Very annoying.

[DrKMcK]

The wack attacks who make those stupid names on the "members online" list make it very unpleasant to see who's on the site. I'm peering at the list going, "Oh, okay, Colby's on", or "Bec is on"]. It's frustrating. Will it ever go away?

[BrainGirl]

Until there's an anti-virus program that can actually hunt down the source and zap it, probably not

[humfry]

AFAIK (from experience of my own forum) the only way you can prevent them is to have registrations by invitation only, rather than people/bots surfing around looking for sites to join being able to sign on there & then. Of course they have to await approval, but meanwhile their crazy names will appear.

Private invitation means that unless new proper members knew someone already on the site they are excluded as there would be no way of contacting the site admin. LIke no-one will come to your party if you have not sent them an invite with when & where.

Don't worry about it! The names are usually so ludicrous they are obviously spam. You can ban their IP addresses but they just use different ones. It causes more annoyance to the site mods than to any of us!

[Esmy]

I don't even notice the names at all. I don't pay attention to who is online. I just browse or respond to posts and sometimes people will write back soon.

[Skeever]

It's the way of things now, unfortunately. Going online at all requires a certain degree of effort and vigilance that it didn't before. Part of almost any online social activity WILL be infested with Trolls, or the inane bots and spam artists.

Curious to see how much worse it gets before the general net world at large manages to handle it. If it does, or if it can? And this is coming from someone who spent the last ten plus years as a Unix hacker? (in the sense of computer literate, geek kinda person, not the media image of hackers....thieves, terrorists etc. Hacker was originally a word meaning you knew your way around computers and the net, and you know a bit about programming, or the like? Now? I back off the Net to be honest.

It's reaching a certain high water mark that may give a clue as to what the future of being a Netizen means? for better or worse?

Long story short, there is so much more these days that we just learn to avoid.....whether or not we like it. Which I suppose is a long winded issue best discussed outside of HC....but yeah........annoyances proliferate more than promiscuous rabbits these days? :P

[Skeever]

Brain Girl, ain't no anti virus that can stop people from spamming. It just recognizes algorithms intending to take control of your computer, or perform functions you didn't authorize. Best look at anti Spam software, but even that is a limited attempt to control massive spam waves online? Sigh......

[BrainGirl]

Originally Posted by Skeever

Brain Girl, ain't no anti virus that can stop people from spamming. It just recognizes algorithms intending to take control of your computer, or perform functions you didn't authorize. Best look at anti Spam software, but even that is a limited attempt to control massive spam waves online? Sigh......

I know, it was more wishful thinking (of a Star Wars/Innerspace nature) than anything else

[Skeever]

May the Scent Glands be With You! :P

[Colby and the Dwarfs]

I know! I hate it too. Can't the mods just ban them already?!? It's driving me insane, among other things. *sigh* Or maybe people shouldn't appear till they've made one post? Lol.

[Vectis Hamstery]

As has been discussed in similar threads recently, just ignore them. They are dealt with as required. Banning all the potential spam accounts would take an enormous amount of mod time (we are volunteers and have work/life/families/animals to care for outside the forum) and has been mentioned in this thread even if they were IP banned, they may just use another IP to reregister. Also banning them wouldn't remove their names from appearing in the list.

So please, just ignore them in the list. If they upset you that much, use the 'unread posts' function in the top right hand corner of the forum to browse threads rather than coming via the front page.