This information comes from Baby Jesus today, August 20, 2008
This is a direct copy from BJ's blog:
anyone who's been reading my blogs knows that i've been doing a lot of (crazy?) stuff the last few weeks.. removing the requirements to level, adding salute filters to your profile, etc.
in order to help fight off the spammers/scammers who're trying to infest our nice little watering hole, i've been forced to enable something that i've tried to avoid: email verification to post comments, send private message, send shouts, or have html displayed in your profile area.
most other sites require you to verify your email address before they even activate your account. i always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and try to keep the site as open as possible... but the spammers/scammers have been abusing it and this is one of the most effective ways to make it harder on them.
if you don't know if you've verified your email addres, or if you need to verify it, please go to your profile settings page. under your email address you'll either find a 'Verified' label, or instructions on how to verify the address. it should only take a few seconds to complete.
what does this mean to you? if you haven't verified your email address you'll start to receive error messages when posting comments, sending shouts and private messages. you'll continue to earn points and can surf around like normal. if you haven't verified your email address, the only people you can private message or shout are bouncers.
the following members are excluded from the email verification requirement:
# VIP's.
# members with approved salutes.
this will take effect in the next few hours. werd.
-mike
