An idea for dealing with website spammers...

I have my site set up so that a person has to validate their email address before they can sign up as a registered user. Only registered users can post anything to the site. So here's my idea: in order to sign up, they have to agree to the Terms and Conditions, which will state basically this: If you attempt to post spam to this website, you agree to have your email address sold to our partners. In other words, if you try to profit off this website, this website will profit off your email address.

Anyone who signs up will have to check that box before being allowed to register. They would be "opting in" by spamming on the site to have their email address sold.

Selling opted-in email addresses would help offset the cost/time it takes to moderate their spam postings.


What do you think?

Also, I would include that anyone who does not spam the site will never have any personal information sold or given to anyone ever, unless required by law.

Interesting idea.
But what about spammers who just sign up with a fake email?

They have to validate their email before they can sign up. When they sign up, their selected username and a randomly generated password are sent to the email address they provided. The email has to be real for them to get their password to be able to log in.

Anyone can make a new email to spam, hot mail,yahoo, myway.
Or anywhere... I dont see that stopping, they can delete and make another..

This is what I meant.

Fine with me, I'll at least make money off 'em. There's no way to stop all spammers, so at least this way my time dealing with them is paid for.

Good idea then.

I used to help with a website, we had a few people joining off another forum purely to post drivel and cause pathetic mischief - we saw straight through them immediately and played along laughing at them.

What they nearly always used though was gurillamail - a dubious site where you can create a tempory e-mail address, which expires after 60 minutes, never to see the light of day again.

With this sort of site around, the spammers would always find a way unfortunately.

It would be a deterrent for those people trying to promote their new website or their latest network marketing program. Those guys don't tend to have the mass spamming systems in place, they're just trying to promote themselves.

heh that's a pretty funny idea. I don't know how much you could get for their emails but at least it might annoy them.

Most of the emails you will get will be to well known bogus anonymous emails... like bugmenot.com. It's so easy to use these email addresses. And selling them... good luck!

Most folks never read the terms of services for a forum or other required registration site. If they did, and really thought about it.... they wouldn't accept the terms. Been there... done that. Also, you might check with an attorney as to just how legal your terms of service is as it is now and ask about the addition of putting "spammers" on a "for sale" list.

My suggestion is to try using capcha. Like this forum does. It will cut down on the spamming.

D