I've been among the first to chide people for complaining about spam not being removed instantly, but it's been almost a month since the first complaints about these (bleep)s using the Forum's PM feature to spam other users.
Not only are they still doing that (I just got my third spam PM from them), but they've escalated to harvesting email addresses from the forum in order to spam us outside it.
I think we're owed an explanation from management of why nothing has been done about this: it significantly damages the usability of the forum if we can't safely use its "private" features to contact each other without bothering everyone with messages that aren't of general interest.
If you got an email spam from those twits, be sure to forward a copy to abuse@vpls.net (their US-based hosting provider) and gmail-abuse@google.com. You can try complaining to anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net (their local connectivity provider), but my past experience with them has not been encouraging.
Well I do suggest that you hide your email address on the forum as it shows up in your user info as well as the google reader feed. Both of which anyone can view...
from Arduino - General by -@***.net (Ran Talbott)
I do agree with this though and some more spam mods need implementing very soon. It is all well and good us being told that there is someone clearing spam every night (in spam thread) but this is obviously not the case.
I only post a link to my website, which has a "contact me" form with a cheezy homemade (but so far, working - as far as I can tell) anti-spam CAPTCHA system, in addition to other controls.
I would also agree that removing your email address from your profile would be a good first step. You might try putting your email address, with "anti-spam" control (ie, test AT test DOT com, perhaps even staggered/warped like a CAPTCHA) as a graphic file, post it on some free hosting site (photobucket or the like), then link to that from your profile.
Not much you can do about the current spamming of your email, tho...
