You been *banned* from Hamsexy

Alright, enough bullshitting around.

it ‘s been an issue for the past few years, but it’s finally starting to piss me off.

People are accusing us of conspiracies, derring-do and other nonesense, so it’s time to set the record straight.

If you wish to sign up for the Hamsexy Forums, (and all are welcome to do so, by the way), you are *not* permitted to use a ‘throwaway’ e-mail address to sign up. These include, and are by no means limited to:

– Gmail
– Yahoo Mail
– Hotmail
– Pookmail
– Mailnator
– AIM Mail
– Canada.com
– Canoemail.com
– Fastmail.fm
– Hushmail

If you attempt to sign up using any of these other other ‘free’ e-mail services, you will be told that your e-mail address has been ‘banned’.

Now, this unfortunate little piece of wording on behalf of the designers of phpBB has been an unending spike in our collective asses for years. Not a week goes by before we get someone screaming at us over e-mail, demanding to know why they have been ‘banned’ from Hamsexy.

Look – we ban people, like any other message forum. Rest assured, if you’ve been banned from Hamsexy, you’ve done something pretty heinous to deserve that honor. Some anonymous ham that stumbles across our site we’ve never heard of probably isn’t going to even make a blip on our ban radar, no matter what they’ve said about our site on other forums. Despite what some people accuse us of, we don’t troll QRZ, eHam or RadioReference looking for fresh meat to enter into our ban filter.

What e-mail addresses DO we accept? Most ISP e-mails will work, as will ham radio e-mail addresses (ARRL or RAC.ca addresses are fine). If you have a SERIOUS issue, and just have to join our site, e-mail us and let us know what your beef is. We’ll try to work it out, but we aren’t going to turn off our ban filters for every Tom, Dick and Hiram who staunchly refuses to let go of their precious Gmail account. Besides, after you have registered you can easily change your e-mail address to whatever you like, so it isn’t going to be much of a hassle.

So – if you sign up for our forums, don’t use a throwaway e-mail address. Hopefully this will clear up the confusion, and stop all the bellyaching.