Since joining this forum I've gotten more than half a dozen notifications of new posts or split topics which, when I click on the link, take me to old messages.

Most recently I got a notification sent August 11 saying "A reply has been posted to a topic you are watching by cocohuang." But when I click on the link it takes me to my own message from June 7, which appears to be the last message in the thread.

What am I doing wrong?

It's nothing you're doing wrong.

When a spambot replies to one of your threads, you get the notification. When Ron or I split the spam post out of the thread and send it to inactive, it's gone from your thread, and it looks like a phantom notification.

I remember dealing with spam from cocohuang.

So that's all. It's just spam.

-Vincent

Is it just me, or the spam lately had been worse than usual?

It comes in waves. This wave hasn't been the worst we've had, by any stretch.

Ron and I made a decision a few months ago to let all legit posts get through even if a little spam does too, instead of incorrectly marking some legit posts as spam. Consequently, we have to deal with some spam sometimes.

-Vincent