Guess I need to talk about this a bit, because I'm getting a number of new registrations lately that I have had to reject.
There are some profile info requirements that need to be met when I am auditing new registrations. They are as follows:
- Real full name
- Location - normally city and state will suffice. If you are located out of the USA, then country is required as well.
- The IP address you are registering from must match (within reason) the above mentioned location field.
- The member name you use must not be abusive in content or intent.
- Special characters are not allowed in the member name.
- Your email address must be valid.
Now to explain the "why" of those requirements.
FULL NAME: This site is pretty much focused on the business aspects of the industry, and certainly a great majority of the people who come here are here with the intention of buying and/or selling animals or related merchandise. I believe that the people who are viewing what you are offering to sell, or otherwise engaging in a potential transaction involving the exchange of one or more items of value have a right to know WHO they are dealing with. One of the more common ploys a scammer will use is to try to obscure their true identity as much as possible. The reason for this is that it is nearly impossible to prosecute someone if you cannot accurately identify them. If someone asks you to ship to someone else, or make the payment out to a name other than what shows on their profile here, I suggest that you be VERY wary of doing business with them. Yes, their reasons may certainly sound legit, but if you are expecting a scammer to admit to you up front that they are going to scam you, well, eventually you are going to wind up with the title for ocean front property in Arizona. And I know this might be a bitter pill to swallow, but yes, it is quite possible that a scammer just might be smarter than you are. So if you need to slow things down so you can keep up with what is taking place, MAKE it slow down enough to be comfortable to you. Make certain you UNDERSTAND what is going on.
A note about using initials. I sometimes get registrations that will be something like " TJ Zolodnick". Yes, maybe everyone has called you "TJ" since you were a toddler, but unless that is what shows up on your driver's license, that is NOT your FULL name. Sorry, but such registrations will be rejected and deleted as being non compliant with the requirements of registration. I WANT people to be able to track you down if you wind up being a scammer using MY site to scam people. Don't like that? Then sorry, but this just is not the site for you. Have a nice life.
And yes, I FULLY realize that there is likely no way in hell I'm going to know whether you are using your real full name or not here. So you snuck in with a false name. Clever you. But what are you going to do if you do find a juicy deal on this site and suddenly find that you have to tell the other party that your registered name is not true? Are you going to be comfortable admitting that you lied during the registration process? Is the OP going to be real thrilled having an admitted liar wanting to do business with them? So you get the bright idea to come to me and ask me to change your profile name for you. Well, guess what? I'm going to ask you WHY you are changing your name. After all, you have just placed me in the predicament of having to tell me that you either lied when you registered, or you are lying now to try to actually obscure your real name, maybe after a deal went sour, and I'm going to REQUIRE that you send me some sort of verification of what your REAL name really is. Don't care for that much? Sorry, but that's the bed you just made, so don't blame me that now all of a sudden it's too lumpy for your comfort.
LOCATION: Along the same lines as above, scammers will try to obscure their actual true location. If not lying outright, then they will be as vague as possible about where you would be able to find them if you find some time that you really need to. And again, if someone says they are located in Pittsburgh PA, but want you to ship to Richmond VA, that really should set off some red flags to you. You will hear all sorts of possibly plausible reasons, but use your head. Are they really trying to HIDE?
IP ADDRESS MATCH: This pretty much goes hand in hand with the previous concern about about location. Now, I do understand that some people will use their computer at work, or a mobile device, which can put the IP address of their ISP remote from their actual true location, and I do make allowances for that. But there is still going to be a "reasonableness" test made when auditing new registrations. And quite honestly, this is being used more to weed out offshore spammers more than anything else lately. You can pretty much count on anyone who puts "Los Angeles, CA" in their profile field yet has an IP address pointing to China is NOT going to successfully register on this site.
Also, if a new registration's IP matches one of someone who has been previously banned here, particularly if they have had a history of bogus accounts in the past, that registration will get rejected. Yes, sometimes there will be collateral damage involved, and I do regret that, but if your IP matches someone else's with that sort of history, I am sorry, but I will just assume you are lying to me about being an innocent party.
MEMBER NAME: Some people seem to delight in using profane names as their handle on internet sites. Or even cases of something like "JoeBlowSucks". Those sorts of names are not going to be passed through registration here. Maybe your friends all really do call you some profanity, but sorry, it just isn't going to fly here. Maybe you think you are just being cute, but if it personally rubs me the wrong way, sayonara, dude. Also, special characters are not acceptable in the member name. There are a couple of reasons for that. (1) Although vBulletin doesn't seem to have a problem with them, it concerns me as a possible problem with the way MySQL handles special characters for search algorithms. Rather than take the chance of this practice causing unpredictable results from the database, I feel it is best just to block them from use completely. And (2) someone trying to do a search on a member name is greatly hampered if that member name is using a subset of unusual ASCII characters. Since searches for member names is quite commonly done here, I don't want to hamper that sort of practice.
Also concerning member names, sometimes members will want to change their member name here and will attempt to do so by simply creating a new one, and therefore abandoning their current account. Sorry, but I do not allow that knowingly. It is wasteful of system resources to allow abandoned accounts, so I try to not have that happen if it is preventable. Plus member name changes are a perk of the paid membership levels, so it would be downright silly for me to just allow members to bypass that so easily in that manner. Yes, sometimes new registrations will get by me, but if it is discovered later on, it's probable that your new account will simply be merged into your old account, losing that new name you set up. Seriously, I have had some people try multiple times to create a new account to create a new member name for themselves, and after deleting it every time, I was forced to simply ban that member name, ending that effort from them. Honestly, if you want to change your personal account to something along the lines of a business account, wouldn't it be wise to just go ahead and become a paying member anyway, and get some of those perks that would be helpful to a BUSINESS?
VALID EMAIL ADDRESS: New registrations on this site are put into a temporary holding member group while a verification email is sent to the email address they provide during registration. I STRONGLY suggest that you white list "webmaster@faunaclassifieds.com" in your email processor, whether it is at your PC level or at your ISP. If the email gets block and deleted as being spam by your ISP, then you will not get that verification email. Done. Fini. You are now in limbo. Granted, there are some ISPs that I know are more problematical than others, so when I review those queued registration, I will sometimes pass them through anyway. But still, you already have a strike against you during the audit, so make it easier on both of us, please.
Also, please bear in mind that if you create a temporary email account just to register on this site, sooner or later you may find that you lose your registration info. When that happens, and you find that you cannot log in here, you are presented with a link that will allow you to reset your password so you can regain access to your account. However, this is all done via the email address that you registered under. Oh, you abandoned that email address? Well, pretty much too bad for you. You should have written down your login info. And please don't come to me with an email saying that you lost and don't remember your login info, giving me NOTHING to go on. I'm not psychic, so if you can't remember your login info, what exactly do you expect me to be able to do for you? Seriously, I have had people come to me saying they can't remember their login name, password, nor the email address they used, and then get offended when I told them there wasn't much I could do without SOMETHING to go on. I'm supposed to scan through all 85,000 registered member names hoping to just stumble upon theirs? I don't think so....
So yes, I'm sure this all seems to be very strict to some people, and no I'm not joking about them being REQUIREMENTS. But really, the alternative is preferable? How would you KNOW someone is giving you a false name or location unless you had SOMETHING to go by? Something that shows up in their profile here to compare to? Let's face it people. If someone will lie about their profile information here, shouldn't that be a sign to you to be wary? Or are you one of those people who believe that people will lie to everyone BUT you?
If someone DOES scam you, wouldn't you REALLY like to know their name and location info? To have at least something to go on?
Please be smart about how you do business and who you do business with. I've tried to provide tools to you to help you in that endeavor, but you still have to use your brain along with these tools. I am making a lot of effort to help you protect yourself (surely you don't think that auditing each and every new registration is a hell of a lot of fun!), but YOU do have to put some effort into protecting yourself as well. People will sometimes go through extraordinary efforts to separate you from your money, oftentimes making much more effort to do that than if they had just chosen to be legit and run an actual quality business. Yes, some people LOVE to steal. It is apparently just fun for them putting one over on someone else. Just be on your toes and not be gullible. If you are being rushed into what looks like a steal of a deal, you just might very well be, but the stealing will be FROM you. And I will say this. I cannot remember all the deals over the years I may have lost from just being too cautious. But every time I have been scammed by not being cautious enough? I will remember each and every one for the rest of my life. Bear that in mind, please. You will absolutely HATE getting scammed if it happens to you.
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