Spammers Flooding the Forum

I have spent a lot of time lately dealing with spammers, Pet Talk is now being targeted by likely a couple black-hat companies (from Russia and the Far East, mostly, given the IP addresses involved) who pay people per post on forums, or maybe by account created. You may have seen some of them in the "users online" list, rest assured, you do not need to see their posts, or worry about messages from them. I have banned one domain name, and an IP address, from which many of them came, but they may just switch and spoof a different IP address.

Just wanted to let you all know.

Thank you Karen. As you know, I noticed them, too. Sorry you have to deal with this, though. :(

Is any of the legitimate Pettalkers' information in danger of being misused or hacked?

No. They are not hacking the system or anything, most of them never even get through the registration process. They are spammers, not hackers.