I have the same kind of forum as Uboat.net at warsailors.com - have used it for years, and really like it. With the new version enabling hidden addresses, along with other features, we're very well protected, but every now and again someone will take the time to register for the sole purpose of sending Private Messages, usually spam, to a score of other registered people (I'm assuming now that "peachey" received the message in question as a Private Message via the forum and not as a regular E-mail). This has happened only twice in my case and I always delete the registration immediately, but this is still too late as the messages have already been sent by the time I spot the problem. As moderators, there's really nothing we can do about it, except turn the "Private Message" function off, which I would rather not do because I believe it's used quite a bit by the members. Other than that all we can do is ask our members to be very careful. The last case on my forum was someone asking members, via the Private Message function, to send an E-mail to a given address, and, of course, by doing this they provided their own E-mail addresses to the spammer, who in turn responded by sending them a version of the "Nigeria scam". I then received a flood of complaints in my in-box, as if the whole thing was my fault.

Remember that reading a PM is quite safe, and responding to a PM via the forum is equally safe, as long as your E-mail address is set to "hidden" - it's the regular E-mails that get you into trouble. (May I add also; please keep in mind that we as moderators provide you with a great service, and getting upset with us when this sort of thing occurs does not help - we really do our best to protect you, but at some point we have to leave things up to your own common sense).

Siri