Is freeforums.org Safe?

PhpBB is a free forum software, but they limit so many features that the real version has. Your better off going to a free host and setting up PhpBB yourself for the safety of your members information. They don't seem to care about issues that you may have with your website. During registration for your members, they are required to put in there phone number to activate there account. I don't like this idea, so I have made my own site. Beware, and do whats best for your members.

What I have to say will interest anyone who is using ***** as their own personal website thinking they are keeping their members safe. This is just my own opinion but I am not impressed with what I found out. but still checking out if it is against their policy and if so I will report it to them to take care of. Even though I was impressed with the anti-bot questions and advanced Captcha (a moving one I never see on free forums) I didn't like how third parties can get your information. Yeah this is typical for some free forums but in the way this is done (at least how I saw it) on here did not impress me. "No information obtained from a third party is endorsed by ***** and remains the responsibility of the third party providing the information." In other words, third parties get your information by you registering to create this forum as well as members signing up to your forum if you are using this. What I saw is when someone registers on a forum hosted there, the next step (no confirmation yet) is they are brought to an iframe that has an advertisement that you can't skip and forces you to put your name, email address and cell phone number even though it says it will charge you $5. Click on pass (which the link is ***** ) only reloads the page so it seems there is no way to get past this. Digipathmedia at this current time reads as a solid red in WOT. On top of that it has just come to my attention that the url that a person complaining about the ad must submit to freeforums.org contains the email address of the member encoded in the URL (through the session ID so I told them to delete their cookies). But when I gave the link to someone to see if they can see what I see, he saw the real first name and last name and email address just by having that link.. The submit button was never clicked but the information was saved in the url? The main problem with this is the support forums say you have to post the link if you have a problem about it on their forums which will reveal your info.. Also if you try to close it you get a pop up which pop up blocker caught. Here is the image showing how you can't get by the ad (created by a new member there): ***** See ***** for what is said about ***** Contacting freeforums.org in the email address at the bottom of their ad quality page: http://www.freeforums.org/ad-quality.php and the email I got back said they do not offer support over email and to sign up on the forums. I would suggest using a different email address you don't mind getting spam in just incase. http://support.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=81992 Looking at other complains about this on different forums it seems common for new members to be furious and take it out on the forum admin thinking that they are responsible yet admins are not allowed to tell any members not to click on the ad as it brings in revenue to the host of the free forums.. Also themes you choose if you do decide to have a freeforums can suddenly disappear if they so choose to no longer support it. As well as image sets. See more about the themes issue here: http://support.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=86702 http://support.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=86681 http://support.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=86643 http://support.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=86710