Most times when someone joins a forum and doesn't post, they're just leaving link spam on the forum profile. And, I've heard some spammers try to justify saying at least they're not spamming open forum. But your Google adsense account can get shut down if those spammers are linking to illegal websites. So it pays to police your profile pages. Most times, I delete profile pages of members who never post. Also, I have a mod that does not allow any signature links for members under a certain post count. That doesn't stop them from posting a link on the profile page. So if they don't post after a certain time, their account gets deleted. How do you handle profile page spam?
Certainly don't, I do tend to check profiles of suspected spammers from time to time and delete all there little sneaky links.I do this manually though because my forum is small enough for me to do so at current, I suppose I should think about security measures to stop it happening though.
That's why, on active forums, you set the profile access to members with at least 5 posts (number can vary). This way, if they are inactive, they cannot 'silent spam' and, if they post crap, they'll be off the forum anyway
This is a good way to ensure that sneaky spammers don't pollute your forum. Unfortunately, many times these link builders are also using forum spam software that automatically makes 20 or 30 posts anyway. So it looks as if they are a legit poster. And, that's how they get past these signature line restrictions. You can always spot this type of spammer cause they show up and make a massive amount of posts the first day. Other times, you might recognize the same discussions copy/pasted from other forums. In that situation, it's good to go check the person's forum profile page and delete their forum signature.
Profile spamming shouldn't be tolerated imo. Once your forum becomes somewhat famous and reputed profile spamming is almost inevitable. These profiles should be deleted with no further delay.
