guests printing topics

[MattGSX]

Guest      01:58:42 AM     Printing the topic "Would this be worth the 50 cents?".

I'm not really sure why I'm frightened by this, but it seems weird that non-registered users would be printing topics, especially that one. Maybe I'm just paranoid because of the implied advice that comes with people talking about committing crimes.

[.]

yeah but even if Arbie blocks that, they guy can still make a print screen and get it that's why we should be careful...

[Raptor]

YOUR ALL SCREWED NOW BECUZ TEH FBI IS GOING TO GET U ARRESTORZED!!!

and who told you not to do it?

hah, that was stupid but what I find interesting is the fact that you can actually see when a user is printing. I meant WTF! What are they going to have next, user frog has stepped up and is walking toward the door?

[rbcp]

I've seen guests printing on several occasions before.  And they were on lame topics, too.  My guess is that the guest was actually a spam robot.  Those things will visit every page that's linked on your site, either harvesting email addresses or filling up random forms with URLs and keywords.

On that note, it's probably not a good idea to have your email address displayed on your profile.

[mrpeanut]

ROBOTS!

[MattGSX]

You evil twisted metal men!!!

I guess I'm just paranoid.

[Reverend Greed]

Also, they could be simple robots from Google, MSN, Yahoo Slurp, etc, indexing the forum for search engines.  And because the 'printing topics' function is a link - it'll follow it.