Solicitation Messages

[sengarooney]

Anyone else getting messages advising  how to earn money and pay bills etc. It’s very annoying. 

[hTideGnow]

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@Korth wrote:

The common approach on other forums is to not enable private messages for new users until a certain number of posts are made and/or a certain number of days have passed. As often as not, they also impose annoying captchas onto low-tier users.

Some sort of dedicated "contact Admin/Moderator" button is almost always provided, a special channel which anyone can use. (And, I think, a necessary one for a support-based business site like this one, lol.)

But user-to-user messaging is kept public until new users have "earned" the privilege of sending private traffic. It's not 100% spam-proof but it does discourage spammers, they prefer places where they can big numbers with minimum delay and minimum effort.

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I agree this approach.  If being nice, I guess the system could limit the private message to sincle recipient, maximum of 5 message per day, only until user earn enough point or reach a different ranking.

On the other hand, so far these message just annoying and not that harmful yet.  So, I doubt PM would do much to stop it.

[Korth]

The common approach on other forums is to not enable private messages for new users until a certain number of posts are made and/or a certain number of days have passed. As often as not, they also impose annoying captchas onto low-tier users.

Some sort of dedicated "contact Admin/Moderator" button is almost always provided, a special channel which anyone can use. (And, I think, a necessary one for a support-based business site like this one, lol, let's face fact: simple Simon bot isn't for everyone, many people will use it only as a last resort, so you might as well accommodate other options.)

But user-to-user messaging is kept public until new users have "earned" the privilege of sending private traffic. It's not 100% spam-proof but it does discourage spammers, they prefer places where they can big numbers with minimum delay and minimum effort.

[AE_Collector]

One might think that here could be a built in software alarm to moderators if any newly registered account starts sending private messages to more than 2 or 3 people? When would any of us start sending private messages to person after person? And we aren't new members here. I assume that moderators may have the ability to look in someone’s messages OR look at the message in the senders “Sent” folder to confirm its content. With something like this the new member could be shut down quite quickly and tossed. Then maybe all members spammed by said member could receive an automated message saying the perpetrator has been tossed.

AE_Collector

[nathands123]

Got my first message from them today. Reported that real quick.

[darlicious]

@dabr @Anonymous 

Yes a nuisance for us.....one or two spam messages. But a time consuming headache for the moderators which then slows down wait times for customers needing their issues resolved. Everytime we report they respond in a timely fashion which is time not responding to port issues, sim card changes etc...

[dabr]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Here's a suggestion.... @Melinda_H , @David_J : maybe some spam would be much less if the online status of accounts was defaulted to not showing. My Z account doesn't seem to get these spams. But then maybe it's just because of alphabetical order. I'm not sure why some accounts get it and others don't.

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@Anonymous   Perhaps you've just been lucky with the other account.

I can confirm that it doesn't matter what your online status is or whether a community member has even posted in the forum as two accounts that never posted and are set to be not visible on the rare occasion they are signed in, have received more than a couple of these spam emails each over the last few months.   

Edit:  But I agree it's not worth getting overly concerned about this issue when reporting and deleting takes just a minute.  More of a nuisance!

[Anonymous]

Report. Delete. Move on. This is not hard. First world problems. Why do people set their hair on fire every time? The only "offensive" one I remember wasn't offensive at all. It was the page of a link. Don't click the link! Anyway!

[darlicious]

@AE_Collector 

What I don't understand is these spammers follow a pattern....last time they would strike every two days, the time before that it was every night but it is always between about 12:30 am to 2 am eastern that the community accounts get made and they start spamming for the next 8 to 10 hours. Its obvious ( lol I wasn't on last night at that time for once!) what's happening because community members online suddenly go from 5 or maybe 10 at the most to 40 new members with similar full names being used and the profiles are all made within 10 minutes of each other.

One of the night moderators should be assigned the task of checking the users online list once or twice a night to observe if there is this unusual activity occurring. I do it....it takes 30 seconds! Unless I was spammed right away there was no easy way of alerting the moderators to take immediate action even on the following nights after they were aware that another spam attack was likely.....

Being proactive in eliminating the the offending accounts usually from only one or two IP addresses would save the moderator team an immense amount of work answering reported spam from legitimate community members. I estimated the last spam attack was producing a minimum of 18,000 spam messages each night over the course of 10 hours. Stopping it from happening within the first hour or two would make a real difference in how many members are affected by these unwanted  and sometimes offensive messages.

[Korth]

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@Yummy wrote:

Can they do some decent work instead of spamming people???

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Some people will always be lazy. Will never do real work while they can profit from the work of others. If they achieve any measure of profit or success then they'll believe they're clever, they've somehow outsmarted the system. But no matter how you measure it, being an anonymous online spammer is a pretty sad and shameful accomplishment.

[AE_Collector]

Only problem is that how many people create their account to ask a question or solve a problem. An automatic 3-7 day wait means any that aren't already a customer will get their info and quite likely their service elsewhere. And those who are already customers with problems will be like so many that we see here from time to time who are incensed with something about PM once they are finally able to ask for help.

AE_Collector

[Yummy]

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@Meow wrote:

How about blocking new Community members of posting for 3-7 days after creating

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I like that. Like cooling off period...

[Meow]

How about blocking new Community members of posting for 3-7 days after creating Comm account? I doubt spammers have enough patience to wait to start posting messages.

[Anonymous]

Here's a suggestion.... @Melinda_H , @David_J : maybe some spam would be much less if the online status of accounts was defaulted to not showing. My Z account doesn't seem to get these spams. But then maybe it's just because of alphabetical order. I'm not sure why some accounts get it and others don't.

[chipmunk]

Another name for the list:

GracelynMack

[Yummy]

Another spammer MadilynCastaned with similar private message. They are really annoying. Can they do some decent work instead of spamming people???

[Meow]

Yup! Some bitcoin solicitation from 'member' MakennaCannon registered today.

Deleted, reported. Nothing else one can do but report... Open message (no harm unless you click on any links) and click on left 'Report'

[sengarooney]

Many thanks for the helpful info...

[sengarooney]

Many thanks for the helpful info....stay safe!

[hTideGnow · Accepted solution]

@sengarooney Unfortunately these guys keep hanging around.  PM banned them but as you know that they can always come back with new account.  Just report spam , then delete.

[darlicious]

@sengarooney 

There was some spammers about two weeks ago. They have all been banned . You can safely just delete them. But you can report it first if you like.....don't click on any of the links but if you open the message at the bottom left under the message is a report this message button. Click on it and report it as spam. Then delete the message.