New members may be frustrated when after joining they want to send an email to another member, and get a message to say that they have not made enough posts to.
This sounds rather unfriendly of us, but there IS a reason.
CBF is often targetted by people who only join to access our member list, to send spam emails. In fact, 40% of failed attempts to join (i.e the email address used is not a real or working one, so they can't receive the confirmation email to click on the authorisation link) are Russian. Guess why they want to join
In order to send emails to other members, assuming they did use a real email address, they need to make a small number of forum posts first.
In the main, they can't without it highlighting to us exactly what they are up to, and we can lock them out.
Previous instances of people signing up, posting nothing but emailing all our members resulted in upset, rightly so.
Please rest assured that NOBODY (well except me) can see your email address - even if they email you, they don't see your email address at any time - the forum software sends the email to you without revealing your addy.So apologies to new members, who legitimately want to use the email facility - I can't say how many posts you have to make on the forum before you can, but it isn't many
Thanks
Scunner
