Please Help Stop Innappropriate and Abusive Material

[Paul]

Firstly thank you for your support by signing up and using our forum - it's much appreciated.

It's very unfortunate that a very small minority of people sometimes try to spoil it everyone else. We have just had to remove and issue a lifetime ban to a new member of this forum for gross misconduct and a severe breach of the terms and conditions of membership. BirminghamIU apologise to anyone who might have already read the offensive post by this rogue member. We certainly encourage a healthy debate about paranormal topics, but this member just signed up, posted and linked to extremely offensive and inappropriate adult web sites that have absolutely nothing to do with BirminghamIU or the subject of paranormal in any way what-so-ever. It saddens us that these people go out of their way to damage the reputation of our paranormal investigation and research group by attempting to offend our reputable members when no-one has done anything to provoke this.

We take no pleasure in banning any member from our forum, but BirminghamIU takes a zero tolerance approach to any abuse, insulting or other inappropriate content. Although certain measures are in place to prevent a banned member resigning up to the forum, please note that any banned members who attempt to sign up again and/or repost inappropriate material to this forum after being warned will be in breach of The Computer Misuse Act 1990. They will therefore be reported to the police. We take this all this necessary action so that the vast majority of members who are decent respectable people like yourself can continue to use the forum in a friendly, informative, enjoyable and safe environment.

How can I help?

The BirminghamIU team check this forum regularly for inappropriate content, if you spot anything that you believe to be offensive or links to inappropriate material, please don't hesitate to click the link at the bottom right hand side of the post saying, "Report to moderator". This will draw our attention to the suspect post so that we can take appropriate action immediately.

Many thanks for your help, remember it's much appreciated!


Paul
Founder Member of BirminghamIU

[Paul]

We have had to ban 2 more new users who again only signed up to post inappropriate material. We now suspect that an automated robot has managed bypass our security to sign up to our forum in order to post inappropriate and/or adult spam without our consent. Automated spam robots such as these are highly illegal.

Because of this completely unprovoked illegal attack on our forum we have been forced to upgrade our security. If we find that the upgrade is insufficient to block this attack in future, we will be forced to upgrade our security even more until we do prevent the problem, we simply won't allow these criminals to ruin the enjoyment of others using our forum. This won't effect existing users, it will mean improved security checks when signing up for the 1st time which I hoped wouldn't be necessary as I wanted to make the sign up process as painless as possible.

When registering for the 1st time new members will now be asked for the answer to a simple puzzle as well as first copying the usual captcha text. It's unlikely that an automated robot will know the answer to this puzzle, but unfortunately these robots are also improving constantly as security techniques improve, it's like a cat and mouse game. We have also added a new 2nd line of defence that will block thousands of known robots automatically based on their details.

I do however suggest that existing users ensure their password is extra secure as a precaution. I recommend you use a combination of both letters and numbers that is least 6 characters in length. If you have any problems with our new improved security what-so-ever, please contact us immediately.

It saddens me that increased security becomes necessary when I know the vast majority of members are decent respectable people.

Again, sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your support.


Paul
Founder Member of BirminghamIU