Buddhism Spam

[Sal Collaziano]

To anyone who receives a private message from a woman (often named Patricia) - it's spam. There are other names - but the message is usually an introduction with a signature-like section dedicated to spreading the word about Buddhism. Messages like this should be reported to me (there's a new report link in the private message area). The sender will never respond to your messages. It's spam...

 

[GrandPrix08]

I'll keep that in mind. Thanx.

 

[jwaters943]

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

A few of our members had received this specific spam and emailed me about it. The member's account has been banned - but there will likely be more. It's a trend on message boards these days...

 

[Genesis X]

I recieved an email that I had a PM. When I signed on there was no PM. When I checked my mail again for the I was able the read the "original message" and it was the spam from Patricia.
Did you delete the PMs for all accts from this person?

 

[GrandPrix08]

It's not a surprice at all. There are always troublemakers asking for trouble for any website, whether big or small. My Mortal Kombat site(my oldest one that is about 3 years old now), had been attacked consistantly from time to time. It was even attacked by hackers and completely destroyed about 2 years ago, so I had to start from the scratch, on the current site, once there was a user by the name of 'melissa', who came on and posted nothing but 1 liners spam on the chatbox of that site, later registerred, PMed every staffs and E-mailed the staffs those one liners spam so we had to ban her. Another time, this guy registerred, and posted all kinds of curses on ALL the threads, sending abusive E-mails and PMs to the admins(myself and my partner there) and mods, even hacking into one of our member, trying to get him banned, so we had to do something about it. Lately, BOTs were keep registerring just to post porn on the site which are strongly prohibited, so we had to enable the site security to force new members to confirm in order to post messages. Worked for a while, but yesterday, it happened again, so I had to UPGRADE the security.

I think what is happening here is the BOT attack. I think we should upgrade the security here if there is any.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Yes, the member was banned and all PMs sent were deleted.

We're all secure here. Some bots just get through the security. However, all they're doing is signing up and either posting or sending PMs. I've considered shutting down PMs altogether - or only allowing people to send PMs after a certain amount of time and posts.. However, I don't want to restrict people's access because of a few bad apples...