Our first Spammer.
 

A couple of hundred people got PM spam in the "send me your bank account info and we do great business together" type style, which means our first spammer made it through.

I know the extra manual step to verifying accounts before they can post frustrates some people, but it really does help keep spam down on the forum. It turns out the "users awaiting confirmation" group could still PM others.

That user group can no longer use PMs (but can still use the "contact us" link if they have problems) and all PMs from this specific user have been removed so most people will never even see the spam.

Thanks to those who reported it.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I didn't get one of those spammer PMs. I feel unloved.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

It seems the deletion of the spammers PM has thrown the PM count out. My PM box still shows 83 messages (as it did when I had the spam) but I only have 82 messages in there. Inbox and Sent Items count is correct, just overall number that's affected.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I didn't get this spam, but I haven't had a private message in about 5 days and all of a sudden it showed a new private message. Very odd, because I couldn't find it and it wouldn't go away until I deleted about 20 old messages then it disappeared as if I hadn't read one of my old messages (Which I had, I had zero new messages for the last 5 days).

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

While primarily intended as blog spam protection, where it excels I might add, there have been a number of efforts to use the tool in forum packages as well where it should be equally effective against spammers. There's no reason it can't work against PMs just as well as it would against postings.

Edit: Interesting - how does vB know to put the page's title in the link?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Thank ****ing god that for once I didn't get the spam. Been getting a lot on a couple of my emails lately and it's nice to know one spambot missed me this week. :)

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I got it, and just so those of you that don't feel loved due to not getting it don't feel left out....

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

My count is also off like Xerihae's is.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I got it twice, but it doesn't make me feel loved.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Hmm, I'm wondering what criteria their program used to determine who to send them to.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

The unmoderated user group can't view the full member list so my guess is they were following links from posts.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Hopefully this got reported to Fraud Watch International. They keep track of the sources of Nigerian 411 spams like that one, and other types of course. If you do receive something like this via email, turn on long headers and forward it to for their action.

You can also see a list of the latest fraud and phishing attempts on their main page at - very handy if you suspect you've received a phish.

Please tell older folks (like myself, for instance *grin*), parents and grandparents who may be new to the net and unaware of the damage that fraud and phishing emails can do - help them get aware and stay safe. One of the most recent is an IRS refund offer that is warned about on the IRS website itself.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Nice. Well, may they burn in that special circle of hell reserved for fraud spammers!

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I don't have any spam, but a little pop-up telling me that I have a new PM keeps coming up but when I check it it's just the same old ones. Is that a side-effect?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Sounds more like a Movie Plot


Darren Brimhall

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

The message is highly entertaining, thank you.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

This about important information. Must be for thank in most times.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Lately though, I've been getting a lot of spam that starts out "Hey sugar, you were great last night." and so forth.

That I just tag as it is and let Yahoo deal with it.


Darren Brimhall

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

You guys realize this thread is like 7 years old, huh?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I blame Darren.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

The irony of Ghostcat and my responses just went WHOOSH right over your head, didn't it?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

What does the "irony" of your posts have anything to do with necro'ing a 7 year old thread?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Okay here's the simple explanation since you've confirmed that yes, it did go right over your head:

This thread is about spammers. If you read through, you'll see a few different types of spam addressed.

One type of spam on the internet is -

necro'ing old threads with spam posts.

Another type is -

responding to necro'ed threads by human spam-bots who post single-line posts through a translator, such as:

Very interesting thread, much thank for you in contribute!


And so - Ghostcat and I complied and pretended to be those one-post bot-members who use babelfish to translate our foreign spam lines that exist on occasion to imbed a secret link in one of the words, such that if you were to click on it, it'd link you to a spam site.

It was funny to those of us who understand how these things work, and participated in perpetuating the joke.

You didn't get the joke.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

And yet, the person who revived a 7 year old thread continued discussing it, with absolute no trace of irony.

I suspect in your case, this is someone being far more amused with themselves than they have any reason to be, mistaking themselves or their posts for being far more clever than they are.

I understand you and the other poster were mimicking spam with your posts, but it doesn't change the fact that this thread is 7 years old and it has been otherwise pointless to continue bumping it to the top of the discussion on the front page. The forums are inactive enough to where it really doesn't need something like this to be the most active or prominent discussion.

If you want to be "funny", why not do so in context of a thread that actually contributes something?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Actually I was honestly thanking Darren for bringing this thread to my attention. The message was pretty funny.

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Seems I was wrong about Ghostcat, he wasn't trying to be funny. I thought his post was funny, mocking Darrell and the entire thread for its existence with a typical 1-liner that spam-bots are known to drop in necroed threads.

I understand you want to scold us like children for daring to revive a 7-year-old thread, but it is otherwise pointless to continue bumping it to the top of the discussion on the front page, as you have done a couple of times already in the past week. The forums are inactive enough to where it really doesn't need anyone like you to be the most active or prominent discussion.

If you want to be a moderator, why not do so in a forum that actually encourages you to contribute something?

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

I thought the babelfish one-liner thing was hilarious.

*bumps to top of the main-page*

Re: Our first Spammer.
 

Quit spamming my email with notification alerts. :P

On a related note. To this day my inbox still shows 1 unread message on this site because of the spammer that led to the creation of this thread.