I have recently been asked by a number of members about the large number of guests on the forum at any given time. Some members have been feeling a little "creeped out" that there are so many anonymous people seemingly spying on what they are saying or have said.
The vast majority of these guests are in fact “bots” sent from the various search engines simply to search out keywords on the internet in general – so for instance if I did a search on one of the engines for “Search engine bots + Forums” I would have a good chance of this very posting appearing in the list of thousands of hits (not that I plan to go looking through that lot to prove it!)
All search engines do this, whether the engine of your choice is Google or something less well known, but for some reason, and I have no idea why, Yahoo seems to flood the place with bots when they get around to this site, for this is the company whose bots are currently loading up the numbers.
Other guests can be (and frequently are) actual members of the forum who are just “having a quick peek” to see if there is anything new or worth posting on, and if not then they will have saved time by not logging in.
Sometimes guests are unwelcome, bots – actually scripts – which scour the internet looking for forums to “join” – hopefully which have no guardians to block their joining, and, once a member will flood the forum with spam messages advertising any one (or all) of Porn sites (some of which are more sick that you can believe), medication to maintain an erection or kill pain or space you out, Gambling sites, meet nice non gold digging Russian girls who want to marry you for love
…. etc etc etc. Your support team spend a good deal of their time on the forum ridding you of these automated annoyances and keeping the place safe and spam free.
Finally, there are some that are, wait for it…….. <shock>
genuine guests – taking a look at us before deciding whether we are the sort of place they may wish to join – the cheek of it eh?
I hope this puts your mind at rest if you have been wondering about the guests any time?
Best Wishes
Your Forum Support Team
Cory, Howard, Molly, Paula & Steve
A forum for Americans and Brits
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