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The message was still in my account today but I was just coming here to ask if there’s a way to report spam messages thru this site. Thanks for taking care of it, much appreciated.
Yep, me too. I have emailed Susie and Jennifer, who no doubt have other things they would rather be dealing with today!
I just recieved it from asumtha saying she is Karen Gerni from the army too.
I wonder if there is a way to block their IP address perhaps?
Looking for:
"COSMIC SHIFT DRAGONS and KI-RINS" and the "OCTOPUS TANUKI TEST PAINT #1"I suggested that in my latest email, and Jennifer said that doesn’t really work for many reasons.
The only way it could work is if the person has a static IP address. Most connections get an IP address from their Internet Service Provider. Even if the same IP address was used each of these times, a few days from now it could get assigned to somebody else.
My keyboard is broken. I keep pressing "Escape", but I'm still here.
I also got one from another name as well. asumtha is the other one; and I got a message from both. Thanks to everyone who helped!
DovahkiinWolfStudios, AKA Mariah Harrison
“You feel the Thu’um. You are Dovahkiin- Dragonborn.”Thank you, I got the newest one just now.
IP blocking has become more tricky over the years as it can accidentally effect innocent people if the IP is spoofed or otherwise change IP blocks. Also many of these scammers/spammers like this are automated and IP spoofing is a common tactic to get around IP bans. That said, I’m sure Clay will do what he can to help prevent this once he’s able to get time to look into it. He has a far greater understanding and expertise than I do! I barely know enough about this stuff to get me in trouble if I muck about, so I do my best not to mess with anything that I don’t fully understand.
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comBTW, when reporting these, it is most helpful to get the actual username, not just the screen name. You can get that by hovering your mouse over the screen name, or if on a mobile phone, hold your finger down on it until your browser pops up a question showing the URL and asking if you want to open in another tab. For mouse hover, I circled the username in this pic. This is Firefox. Other browsers may show the URL elsewhere – but it will be somewhere.
My keyboard is broken. I keep pressing "Escape", but I'm still here.
My very basic understanding with the disclaimer that I am NOT an expert and in fact only just barely glean this info from my IT husbando: scam and spam is such a huge online business worldwide that scam/spammers and the scripts (much of it is totally automated!) are getting smarter and better about getting around safeguards. It’s easy to wonder “what’s the point?!” but the point is to set up an ever larger network of computers to send out this garbage, like a giant net cast into the ocean, that they know will trap at least some of the fish (ultimately to make money, but the way this happens can seem very round about).
This is a kind reminder to always be suspicious of any messages, emails, websites, ads- not just on the forum but with anything electronic- especially ones with links or attachments. Never click on stuff that you aren’t 100% confident in!
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comThanks for your patience everyone. We’re doing our best to deal with this situation and prevent it (as much as possible) from happening in the future. It’s tricky! Several hundred additional spam messages were sent last night from a few different user accounts, which are all connected to the same culprit. If you got one (or more) of these PMs, please just delete them. As mentioned, blocking IPs is a tricky business, but it’s worth trying. However, while IP addresses are attached to forum and comment spam, that’s not the case with PMs. So I’m doing some detective work to try and identify the IP(s), but am not sure that will be possible.
Yesterday I went into the site database and just deleted all of the messages from that first round of spam, but that left users who had not yet opened the message with a “false” setting of “1 new message.” If you are having this issue, please PM me, and I will reset it for you. I will go ahead and do that for those of you who have mentioned it in this thread.
I want to reiterate something that Jennifer mentioned, and that most people are aware of by now, but it bears repeating: NEVER OPEN AN ATTACHMENT OR CLICK A LINK IN A PM OR EMAIL FROM SOMEONE YOU DON’T KNOW. This particular batch of spam did not have any links in it, so it’s relatively benign, just annoying. Let me know if you have any other questions about this.
OK, I was able to delete all the spam messages and reset the “new message” counters associated with those messages, so hopefully everyone’s new message numbers will be accurate now. If anyone still has issues, just let me know.
Thank you Clay!
Looking for:
"COSMIC SHIFT DRAGONS and KI-RINS" and the "OCTOPUS TANUKI TEST PAINT #1"Yeah I had a message again yesterday too but now my message count is back to normal so that’s good! Thanks for the help!
Looking for rainbow or pink & teal grab bags!
My pm count is still funky, but no rush fixing it! You all have so much on your plate, and please know how much we all appreciate everything that you do <3
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