I think what most of us don't understand....
And yes, as mods we've had this discussion multiple times with admin over the past year or more....
Why are all the spammers signing up? They have to be generating revenue somewhere... Either for themselves, or for HNI. Someone is making money off these spammers somehow . Otherwise they wouldn't exist. Nobody is creating these accounts for free . Nobody is creating programs to create these fake accounts for free. Someone is getting paid somewhere due to these accounts.
Which leads us to the issue, at least as I see it.... Is this a hunting website or a spam spot to generate revenue for somebody? And it's further complicated by the fact that many of these names have sexual content attached to it. Including links to probable por**ographic material as well as esKorrt services etc.
CI and myself, as well as other mods, have previously discussed the moral aspect of continuing to serve and support a site that is hosting or allowing these types of profiles. Because to be honest, it bothers me. Especially when we searched for and deleted hundreds of profiles, spent hours of time, only to be told that it's "not a problem as long as they don't post on the actual forum" even though some of these profiles had hundreds of page visits.
Now, to admins credit.... They've deleted accounts that we have brought to their attention . I have a thread on the mod forum with over 200 posts full of spammer accounts that we had admin permanently delete . Ibobi has deleted hundreds of accounts for us through this thread .
I guess I don't understand why a site with such low traffic, shows a membership of over 230,000 members. And why some of these spam members, who never post, still have many views on their profile . Who is viewing their profile and how are they getting to it? And what is HNI getting out of #1 all these members #2 all these profile views etc.
-Jake