Competitor harvesting forum e-mails

[Melprophet]

OK, I need some sage advice here...my UBB is small, but steady with a nice constant flow of about 40 regular daily posters.

Some time ago, a little trouble erupted with a couple of members, who I eventually booted from the forum. They have since set up a competing forum at a Yahoo club, and have decided to use my forum as a source of e-mails from which to draw users to their own forum.

I have no problem with competition, but when I set up my site 18 months ago, I didn't go over to other competing forums to recruit people, I just built the site with some hard work and fiddled with search engine placement till I got it right.

Yahoo won't do anything..no surprise there. These two competitors won't stop this practice, and I'm quite annoyed that a new user to my forum gets an invite to join a different forum within hours after registering at my UBB.

I'd love to have some kind of hack for the UBB, where accessing member e-mail addresses would require membership to the forum and password, but I don't see this type of hack available and the query drawn blanks at a couple of ubb hacker forums.

I know I could turn the e-mail feature off so all e-mails are not displayed, but that takes away from my community.

So the question I've now taken far too long to ask is...what can I do, if anything, to deal with this?

Prophet

[jimbo]

vBulletin uses forms to email members.[nbsp][nbsp]That way nobody knows the person's email address unless they reply.[nbsp][nbsp]And you have to be a registered user in order to send the email.[nbsp][nbsp]I'm sure UBB has something like this.

-jim

[Mandi]

I'd ask your community members what they think about it.[nbsp][nbsp]Offer your own opinion on the matter - how much work and resources you've put into creating this for them, and if they aren't a little irritated that someone else views that work, as a fresh field for harvesting.[nbsp][nbsp]When I've put it this way to my own community, they rallied and ignored outside harvest efforts.[nbsp][nbsp]I did not go to all this trouble, to be a shortcut for someone else.[nbsp][nbsp]I don't mind competition either, but I certainly expect them to go through the same hoops I did.[nbsp][nbsp]No stealing my hoops!!

I personally veil emails for a lot of reasons.[nbsp][nbsp]I figure if users want to share, they still can via the[nbsp][nbsp]tag.[nbsp][nbsp]I don't like the idea that email spiders can sift through the HTML thread pages for email addresses either.

[Terra]

email spiders can sift through the HTML thread pages This species of Spider, is my most hated as they attack message forums directly...

These perps unleash them at T-3 (or greater) speeds without any type of speed control or care to the damage they are causing...

Their goal is to gain as many emails, in the shortest amount of time...

These guys are usually the most creative to circumventing any type of resource control...[nbsp][nbsp]The faster I build better moustraps, the more creative they are at bioengineering the next mouse...

--
Terra
--I'm afraid that my feeding them radioactive cheese didn't help matters much either--
FutureQuest

[Tatu]

--I'm afraid that my feeding them radioactive cheese didn't help matters much either--You could try... Lord knows that Justin has some in his fridge, forgotten behind the battery acid... :P


[This message has been edited by Tatu (edited 11-10-00@08:50 am)]

[frankc]

Prophet, to enlarge on Mandi's idea, why not issue a nice "Welcome to our forums" message.[nbsp][nbsp]In that, add a note that some folks lacking scruples may be sending them a message to join their forum, and that they are "trolling" your forums to leech names for their own.[nbsp][nbsp]Put them in a negative but not a harsh light; the welcoming email should inform them of the facts and let your members decide on their own.

[nbsp][nbsp]Frank

[jimbo]

Because who really reads those welcoming emails anyway?[nbsp][nbsp]About 1 out of 5 people registered on my forums will email me asking a question that was answered in the welcoming email.

I'm just surprised that UBB, being such a "far superior product" than vB still doesn't utilize mail forms, or something like that.

-jim

[kickster]

jimbo

I'm just surprised that UBB, being such a "far superior product" than vB still doesn't utilize mail forms, or something like that.

LOL I just couldn't get over that comment, I am still laughing :D

whats next MS windows is superior to......

[Tatu]

VBulletin has a feature like that?! I'm going to have to do my best for my site to get that MYSQL package next time. ;)

--
How mad would a wood chuck get if a big neon pink Koala bear named Ishtar ran into the woods and chucked all the wood before the woodchuck could?

[Mandi]

About 1 out of 5 people registered on my forums will email me asking a question that was answered in the welcoming email.
This is really starting to annoy me.[nbsp][nbsp]I have a pretty busy forum, and just feel I don't have time for this.[nbsp][nbsp]I have started responding, "Gee, I know that's covered in the User Agreement (or Site Policies, or whatever) .[nbsp][nbsp]. . which you presumably read thoroughly before you joined . . . ?? (or, " . . . . since it's linked at the bottom of every single site page . . .?")

There's probably some special circle of hell for impatient webmasters.[nbsp][nbsp]I mean really, it probably takes me more time to type the above, than to answer the darn question.[nbsp][nbsp]I suppose it's nicer than pretending my contact addy is stupidquestions@, and then having an autoresponder that just says RTFM . . .

Umm, </vent> :D

[Armand]

Would a mail form even stop such people anyway?[nbsp][nbsp]I mean then they would just look at the source code for the mail form to get the email address no?[nbsp][nbsp]So probably a moot point no?

If it's a problem... couldn't you just go into general settings and turn off showing email addresses?[nbsp][nbsp]A pain probably for legit members, but hey.[nbsp][nbsp]:shrug:

[Melprophet]

Thanks everyone!

It doesn't seem to be having much of an effect on my forum as it turns out, so I guess I'll let it go, shrug it off, and sell my whopping 3 shares of Yahoo in protest to their sponsoring blatant hoop theft ;)

Prophet

[jimbo]

Would a mail form even stop such people anyway?[nbsp][nbsp]I mean then they would just look at the source code for the mail form to get the email address no?
Actually, it doesn't work like that at all.[nbsp][nbsp]The function that sends the mail is in the script, so the form looks something like this:

<form action=&quot;blah.php&quot;>
<INPUT TYPE=&quot;HIDDEN&quot; NAME=&quot;action&quot; VALUE=&quot;emailmessage&quot;>
<INPUT TYPE=&quot;HIDDEN&quot; NAME=&quot;userid&quot; VALUE=&quot;146&quot;>

The email address is stored in the database, so the script looks for the email address for user #146, and sends the mail to them.[nbsp][nbsp]The third party doesn't have access to any of the email addresses if the mailform option is turned on.

Here's the mail form to me on the vBulletin forums - feel free to check out the source (http://vbulletin.com/forum/member.php?action=mailform&amp;userid=146).[nbsp][nbsp]No mention of an email anywhere.

I'm a member on the forums at Sitepoint.com, and I recently received an email from them saying that the spiders were attacking email addresses in signatures on the forums, but not from profiles or the &quot;send email&quot; link.

-jim