Stealing membership list

[dana2]

How do others feel about members starting a competing site and inviting your members via PM's on your site to join their new forum? We have a couple of members that created new user names and have been doing this.

Anyone have any recommendations on dealing with members like this? I'm just curious what others have done in similar situations.

[cheat-master30]

I'd say ban them to be honest. If they actually were legitimate, they wouldn't be trying to advertise your site behind your back.

P.S. I nearly thought this was literally about stealing a site member list for a competing site with the title...

[dana2]

I'm sorry if the title was misleading, but it is almost like stealing your membership list; when they are targeting your active posters for their site.

[0ptima]

Make an announcement that you will not tolerate members abusing your forum to promote their own. I consider mass PMing of users as spam and I have a zero tolerance for spam.

I do not mind if people talk about the competition, but if it turns into blatant advertisement, I wont allow it to continue.

[Razasharp]

Ban them! A member (well two actually) recently did this on one of my forums, one of them abused our PMs and the other used other social networking avenues to 'invite' them over.

[RC Addict]

Ban 'em fast, before they get to everyone on your member list. I too had someone try this recently--even posted that he was starting a new forum. If it didn't compete with me (a different subject altogether), and if he were a supporter, I would not have an issue with it. A rank and file member stealing my members and my idea--not cool!

[hitmancode47]

I just firewall ban their IP from my webservers. And ban em of course

And if they continue to bypass that system, i just go over to where they are advertising, speak to the owners first to see whats going on, the owner soon bans em

[Biker]

If I loose members over someone trying to steal 'em away, they're most likely ones I don't mind loosing to begin with. After they're gone, then I ban 'em all. **snicker**

[hitmancode47]

Lol, why would you WANT to lose members? isnt gaining members what a community is all about?

[Biker]

When certain users are actually detrimental to the developement of your community, you usually don't mind when they go bye-bye. You know the kind, you see 'em around here all the time. They'll step right up to the line, but never actually cross it.

[hitmancode47]

Ah i see, yea i got a few of them over on my board. Wouldent want to get rid of them though, they add a valued amount to the thread and post count

"Every little helps"

[subduck]

Around 5 years ago I had an admin on my forum steal the entire userlist to start a new site, it sucked but his site was pretty much left in the dust. Most of your users will stick with you if you have a solid board, so you don't have to worry too much.

[MRGTB]

Make an announcement that you will not tolerate members abusing your forum to promote their own. I consider mass PMing of users as spam and I have a zero tolerance for spam.

I do not mind if people talk about the competition, but if it turns into blatant advertisement, I wont allow it to continue.

Trouble is though, when you tend to be very in-your-face like that publicly on your board. It can turn away a lot of potential members from your sites, as well as losing some. Friendly inviting sites that do well seem to avoid that, but may be very keen on it hidden away behind the scene from their members.

All that does is make you look like an admin on a power trip, who has to shout his mouth off publicity just because you run a forum.

[VictoriaH]

How do others feel about members starting a competing site and inviting your members via PM's on your site to join their new forum? We have a couple of members that created new user names and have been doing this.

Anyone have any recommendations on dealing with members like this? I'm just curious what others have done in similar situations.

Personally I would let it be im sure your regular members have the intelligence & are able to sniff this one out for themselves.

A few may drift but on the whole I think that members are pretty loyal providing your board keeps them stimulated:-)

Just my humble opinion.

[ComputerModding]

There are quite a few hacks you can add to VB to stop banned members coming back, I have about 5 installed ranging form proxy server detectors to cookie tracking so when you do ban them these mods pick up on if they are coming back.

What you got to remember is that if somebody wants to access your website they will no matter how many mods, hacks or searches on their IP address you do. I got one persistant little bugger on my forum and to be honest it is more fun catching him than it is a pain because with every new way he finds of getting onto the forum I find another way to catch him out which only goes towards building up the defences of the site.