Private message spammers

[abcdefg]

I got two spam private messages overnight. Don't know, but perhaps the 刚装修'd form is attracting them more than it did before. Hope not.

 

Beware of opening private messages from people you don't recognize. If you think they might be 假的，first take time to see what that person has contributed in the past, if anything.

 

This is the era of ransomware and all sorts of internet ugliness. Scams abound, especially at this time of year (during the run-up to 春节 Spring Festival.)

[abcdefg]

Another one just now. This time it was in Russian.

 

Anyone else getting these? This makes 3 in less than 24 hours.

[roddy]

Send in a report for anything you think is a problem - you can report pm's in the same way as posts. I'll stamp on 'em and investigate when I'm back at my desk. 

[abcdefg]

OK, will do. Did not realize that was possible.

[roddy]

All banned. 

[roddy]

Rather than banning new members from using pm's outright, I see I can now limit the number of pm conversations they're able to start. So I've limited this to one conversation, with one recipient, per day. I figure this allows some legitimate use but will limit the spammers and hopefully they'll only get one message out before getting reported and banned. 

 

Seem reasonable?

[abcdefg]

Why would a new member, who is not even allowed to post without the post first being reviewed by a moderator, need to send any private messages at all? And don't these spammers often change their bogus personal details after only one batch of messages?

 

I think it would be better to not let them send any private messages before they have been around a while.

 

My guess is they are targeting active forum users, such as myself, more than people who seldom or never post.

[imron]

5 hours ago, abcdefg said:

Why would a new member, who is not even allowed to post without the post first being reviewed by a moderator, need to send any private messages at all?

Maybe someone else wrote a post with 'PM me for details' and now that person who has never posted before would like some details.  This actually did pop up every now and then with people saying they couldn't PM yet.

[Flickserve]

Not had any so far.

 

Is there a relationship between the registration time and the spam message?Perhaps a 24h period of no PMs after initial registration will be effective?

[roddy]

It's usually someone wants to respond to something like "I have the contact for the CSC contact at X embassy, PM me if you need it", or they want to contact someone they think will be able to help them with some issue.

 

It's not necessarily an immediate thing - one of the accounts I banned yesterday was registered in December. When I can spot a bunch that are dodgy I can mass-delete them, but sometimes it's one registration from a legit provider like gmail.

 

There are currently more spammers in the system than usual - i turned off CAPTCHA as it was causing problems for folk in China (it was a Google service) and the question and answer challenge wasn't keeping them out and we had a lot of spam accounts registered. Updated the Q&A's and that's working for now, but some of the spam accounts are still popping up now and then. As I say, those I can spot and get rid of, I do, but you can't catch 'em all.

[roddy]

Had a couple of reports of unwanted pm's lately - do send in reports if you get one and we'll take a look and nine times out of ten ban them. 

 

The current set up is that new members can only send one pm a day (or rather, pm one person), so they can't spam the entire membership. I can tighten up on that if it becomes a problem.

[abcdefg]

Thanks. I was concerned that she might spam a lot of members all at the same time. Not sure why she picked me.

[Shelley]

Interesting that you thought they were female, if we are talking about the same one I thought it was male.

[roddy]

You're not talking about the same one.

[Shelley]

Ok, understood.