Etiquette or actual names?

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

I've seen quite a few posts that have people's names like Mark spelled M4rk - 1337 style. I'm wondering if this is an etiquette way to protect certain name sequences from being searched, or if these are actually how baiters/lads actually spell their names in some situations?

Sorry if this is an oft asked question, I tried searching an answer and couldn't find one. Thanks!

419Eater is my life Joined: 30 May 2009 Posts: 298

I think the idea is that you obscure the names during baits in progress to prevent your lad from finding it through, like a Google search or even a search of this site's internal engine. 419eater is a pretty high profile baiting site, and I'm sure there are some scammers who know it exists and might check it out if they begin to suspect they are being baited.

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 9:30 pm

Leeting or masking a name is a good way to make it invisible to search engines. But please, if you use either, use them sparingly. Masking whole wodges of text uses bandwidth and makes Rover nervous. And Leeting can drive screen readers* crazy if used to excess.

*Screen readers - special adaptive software used by the visually impaired (and the extremely dyslexic) to enable them to use computers. The software actually reads the text on the screen aloud. You can imagine what - oh, say, f1yb0y, sounds like when read by a program that tries to pronounce it phonetically. Wink

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 9:45 pm

It's rare that a scammer googles his own name or your baiter character /church/business name--but if it happens at an inconvenient time (such as when you are on the border of a safari) it can really cause problems. The same goes for names of baiter tools.

In general if the name is pretty unique, and you are at a point where a lad finding it will be damaging, then mask or leet sparingly. If you are using a name like John Smith or Bruce Wayne that will bring up thousands of hits, don't bother.

If it is a tool such as MTCN s3cur3, always leet or mask it when you are in an open forum.

And if you are in help, hints, and tips or fake banks, leeting/masking is not necessary as those forums cannot be picked up by Google anyway.

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 9:53 pm

Good advice by Titania and Dorothy!

How I hate excessive leeting! And to be honest, if it is a post with a lot of it, I generally won't read it. So please, please use it only when needed and then only sparingly!

Or alternatively, change the names. I believe there is a certain mod that loves it when you change your lad's name to Ted. Wink

Little chance of a lad googling and finding then.

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:39 pm

Just a suggestion.. how about the forum admin prevent google bots from crawling this site? If the search engines can not crawl the site then they will not show up on search..

Just a suggestion

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:47 pm

^^^ because we would like scam victims to find a lot of the information in this forum.
for example, using google to check the names of fake bank websites.

every potential scam victim who avoids paying a lad is a gain in the war against scammers!

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:25 am

^^^ While you are correct about the reason why the bots are allowed, r2d2, you are wrong about the Fake Bank forum. No google bots there! Wink

The only forums that the bots search are Gen Chat, Main, and Romance. They would need to be leeted, if needed. The rest of the fora are behind the login and are not googleable.

To check for yourself, see which fora you can see without signing into Eater. In fact, you can't even see there is a Fake Bank forum on Eater unless you sign in. Very Happy

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:08 am

I just change the names to common ones.

Etiquette or actual names?	View next topic View previous topic