Spam in private messages

[Christian A.]

Hello,

Recently, some spammers have signed up to the forums, and have sent out private messages to a number of users, pretending to be administrators of these forums.

The private messages said that a virus had been found on the user's computer, and that the user needed to visit a link to check.

We do not and cannot check any user's computer for viruses. These messages were not from us. Please do not be alarmed, your computer is most likely not affected. However, if you visited the link, we recommend you scan your computer via a reputable virus scanner.

We have taken steps to ensure this cannot happen again, but please exercise caution and common sense on the Internet.

The current administrators and moderators can be seen at this page. If any message appears purporting to be from an admin, please check against that page.

Regards,

The administrators of Tina Dico-forum

[Anticubital]

Originally Posted by Christian A.

Hello,

Recently, some spammers have signed up to the forums, and have sent out private messages to a number of users, pretending to be administrators of these forums.

The private messages said that a virus had been found on the user's computer, and that the user needed to visit a link to check.

We do not and cannot check any user's computer for viruses. These messages were not from us. Please do not be alarmed, your computer is most likely not affected. However, if you visited the link, we recommend you scan your computer via a reputable virus scanner.

We have taken steps to ensure this cannot happen again, but please exercise caution and common sense on the Internet.

The current administrators and moderators can be seen at this page. If any message appears purporting to be from an admin, please check against that page.

Regards,

The administrators of Tina Dico-forum

Thanks! We just ignored the PMs as usual...

[Cheesewater]

I have gotten a few of these, the latest being only a couple of hours ago. I reported it through the CP, put the offender on "ignore" and deleted the message.

Thanks for being on top of this admins!

[Christian A.]

Thank you.

He has been dealt with.

[marco]

I recieved an email telling me i have been pm'ed about this, i logged in and could not find any pm's sent or recieved, i have not been logged in to this forum for quite a while and would certainly not spam members of this forum my login was obviously comprimised if my account has been spamming members, sorry people

Marc

[Christian A.]

marco, your account has not been compromised. What happened was, that you received one of the spam messages sent, and then the forum immediately sent out an e-mail.

In the meantime, I went in and deleted all the messages the spammer sent, and then of course you come in and see an empty inbox.

Sorry for the confusion, but that's the way we have to do it

/Christian A.

[Kenny]

I'm a member of another vBulletin message board and it's the exact same usernames on here that have spammed the members, as they have on the other message board.

I'm guessing they'll keep coming back as different usernames. They do on the the other vBulletin board. But I'm sure you've got measures in place to counter them.

I admin an SMF forum and one way we counter them is to prevent new users from being able to send PM's until they've made a certain amount of posts. That way you can usually fish them out before they spam.

Good luck with it.

[Christian A.]

Originally Posted by Kenny

I admin an SMF forum and one way we counter them is to prevent new users from being able to send PM's until they've made a certain amount of posts. That way you can usually fish them out before they spam.

I've actually just implemented this measure today.

Let's see what happens

/Christian

[Christian A.]

The criteria to be able to send Private Messages has been upped from 1 post to a higher number.

/The admin team