CAUTION!!....MORE SPAMMERS!!

[darlicious]

Hey community members,

As was reported earlier on Saturday there was a couple of spam sent thru private messaging about making money $$$$ someway somehow.....

There are 29 new members that created their accounts between 9:31 pm pst and 9:36 pm pst when no one has posted since at least 8:36 pm pst until @Korth an hour later.....anyhow expect to see spam in your private messages in the morning. I messaged @Andu_S a heads up since I have yet to recieve any spam to be able to report it. As usual do not click on any links or repost them. Report the spam and delete it. Watch out for the following new members private messaging you......

[Korth]

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@Yummy wrote:
And BTW, I cannot get out of this 'quote' thing. Sometimes when I leave partial quote I can get into new line without this vertical character and sometimes I do not???

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This forum software is lousy, it makes some simple things into frustrating chores.

It's especially awful on mobile browsers. Tragic when you consider Public Mobile's business model depends on many customers being able to properly run this website on their smartphones.

[Yummy]

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@Korth wrote:

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Email addresses always have a reference point to a real person at a real location.

Great explanation @Korth ! Much appreciated. When I tried to find adequate answer on Internet I always hit useless, self-promoting blogs with zillion ads. Everybody wants to cash in on Internet. It looks like some small forums like this one are the answer for any future meaningful discussion.

And BTW, I cannot get out of this 'quote' thing. Sometimes when I leave partial quote I can get into new line without this vertical character and sometimes I do not???

[darlicious]

@stevenanto 

I haven't had any in ages.....I think they're on to me. Knowing if they spam me I can immediately report them thus getting CSA attention. Otherwise my hands are tied. Then again I have been trying to get their attention since yesterday afternoon to no avail?!!😐

[stevenanto]

It is just annoying, I havent been on in a while (a week) and I got three messages in my inbox. 

[darlicious]

@J_PM 

After learning something new today and realizing that in one night the regular 50 or so accounts created by spammers can create 100,000 spam messages per nightly attack. Is there not a way for the night CSA's to be informed or take notice of these spammers when they first get online? It's a little irritating to inform them at 9:30pm pt and still see all of those accounts still spamming away 8 hours later......it must be a huge waste of employee time/labour cost to deal with the inquiries of 100,000 spam the next day rather than ban 50 accounts at the beginning of the night. The 7 P's...PPPPPPP!

[Korth]

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@Meow wrote:

It was more of a comment to try to understand how spammers get hold of your full name when you use your email (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc.) even though full name is not part of my profile on those mail systems????

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Email addresses always have a reference point to a real person at a real location. Even the "free" services like gmail and hotmail require some sort of 2FA - another email address, a phone number, etc - when you register a new account. Chances are you signed up your hotmail account with an email or phone number provided by your ISP, one that's linked to an account with all your billing information.

Plus, of course, they're all able to correlate countless other data points to eventually figure out your identity (and spending patterns) - who you are, where you are, where you go offline, what you do online, what interests you have. The big data brokers make billions selling and trading "your" data to advertisers, and advertisers can be anybody without any real sort of confidentiality or privacy regulations or background checks.

It's inescapable unless you become a hardcore tinfoil hat and live completely off the grid.

And digital information can be copied any number of times, while digital storage media are cheap and always getting cheaper. So you have to assume that anything you've ever submitted anywhere online has been archived somewhere, that it could always reappear again and again indefinitely.

If a spammer - any spammer - ever collected data about you then chances are they still have it and they've already shared it with other spammers. If you ever had any spyware or malware on a machine then "your" information could be out there. If anyone you know and trust ever got spyware or malware on their machines then "your" information could have been lifted from them. If any of the businesses or corporations you've ever submitted information to - a gas station chain, a supermarket chain, a shipping company, a social media site, whatever - sold or traded or shared "your" information with their partners then it's out there. If any of them ever got "hacked" or "compromised" or "leaked" then your info could be out there.

[Meow]

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

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I don't think those are coming from PM if it isn't a private message here.

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Sorry for the confusion. My comment has nothing to do with PM spam. I do not think either somebody cracked into my PM account. This goes for years before me being at PM.

It was more of a comment to try to understand how spammers get hold of your full name when you use your email (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc.) even though full name is not part of my profile on those mail systems????

[ShawnC13]

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@Meow wrote:

Since we are talking about spammers, could somebody explain how these nasty people get a hold of my full name and bombard my mailbox (not PM) with indecent proposals (girls, enlargements, bitconmillionares, dating, etc.).

What is in their mind??? Do they really think people will click on their stupid offers?

I never use my full name in any email I send nor it is part of my profile... Hotmail is the worst, other providers not so much if ever...

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I don't think those are coming from PM if it isn't a private message here.

[darlicious]

@Meow 

No...I don't think so but you can pick and choose what you want to be emailed for like private messages or in this case not....I hate getting bombarded by notifications that someone replied to something so I just ticked the one box to get no emails. If I'm not on the community I'm not bothered. Can you imagine the notifications I would receive from 600+ posts a month?!!  And another 75+ private messages? No thank you!

[Meow]

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@darlicious wrote:

Unsubscribe from your community emails in your profile settings.

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WOW! You think somebody can grab my data from PM???????

[darlicious]

@Meow 

Unsubscribe from your community emails in your profile settings.

[Meow]

Since we are talking about spammers, could somebody explain how these nasty people get a hold of my full name and bombard my mailbox (not PM) with indecent proposals (girls, enlargements, bitconmillionares, dating, etc.).

What is in their mind??? Do they really think people will click on their stupid offers?

I never use my full name in any email I send nor it is part of my profile... Hotmail is the worst, other providers not so much if ever...

[Yummy]

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@darlicious wrote:

Look at my list and go look at the current users online and tell me what you see....

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So you are saying that spam accounts have firstname_lastname as user IDs while 'real' customers never use such pattern? It makes sense; why would anybody use real name in any kind of public forum...

But that kind of account creation requires really good developer's skills; you have to create a code which will generate fake user ID's, access PM page, create and confirm account, etc., etc. And what for? To send spam email everybody would delete and curse sender? Insanity...

[Korth]

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@darlicious wrote:

Next time I will post when I notice on the landing page when you look at users online and welcome our newest members.....it goes from about 5 members and @Christopher_T  to 50 new members all with the same type of full name in the middle of the night. 

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I wouldn't bother with tracking 50 bot accounts. The bot operator could just as easily run 5 or 5000 instances instead. Probably trying to plant as many spam seeds as possible while also staying under the radar. Too bad that skulking around in the shadows just attracts more attention and makes people wonder why you look so furtive, lol.

I suspect that @Christopher_T is itself a bot account - Public Mobile's method of logging activity and history during the wee hours when predatory spammer pests lurk around.

[darlicious]

@Yummy 

Next time I will post when I notice on the landing page when you look at users online and welcome our newest members.....it goes from about 5 members and @Christopher_T  to 50 new members all with the same type of full name in the middle of the night. 

Look at my list and go look at the current users online and tell me what you see....

[Yummy]

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@darlicious wrote:

@Yummy 

So I should just stick to giving it to customer support?

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I just do not see how would, for example I, use your list. Maybe other members find it useful but if I get spam I report and delete. I do not cross check their names with public postings.

Do you really think CSR will go name by name and delete their accounts?

Question is: how did you determine these are spammers? Did you get spam from each of them?

And please, do not get me wrong! I am not arguing with you. Last think I would ever do... If somebody finds your list useful, go for it. With my still limited knowledge of PM I do not know how one can compile such a list or how it could benefit anybody.

[darlicious]

@Yummy 

So I should just stick to giving it to customer support?

[Yummy]

I think it is waste of time to post these long list of alleged spammers. How will this list help anybody in Community?

When and if I receive any spam message I just report and delete.

[darlicious]

They are relentless this week....Report and delete!

[darlicious]

@Yummy 

They always follow a pattern using full names usually starting around 12:30 am eastern. This latest batch switched from girls to boys names and adding an underscore. They skip a day in between and were on Friday night as well but I was too groggy to care it's pretty obvious when there are 5 or 6 members online and all of a sudden 40 to 50 accounts are suddenly created that never post anything publicly.

I did the math earlier in this thread and if you don't think 20 000 spam emails and private messages doesn't have an effect on customer service wait times as CSA's answer each reported spam and any subsequent tickets created by customers that don't use the community for help then give me a better explanation other than coincidence that the recent increase in wait times up to 4 days over a 5 or 6 day period that just happened to be immediately following the last spam attack preceding these 3 incidents. 50 spammers sending out a minimum of 60 spam per hour =3000 per hour × 6 hours=18,000 spam you don't think that has effect on customer service even if only 1000 of them get reported?

There was a 4 or 5 page thread trying to convince a customer that reporting and deleting was the appropriate way to deal with this spam. They insisted on opening a ticket to report it and was told to report and delete as we had instructed. How many more customers have done that without asking the community? That's my point.....if those spammers were banned in the first two hours they are online  we are preventing more than half of the spam from being sent out and the more you are successful at discouraging spamming the less likely they will continue to attack.

[barrascuk]

But can you collect them into a note file (copy and paste) and can you send a PM  to multiple IDs?

@Meow 

[Meow]

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@barrascuk wrote:

@Meow Just tap a user ID and you will get the option to PM. Is very easy   

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Correct, but it is still work, it is not automated! You have to get to user ID, tap, paste, send. So somebody has to go into any topic with a lot of replies and do that or to click on any currently logged in user, refresh, etc.

[barrascuk]

@Yummy 

I agree with you. Report and delete. 

[barrascuk]

@Meow Just tap a user ID and you will get the option to PM. Is very easy   

[Yummy]

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@darlicious wrote:

I send the same list to the CSA's in the fruitless hope that they might get ahead of the spam being sent out. When this first started members would ask about specific

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I understand you wanted to be proactive and prevent spamming. But how do you determine people on your list are actually spammers?

And I doubt CSR will take time to consider your list to be 'real list of spammers' as they are most likely busy resolving real issues with PM service/accounts.

Receiving spam is just minor nuisance UNLESS you do click on their links; open PM, report, delete.

[hTideGnow]

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@Meow wrote:

How these spammers get a hold of our 'names'?

They only way I found is to list who is currently on-line. But it is still a work involved to grab each 'name and post to it.

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Spammers usually don't do it manually.  They can easily have programs/batches to browse through the site and collect user names from all the posts

[walker1]

@darlicious   I believe they are spamming people in alphabetical order ( community account name).

[darlicious]

@Meow 

Good question! I haven't been spammed in forever and I am almost always online when they are....

[Meow]

How these spammers get a hold of our 'names'?

They only way I found is to list who is currently on-line. But it is still a work involved to grab each 'name and post to it.

[darlicious]

@Yummy 

I send the same list to the CSA's in the fruitless hope that they might get ahead of the spam being sent out. When this first started members would ask about specific members names so the list could be checked but yes it seems like a waste of time to even bother anymore other than to expect longer wait times today as the CSA's deal with reports and deleting and banning profiles.