The ability to send and receive Private Messages, and the ability to have a signature on your messages is now a privilege gained after posting for a while. For the vast majority of active users, this will not be a noticeable change. The username of users with PM and sig privileges appear in green on the forums, while the other users appear in black. If you find that your signature and PM options are not available, find a good subject to comment on in the forums. This is a community after all! Why the change? The relentless wave of spam registrations is caused by the ability to use links in the signature to fool the search engines. This change should reduce the number of meaningless registrations and posts that the moderators have to deal with. It also eliminates the benefit accrued to any spammers who get by our efforts. As for the private messaging, we've seen at least two occasions where newly registered users sent bogus links via PM in an attempt to infect users' computers with a virus. This should help prevent that issue as well. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. kensmith -at- blackjackinfo.com.
Is there anything special about signatures, as compared to the main body of messages? The spammers seem as apt to put their links in the message as in the sig. As an alternative to controlling the ability to have a signature, would it be feasible to control the ability to include links in either location?
No luck, at least for now. Out of the box, vBulletin doesn't have a setting for that. The next upgrade will deliver one more tool for this process though, implementing the "nofollow" attribute in posted links.
