Ah well goodbye Suzanne.

I could screen membership, for 'real' people, but I don't want to make it harder for people to join the site, anything that presents an extra barrier can put people off signing up, however if this spate continues we may have to become more like the nanny state....

I should say, in boderline cases, where it looks like it really is a 'real person' who is just trying it on, to get members for their own site, for example, I will contact them and give them an opportunity to remain members of this site.

Dear John,

Lillian Conty left an identical message for as many members of the site as she could, saying that she had read their profile and was impressed, and would they please email her as she had an urgent message for them, and she provided an email address.

What would have followed, I don't know for sure of course, but I have enough experience to be more than 99% sure it would be some sort of scam, asking either for financial help, or simply a way to harvest email addresses for spammers to use.

I will ban any user that spams members on this site, or abuses the site - and sending identical messages to many users, within a short space of joining, asking them for private contact, and yet providing no profile information or join any discussions, falls in to the category of 'spammer' for me.

When I ban the user, the software automatically deletes all the content. If I hadn't Banned 'Lillian' no doubt every member would have received the same message.

(In fact behaviour like this suggests 'Lillian' is not a person, but a piece of software designed to contact people and collect their details for some reason)

I apologise if this feels like 'big brother' being on guard, but I would rather be too careful than have someone on the site taken advantage of. And in cases like this, where it's obvious too me what's going on, I'll ban as soon as I see it.

If you want to see more messages like this, look in you 'junk' or 'spam' folder, but be very careful and make sure your virus protection and so on is up to date.

Best Wishes

Kaspa

Please message me, or leave a comment on my page if you have any further questions.

Hello John the Hat, I see from your status that you're looking for messages that have disappeared. Some time ago, Kaspalita sent us this message about disapearing messages:

"A message to all members of Friends of Amida

Recently the Amida Trust, .ning site Friends of Amida, have had several people join and leave 'spam' comments for everyone on the site, often selling things, or inviting people to email them.

As soon as I have noticed these spam messages, I have banned the users, and deleted the comments, which is why you may have received emails about comments to your page, and then not found the comments.

If you have received a message of this type, I would advise not to contact the person through their email address, if invited to do so.

I apologies for any confusion this has caused. We've decided not screen users for the time being, because I want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and contribute.

I hope that we won't receive any more spam comments, and that you all continue to use and enjoy the site.

Best Wishes

Kaspalita"</>

I hope that this answers your question....
Best wishes, Rachel