seed – posted 28 September 2001 13:00
Regrettably, I have had to block automatic public display of user email addresses from the Turfgrass Forums. This action was necessary to help protect registered Turfgrass Forum members from unsolicited email (spam). No action is required on your part, and this is just to inform you of the problem.
Unfortunately, this morning at around 7:00 am EST, someone used the publicly visible Turfgrass Forum email addresses to broadcast unsolicited email (spam) with the header “Don’t delete this!” I realized the source of the email address came from our forums, because a sharp user had used the old forum name “turftalk” as part of his address, so he knew where his email address had been copied. Probably some robot found and copied the addresses.
Although that was only one piece of junk mail (probably sent to everybody), and I receive 100’s per day, I consider any piece of unncessary mail as one too many.
Under no circumstance does Turfgrass.com sell email addresses, give email addresses, or publish email addresses, except as they were included in user postings. The purposes for your supplying an email address at registration are to allow you to retrieve a new password, and to receive rare administrative broadcasts needed to inform users of changes in the Turfgrass Forums.
Furthermore, you do not need to register to read or post messages to the Turfgrass.com Forums. Your registration does give you the ability to edit (but not delete) postings, and to include a personal profile visible to others, should you choose. You can even register with no more than a handle or user name, and a phony nonexistent email address, in which case you would never receive anything, but you would not be able to change your password without a valid email address.
I appreciate the participation of registered community member of Turfgrass Forums (formally called TurfTalk) and others who choose not to register. Hopefully we can still maintain the sense of community. Since members and other users can post turfgrass replies to one another through the Turfgrass Forums, and can find other ways of providing contact information (as I have below), should they wish to be contacted individually, I do not believe we will lose anything by blocking public display of email addresses.
I am sorry about any trouble that was caused by having allowed your email address to be publicly visible. If you have any questions or concerns, or suggestions for Turfgrass Forums, please email them to me, or post them to the Turfgrass Forums community.
Thanks,
Phil
Philip Busey, Editoreditor@turfgrass.com