Guests

[chris.richard]

Why do so many guests look at the member lists? Is that where spam comes from?

[mogul_x]

I have one possible explanation - some "guests" might be members who haven't signed in! When I'm just browsing to see the latest posts, I rarely log in. I'll only log in when I want to post something or check for private messages.

[Speedmade]

I'm guilty too. When I check from work I don't usually log in. I wait to post until the evening.
Reed Herman

[chris.richard]

Still doesn't explain why so many are looking in the Members lists. Click on "Who's online" to see what I mean.

[mogul_x]

Chris,

Took me forever to figure out where the "who's online" button was...:D

When I checked it a few minutes ago, it did show several guests snooping about the member lists. I can't give an explanation for all instances of guests looking at those lists, but I suspect that a couple of them were me in this particular case.

Without logging on, I was looking around the member lists to try to find the "who's online" button, and when I couldn't find it, I tried checking out a member ID (my own) to see if it was in there. Failing that, I eventually logged in, and finally found the magic button.

When I looked at "who's online" it told me my wherabouts at the time, plus two "guests" logged into the places I had previously been. The "last updated" times corresponded exactly to the times I was looking in those respective places before logging in. Don't know if this is an explanation, or merely a coincidence. This may be one of those cases where the act of observing a phenomenon actually influences its behavior!;)

As to whether it is a source of spam - I couldn't say. I was always under the impression that spammers used some type of automated algorithm that generated e-mail addresses at random. Actually perusing online lists and copying addresses off of them seems a little too labor intensive to be efficient.