Scammers & Spammers

[Caroline Richardson]

Marcus.. you have not yet eradicated these scammers and spammers Hope you can do so soon. Scammers are much more deadly than spammers!

This scam message arrived 10 minutes after the timestamp of your email Marcus, saying you had eradicated them! In a way I suppose this particular email is quite poetic.
A whole new genre  has arrived.. We could have a competition.. The Cyber Scam Slam.

Hello My Dear
How Are You? Hoping And Believing you are fine ,
My name is syntia,
I saw your profile today and fund you worthy
to be mine as some one whom i can lay on his
arms as long as love is concern, Again i will
like you to inform me a litel about you,
If you are interested in knowing me. please
contact me through his email,
[e-mail]
I will be expecting your mail anytime from now,
Have a very good day and take care, please contact
me through my email box ok
Bye For Now,

[Chantal Guevara]

Hi Caroline,

I think most of us have been hit by spammers today - this Ning site has nearly 1k members now, and as Marcus said in his email earlier, that's like spammer goldmine!

Currently all new members need to be approved before joining, and that's helped prevent some of the spammers from returning today. (Syntia has been very persistent!)

Let's hope this will solve the problem for now - we've all suffered enough this week without having to put up with scammers/spammers on top of it!

[Joanne South]

I've just received the same thing this morning. Is there anything you can do to get rid of it? Thanks.

[Chantal Guevara]

Who was it from? I've been Googling most of the new members before approving them, so if someone got through, I'll block them straight away.

[Joanne South]

The e-mail was from Syntiadesmond and I've copied the whole thing below as it includes an e-mail address

Hello My Dear
How Are You? Hoping And Believing you are fine , My name is syntia, I saw your profile today and fund you worthy to be mine as some one whom i can lay on his arms as long as love is concern, Again i will like you to inform me a litel about you, If you are interested in knowing me. please contact me through his email, [e-mail] I will be expecting your mail anytime from now, Have a very good day and take care, please contact me through my email box ok Bye For Now,

Chantal Guevara said:

Who was it from? I've been Googling most of the new members before approving them, so if someone got through, I'll block them straight away.

[Chantal Guevara]

When did the email arrive? We've blocked her four times, she's not currently in the ("approved") members' list as far as I can tell. She's the one who was doing all the spamming over the weekend!

I've just Googled her and she's a very prolific spammer in general - sigh.

[Joanne South]

I received it this morning - it may have just slipped through as part of the weekend spam. Thanks for lokoing into this. Much appreciated.

Chantal Guevara said:

When did the email arrive? We've blocked her four times, she's not currently in the ("approved") members' list as far as I can tell. She's the one who was doing all the spamming over the weekend!

I've just Googled her and she's a very prolific spammer in general - sigh.

[Chantal Guevara]

Phew - if it's from the weekend, then she's safely banned from here.

I'm used to receiving occasional spam from various forums I've joined over the years, but it's such a shame to see it on here, especially as it's upsetting a lot of people. Hopefully this is the last of the spam!

[Caroline Richardson]

Chantal
Let's just be clear.. there is spam which is normally marketing virals and there is scam which is much more sinister..ie normally men preying on women - I think Syntia is a man as the email address is syntia desmond.
Other scams are emails asking you to confirm your bank details etc and look as though they come from a legit source.
This is most definitely a scam.
Thank you so much for trying to eradicate this!

[Chantal Guevara]

Hi Caroline,

I wasn't being specific, as either way it's spam, but scammers are much more likely to target forums and groups such as this. Nor is Syntia's gender relevant. (Have been a bit too busy to read the content of the messages).

I would guess that it's unlikely for any more scammers/spammers to target this group for a while, but in the meantime, we're checking out everyone who wants to join, just in case... :)