Wild About Trapping

Now, it is a fact of life that there will be ruthless individuals out there that try to subvert the intentions of honest people. Spammers are one example of this. Spammers are those morally corrupt miscreants that send e-mails asking you to buy pills, pornography, or pre-approved mortgages(!) or any number of other items that their little scams are trying to hawk to unsuspecting consumers.

When you are running an internet bulletin board such as the forums at http://www.Wild-About-Trapping.com/forums/, it is a fact of life that spammers will also attempt to post on your site. As a Site Administrator, I have the forums set up to manually approve all new members. It only takes a few seconds to approve or reject someone, which is not really that big of a deal. It is just something that needs to be done, like a cost of doing business.

What I do have a problem with is someone that poses as a genuine member of our fraternity in order to push a product. A prime example of this was a member, going by the handle "jaclinto," who registered a few days ago. Jaclinto's registration threw up no red flags so I approved him.

Well, Jaclinto's first post was in the form of a question something along these lines-- "Anyone have experience working with this stuff? www.camo4u.com - I was wanting to camo my rifle." Seems like a legitimate question, right? Well... it threw up a red flag for me for a number of reasons which I will not divulge here. Still giving him the benefit of the doubt I did a Google search for his user name.

Guess what? 2,940 results.

Nearly all of them for message boards.

After clicking a few of the links I figured out his little game. Jaclinto has some kind of interest in an outdoors equipment company and is spamming message boards in order to drive up his own business.

Now you might say "What is wrong with a link in a forum post?" In most cases, nothing. I have no problems with someone providing a link in a post. I do have a problem with someone that poses as a legitimate member of our community in order to boost his or her own profits. Folks, it is in our Forum Rules and Guidelines-- "Don't post any message that even hints at advertising." If you wish to contact me about advertising, go right ahead, I would be happy to accomodate your enterprise.

When someone makes an attempt such as this, for the sole reason of fooling us into clicking to his websites, when the Forum Rules and Guidelines so obviously state otherwise, this really raises my hackles. After doing a little research into "Jaclinto", I have found out that his name is Jim Clinton, he works for an enterprise known as the "American Association of Christian Counselors" (ironic, isn't it?), he sells CamoClad items for profit on eBay, his e-mail address is jim@aacc.net and through his message board spamming, he hawks items for these known companies and/or products (among others)--

CamoClad
Camo4U
Bosshead-Lite
Head-Lite
FreedomCampfire

Please DO NOT patronize these companies as they are, through Jaclinto's spamming, contributing to the endless string of drivel that we, as legitimate internet users, have to wade through to find helpful information.

If Jaclinto would like to e-mail me to apologize, he can go right ahead. I am waiting.

(To read more about this idiot, click here-- http://www.wild-about-trapping.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1053.)