Anyone Heard Of: Stop Forum Spam?

I just went to a web site, and found myself blocked because my IP address was put into the SFS database. I have no idea how they got my IP address or email address, but they illegally posted it for all the world to see, so I told them to take it down and if they don't, they are going to get sued.

Here is the site in question:

http://www.stopforumspam.com/

 

I've seen them mentioned a few times and looked over their site but am not very familiar with their procedures. Were you able to find any submitted evidence? Did you try using their API:

http://www.stopforumspam.com/usage

to query for information on your IP Address, Email Address, and Username as is shown in the How to Use examples? Note that you can append &confidence to each URL in order to get that info too. Perhaps this could shed some light on the matter.

There is a partial list of contributors here:

http://www.stopforumspam.com/contributors

as well as a removal form here:

http://www.stopforumspam.com/removal

The first step should always be: calmly try to figure out why you ended up in such a database, who submitted the report, and what was the rationale for making the report. Which is to say, look for and request information. Politely, because it is highly likely that the people running the system aren't the type of people who will respond well to angry language or threats. Even if you do wish to take things to the next level, you would still want to give the polite request for information a go first. Conceptually, you might even discover something that you were unaware of. Such as someone trying to prank you or cause you problems. Good luck.

 

If you have a dynamic IP address, it was probably previously used by a forum spammer. Your best bet would be to use the removal form as mentioned above.

 

if you are connected via VPN could be that you get a shared IP with some spammer..

Have you noticed that nearly all spammer emails are gmail?

 

The OP's wording suggests that his/her email address was submitted to SFS. That's an important detail I think. Its risky to assume, for example, that someone signing up with an IP Address used by spammers, perhaps also even a Username that has been used by spammers, is a spammer. Even if both of those pieces of data suggest that a user signing up is likely to be a spammer, you wouldn't want to submit the email address they tried to sign up with until after it was verified.