[Lasher]

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.

[Jazuela]

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

[Xerihae]

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.

[Newworlds]

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).

[Samson]

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?

[prof1515]

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.

[Fizban]

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

[Fizban]

My count is also off like Xerihae's is.

[KaVir]

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

[Fizban]

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

[Lasher]

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

[Fern]

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.

[Brody]

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

[Ilkidarios]

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?

[Darren Brimhall]

Sounds more like a Movie Plot


Darren Brimhall

[Ghostcat]

The message is highly entertaining, thank you.

[Jazuela]

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

[Darren Brimhall]

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

[Hades_Kane]

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

[Ghostcat]

I blame Darren.