How to successfully join the masm forum.

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The MASM forum has in the past, suffered from a variety of 'spam bots', 'spammers' & scammers' from around the world who use IP addresses and email addresses from many different countries to keep trying to join the forum to post a variety of spam like, cheap loans, drug advertising, software of illegal origin for sale and many other variations.
Unfortunately this has mean't a number of mechanisms are now in place to deal with the problem.

To help the admin' determine that you are a human being and not an automated spam bot or a spammer we need new members to do a couple of things to make these decisions easier.

1. Use a human sounding 'Forum' name, not a name that looks like a random word or name generator. Do NOT use your email address.

2. If possible use your own email address, not a proxy type from free email providers as this is a common technique used by spammers and spam bots.
A 'Valid' email address, is a requirement of membership on the forum.
'Disposable' Web emails and 'Role' emails, such as info@ISPname.com, are not allowed.
(Note: Your email address in your user profile is NOT VISIBLE to other members or the public.

3. ALWAYS make a posting as soon as you have confirmed your membership by responding to the email that the forum software sends you. This is the final most reliable method of determining a valid human being and not a spam bot.

4. Do NOT use a PM to the ADMIN as your posting, you need to make a posting in the Introduction from New Members so that we can determine you are a person and not a spam bot. A PM to ADMIN without an open forum posting will result in account deletion.

Without a clear method of determining if a new member is a real person, we have no choice but to delete a newly created membership to protect our members from the sum total of trash that spammers will post if they can get away with it.