When dealing with cryptocurrencies you'll hear about so-called reflinks very soon. Reflinks, often also known as referral links or affiliate links, are customized links leading to a page where you can register to use a service. It’s possible to receive your own reflink from the website of the service, if you are logged in to your account. If you are sharing your reflink now, other users click on it, and then sign in to this service, the person whose reflink was used (you) will get a small commission for referring this new user.
Reflinks are different from normal links where the person sharing the reflink receives a small commission and reflinks are usually also visible in the link, often the link contains an individual letter / number combination or an username.

Therefore, reflinks are very popular, because the "owner" of the reflinks can earn a bit by sharing it. Unfortunately, this fact often results to so-called "Refspam" that reflinks are posted everywhere to get users who sign up via this reflink. Because of this, Bitcointalk has a rule to prevent "ref-spam":

Source: Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ
 
If you post reflinks, your posts will be deleted, and if someone is systematically repeating refspam posts, it may even end up in a (temporary) ban.
Therefore, you should always be careful and avoid posting reflinks.
There are some exceptions, where reflinks could be tolerated like if you are including it in a very informative reply / description which adds value, a site owner who wants to track traffic coming from Bitcointalk or similar where it's very clear that it's no ref-spam.

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When in doubt you should avoid getting troube, better follow the rules and use legal ways how you can use reflinks in Bitcointalk:


1.) Reflinks in your signature

It is allowed to use reflinks in your own signature. In order to be able to wear a signature, your account has to be at least Jr. Member. But it’s not possible to click the links in signatures of Jr. Members, other users would have to copy them in the URL by themselves. In signatures of Member accounts and above, it’s possible click on links in their signatures.

It’s described in 2.) how to change your personal signature.



2.) Use reflinks as a website in your profile

Reflinks can also be linked in your own profile page and then referenced in a post. Linking a reflink in your own profile page works as following:
Choose Profile in your profile => Forum Profile Information and there you can insert your reflink at Website URL. If you like, you can select a name at Website title, which will be displayed in your profile in Website.

In Profile => Forum Profile Information you’ll find also the option to change your personal signature.









In a normal post on the forum you can point out that you have a link in your profile at "Website". It will look like that:

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3. Refliks in your personal text

It's also possible to post your referral link as personal text. You can find it in your account settings, described by sheenshane here. It should work if your link is not too long because your personal text is limited and you can only use a limited number of characters.

Thanks to hugeblack for suggesting this.

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I hope this little guide will help for you to avoid misunderstandings if you are honestly sharing your reflink.
But please, don’t spam reflinks in normal posts, better use the strategies described above. Refspam is annoying and not allowed. And if you are abusing these strategies to produce sigspam / spam to refer to your reflink in your profile you’ll also get a problem. Better be careful  

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Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Nigeria (Naija)	Egii Nna	Bitcointalk and Reflinks: make wuna no do referral-spam, ahbeg.

Reserving new translations is currently not available.

Nice easy guide!

I am still thinking what is the best way for newbies when they register to read basic rules.
Maybe some knowledge quiz/test that will let them register only if they first read the rules, and then pass the test.
This is maybe one way to reduce spam.

Same could be done before newbies post from time to time with random question.
Questions could be forum and Bitcoin related.

Thank you!
I posted some ideas there in hope of activating this question yet again

Good stuff and good suggestion.
Not all ref links are allowed if you are promoted the untrustworthy brand under your profile you might get a flag or negative feedback.
Correct, better be careful.

In addition to the OP post,




Edit: Quite I'm late reply than this with the same thought.

If someone is going to use a service and a poster provides them a link to the website with their ref link I don't see it as a problem.  Someone gets paid a small amount for showing someone to a service.  OF course the newbie account spammers that are just posting ref links with no request is totally different.

The referral link hidden behind a clickable image is logically not allowed either. I’ve just reported one of such posts from the profile you mention, in order to see if it stays unhandled for ages too although, as you say, the profile has a habit of doing so recurrently. Let’s see how it goes.

Edit: Out of my 7 distinct reports yesterday, this one remains the only one unhandled so far.
Edit 20190807: Two days later, this report remains unhandled ...

Because it could be interpreted as an exception from Theymos:


But honestly, that topic is not really that substantial and useful, and the posts make the adds look smaller (nowhere near insignificant) just because the text is maxed out.

Probably you were the only one reporting and the mods rather than dropping a PM to Theymos fo a debate on what to do choose to wait and see if anybody else was annoyed by it. As  DdmrDdmr said, let's see what happens if more reports are done <insert evil smiley here> 

All these referral links posted on Bitcointalk or other forums is so annoying. Especially when people create bots to spread reflinks on random boards and threads. I always report these kind of posts when I see.
But I have say that I also promote my referral links on Bitcointalk indirectly. I have created website where I upload various referral links and here on Bitcointalk I have separate thread where I advertise my personal website.

Thanks for that link, I assumed there was some exception for posting referral links direct in post, but as you say that user very likely does not satisfy that rule in our opinion, and we will see if reports from more then one user will change something.


This user is run one more thread, dedicated to tennis betting picks, and if you look to OP there is mod note removed ref spam, but this is not stop that user to continue with posting his ref links.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1002400.0

A knowledge quiz is an interesting idea but I don't know if it's effective and fulfil its purpose. There might be some spammers who won't pass it because their knowledge is very limited but it doesn't take much effort for at least halfway experienced members and I guess most of the spammer accounts are operated by "business spammers" so they should know the questions.
And on the other hand most Newbies without knowledge won't have a chance to register here if they want to ask a single question.

So I guess a quiz would most likely affect the wrong people.

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