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Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Discussions about the documentation, main Rainmeter site and forums.
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jsmorley
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Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by jsmorley »

I have reworked the standard "Terms of Use" and "Privacy Policy" statements that come with phpBB and are displayed when you create an account or logon to the system.

For your review, here are the new ones:

Terms of Use

https://forum.rainmeter.net/ucp.php?mode=terms

Rainmeter Forums : By creating an account on the Rainmeter forums, you agree to the following:

You won't advertise commercial sites or products : Any account created that has any links to commercial sites or products in any part of the account information will be immediately and permanently banned and deleted. Any post made in the forums that contains links to commercial sites or products will be removed, and the user account will be banned and deleted. No warnings are given, and no appeal is possible. Spammers of any kind are just not welcome.

The Rainmeter forums are polite : The Rainmeter forums are a "community" of people who are either asking for help with the application and the skins made with it, or providing that help. Unlike some technically oriented forums, all posts and replies on the Rainmeter forums must be polite, with at least the intent to be helpful. Any post or reply that is dismissive, overly argumentative, or in any way hostile in nature will be removed. Personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated. Persisting in this behavior can get the user account banned for a period of time, up to and including a permanent ban.

The Rainmeter forums are safe-for-work : The language in posts or any attached or linked files or images will not contain any profanity, nudity, or other material that would not be appropriate in a family or work environment, nor any content that is racist, sexist, abusive, threatening or otherwise "hateful" in nature. Posts with any content of this kind will be removed. Persisting in this behavior can get the user account banned for a period of time, up to and including a permanent ban.

The Rainmeter forums are about Rainmeter : Posts that contain material about politics, religion, world affairs or other topics likely to cause controversy irrelevant to the purpose of the forums will be removed. Persisting in this behavior can get the user account banned for a period of time, up to and including a permanent ban.

Privacy Policy

https://forum.rainmeter.net/ucp.php?mode=privacy

A valid, working email address is required to create an account on the Rainmeter forums. This email address is stored with your account information, however it is used for one single purpose. A confirmation email will be sent to the address when you create an account, as a security measure. Replying to this email is required to "activate" your account. The Rainmeter forums will never send you emails after this, unless you specifically tell it to do so in your settings for "notifications" of private messages or "bookmarked" forum topics. Your email address is never publicly displayed or shared with any external entity.

Your computer's IP address is stored when you create an account and any time you are using the Rainmeter forums. Your IP address is never publicly displayed or shared with any external entity.

The phpBB software used to run the Rainmeter forums will create several browser cookies on your computer when you are logged into the system. These are to create a "session" to keep you logged into the system, and to keep track of your "read" and "unread" topics in the forum areas. There are no cookies that are in any way related to advertising or that are created by or shared with any external entity.

The password you create for your account is encrypted when stored. While nobody, including the administrators of the Rainmeter forum, has access to this password, care should always be taken to use different passwords on different systems. The Rainmeter forums can't be responsible for any hacking that might take place on this system or others you may use, and strong, unique passwords are your best protection.
drakulaboy
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Joined: June 29th, 2014, 8:35 pm

Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by drakulaboy »

looks like the forum need a better security for registering new users, i see there are some automatic bots that spam the forum.
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jsmorley
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Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by jsmorley »

It's a balance between putting up with a little spam that we kill as quickly as we see it, and having it be a pain to create an account and use the forum when you are a new user and need help. I think it's about as good as we can make it now.

I actually don't think those few you see are "bots", but rather just sweatshops full of folks who get paid $1.10 a day to sit at a computer and put spam on sites. We have a fairly good "anti-bot" setup, require an email confirmation and have an image-based CAPTCHA. If a human wants to go to all that bother to post a message with advertising in it, only to have us kill both the post and the account within a few minutes, we can't really stop that without making the forums a pain in the butt for everyone else.

Just keep hitting the "Report" button when you see one, that makes it even easier for us to spot it. Never "Reply" to any spam, that can actually help to hide it.
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fonpaolo
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Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by fonpaolo »

I totally agree with you that a new user in search of help doesn't have to sign with his blood to register...
...however, if only we could put at the stake those spammers! :twisted:

Almost every day, now, you can find spam messages here, some hidden in the text, others explicitly displayed.

Sorry for the rant. :oops:
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jsmorley
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Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by jsmorley »

fonpaolo wrote:I totally agree with you that a new user in search of help doesn't have to sign with his blood to register...
...however, if only we could put at the stake those spammers! :twisted:

Almost every day, now, you can find spam messages here, some hidden in the text, others explicitly displayed.

Sorry for the rant. :oops:
:-)

The spam is annoying when we get it, but really it is relatively few. We instituted an image-based CAPTCHA a year or so ago that seems to have stopped the "bots". We were not getting 4 or 5 a day like now, but 70, 80, 100 a day for a long time there.

The only way to really defeat the sweatshops full of "humans" would be to have "first posts" not visible until vetted by a moderator or administrator, and that is just not something we want to make a new user with a pressing question have to wait for.

I can imagine a lot of frustration when someone goes to all the trouble to sign-up with a question they want answered, only to have it tell them that that post must first be "reviewed" before anyone will see it.

I have a little utility I use to "watch" new users create accounts. I get a lot of pleasure out of carefully timing things so they actually go through the entire process of creating an account, and I hit the "nuke" button just as they are in the middle of posting that spam message... I'm obviously not always around, but keep a pretty close eye on things.
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fonpaolo
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Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by fonpaolo »

Yes, spam, here, is thankfully very little.

...and I'm registered in some forums where the "review" is the norm.
Having an RSS Feed pointing to this forum on my desktop, allows me to almost immediately recognize and report the spam, maybe that's the reason why it seems always too much for me... ;-)
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jsmorley
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Re: Rainmeter Forums - Terms of Use and Privacy

Post by jsmorley »

fonpaolo wrote: Having an RSS Feed pointing to this forum on my desktop, allows me to almost immediately recognize and report the spam, maybe that's the reason why it seems always too much for me... ;-)
As do I.. ;-)
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