Anonymous

Scott Hardie | April 19, 2003
Having a web site for the first time where users can create their own accounts instead of me manually typing in their names to HTML files has been interesting. You all know my stance on real names vs. handles, so I don't need to rehash that. I used to get a lot of fake names (I just got "joe blow" on Thursday), but not since I put up a large warning on the registration page that your account will be deleted if the name is fake. Maybe people figured out that they're just wasting their time; if they won't use their real name, they shouldn't sign up.

But I'm still getting a lot of fake email addresses. Giving out a spam repository address is one thing; I mean, webmaster@celebritygoogame.com is a spam repository, not my real address. But I still check it on a regular basis for real messages. That's what you're supposed to do with spam repositories. I get people signing up with addresses that are not theirs or simply don't exist. Just this morning, someone signed up with asdf@asdf.com. I wondered if it was real, so I went to that domain, and here's what they say. Maybe the player doesn't care that I can't contact her if there's a problem. But if she had read the goo game site, she'd have seen that the prize is an Amazon.com gift certificate, which is delivered by email. I don't even have a way to contact her to ask her what her real address is. Hey, I guess if she does win, that saves me forty bucks in prize money.