my account. Nevertheless, the down time of about 2 hours can be attributed to this. I have since contacted the host, and am once again in good standing with them.
I do my best to keep this site clear of SPAM, and to protect all of my users from receiving SPAM as a result of their participation in the community. Once in a while an attack like this happens that I am unable to stop, and I do apologize for that. Unfortunately as the site continues to grow and SPAMMERS continue to become more sophisticated – 49ers Paradise will be a target more often. Fortunately I am up for the challenge.
In the past 3 weeks leading up to today I have implemented 3 different SPAM protection measures. New users now have to decode a password that is supposed to minimize robot signups. Additionally, each new member must be approved by an administrator before they can begin posting. I also increased the time that must go by between posts to prevent anyone from posting excessively (which is the tactic SPAMMERS typically try first). I have as of today implemented further SPAM protection that will prevent new users from sending personal messages for a certain probationary period. In addition I will now be contacting each attempted signup before they are given permission to join the board. Today I also applied a security patch to the forum software. Obviously I regret having to implement such features, but I know how important it is to keep this site clear of SPAM.
What can you do to help? The best possible think you can do is make use of the “report to moderator” feature in the board, or send me an email with a copy of any SPAM you receive that appears to come from this site with a short not explaining the situation. Other than that, please accept my apology, and know that I am doing everything I can to exceed your expectations for 49ers Paradise.
Thank you
Bryan
