Unsolicited messages

[Rebecca Petris]

If anyone is receiving unsolicited private messages from members who are not active in our community, please let me know. We're seeing some unusual messaging activity in our statistics, so I was a little concerned.

[ziggy]

private msg

Yup..just found private msg all about buddhism...just deleted right away..didn't pay too much attn to sender

[Eileen]

I received one as well on Buddism. I'll pm you the sender.
Eileen

[momaxwell]

Me too. I asked him/her about dry eye but got no response.

[Toril]

..I got the same thing.

[Rebecca Petris]

Thanks everyone. Someone registered as "einstein" and started spamming all our members. All gone now. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. It's the sort of thing we can never totally prevent.

[painintheeye]

me too!

yep, just saw this on my pm and didn't quite understand it either. thanks for the headsup.

chris c

[William53]

I immediately converted to Buddhism and have since received zero annoying messages. ;-}

[Rebecca Petris]

We occasionally get spammers here and sometimes they are very subtle. One I discovered today was putting a hyperlink to an AdSense filled site attached to the period in his sentences. I deleted the posts and banned him/her ("mikemortal", the 18-year-old would-be lasik-ee with osteoporosis )

I think there's a "report bad post" button towards the top right of posts that you can use to alert us to suspicious posts. If you see anything "weird" please don't hesitate to use it and we'll check it out.

Thanks

[dianat]

Hey, I didn't know that cute little yield sign was the "bad post" button! Cool. I almost reported your post above me to be bad, Rebecca.

I've had a funny feeling about Mikemortal. I was awfully nice to him in that thread he started. I feel so dirty!

If he resurfaces again, I'll be sure and tell him how healthy LASIK is for him and that he should shop the bargain basement surgeons. That'll fix 'im.

D

[Rebecca Petris]

LOL. Remember the LasikAtHome gag? I think he'd be a great candidate.

It's hard to pin down a funny feeling but that's exactly what I had.

Just fyi - here are some clues I watch out for:
- Posting in a thread that's been dead for a long time (sometimes people do this accidentally but... sometimes not)
- Posting something that seems like generic (gratuitous) advice - close enough to the general topic that they've clearly put some effort into sneaking under the radar
- Any remotely suspicious hyperlinks
- Any remotely suspicious hyperlinks IN THE USER PROFILE. I don't normally check these out when people register because it's too time-consuming, so if any of you happen to look at a new user's profile and find a link to a site that has a lot of ads or weird content, please tell me! People who make their livings (or attempt to) from those advertising sites go around and register and post on every bulletin board they can because they know that a certain percentage of people will get curious, look at their profile and click on the links in their profile.