| Banned does in fact mean the person has been banned from the forum for some reason. A number of ways to be banned is advertisement or posting inappropiate material, piracy etc.
Check out the forum rules for more info on that.
As for posting link being "allowed", it depends on the links, as per the above mention - advertisement, inappropriate material, piracy and similar. So the content decides whether it is allowed or not. Just remember, never to click a link you receive from a source you do not trust, as you have no idea what they refer to. We do our best to keep all links on the open forum clean and controlled, however private messages are a different matter.
Many advertisement "bots" and posters use private messages to advertise outside what we moderators can control, which is given your description what you've received. We'll still attempt to take action based on reports from people who've been "spammed" in private messages if we can.
So just delete such private messages, there is little reason (or benefit) to reply, even if the user isn't banned.
Welcome to the forum. |