This post addresses newly-registered members as well as anyone who is trying to change their email address in their profile.

When you create a new account, it is listed as "deactivated." And for anyone who changes their email address in their profile, the board automatically deactivates your account. This is a security feature that the anti-spam software has in place.

So in either instance -- when you see your account listed as "inactive," you need to send me an email. If you don't know my email address, you can find it on laexplosion.com. (I don't type it out here to cut down on spam.)

If you don't send me an email, I simply won't know that your account has been deactivated.

Same goes for new users -- please make sure to send an email to the validation address given during the registration process. Until you do, your account will not be activated. Activation is NOT automatic. This is due to the high number of spammers we've been getting - we just want to make sure each new registrant is human, and not a spam program/script/robot.

And remember to remove the letters "iggy" from that email address to make it work, and to please use the same email account you listed as your contact.

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And just a FYI for everyone: if you try to access this board and get a "you've been banned" message, it is most likely a mistake.

No one has been banned from this site, but I have been adding a lot of spammers' IP addresses to the "banned list." Therefore, it is possible that one particular spammer might use a shared IP address that might also be used by a regular member. So if I banned that IP, it might also affect a regular user here.

So if that happens, and you get a "you've been banned" message, please email me and let me know! I'd hate for someone to get that message by accident and think they've really been banned!!

I repeat, no one has been banned from this site aside from spammers! Not even John Schanley, who called me names and told me to f*** myself. (I tried to f*** myself, but it didn't work.)

i didn't get a message saying i've been banned, but, it was impossible for me to access forum for awhile..

all is well now!

Honeychile-Julia

Dan - It's really nice not having to log in but at the same time there's those RPS's everywhere. Certainly the two most recent new members are anything but legit.

I don't know why but these russian porn spammers remind me of Mr M.T.

Joe will know who I'm referring to. It's like trying to load up your gear when some creep starts hanging around and you have to ignore him. The next gig he claims he's your manager.

I just lifted all the IP bans (I had them in place back when we started to get a lot of spam).

Now that I've removed the automatic activation (when registering), that blocks the spammers from signing up - so there was no need for the IP bans (which weren't really working, anyway - the spammers change IP addys constantly).

This is good, as we no longer risk the accidental banning of real people who just may happen to share an IP of a past spammer...

I see you've cleared e-house of all the fake "registered users" who were cluttering up the memberlist, Dan. Good

Yeah, I do that every now and then. Maybe 2 or 3 times a year.