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Spam in PM's

Anyone else receive spam as PM's today? I received three of the same one within a one hour period. I reported it to the webmaster.

Posted by
19099 posts

I received two, so far. The process might even be automated. Someone is going through the site, finding the links for PMs, and sending their spams.

As I said, I received two, one after the other. When I read the first one, I realized it was spam and deleted it, and also deleted the other one, unread. Now, although neither message shows up on my profile, I still get the "new messages" at the top of the page. It's just a "quirk" in the site's programming, but just as a warning - open all the messages before deleting them.

Posted by
1317 posts

Yep 2. Same person. Same problem as Lee (deleted before read his post).

Posted by
8700 posts

Yes - one. I assume we're all getting them from the same source.

Posted by
4 posts

Yes, this is what I got:

"blessing200doma@yahoo.com

From: blessing

Date: 1/30/09 11:36 AM

Hello dear new freind, i am blessing doma good looking girl i am humble and respectful above all i am loving and caring i have gone through your profile treuly it is quite intresting to me i will like to have a good relationship with you so kindly get incontact with me through this mail address (blessing200doma@yahoo.com) so that i can tell you more about myself and also give you my picture hope to hear from you soon, blessing."

Posted by
368 posts

Yah...

You mean Blessing doesn't love me?

:-(

As it was a PM, they must have logged in and sent the message. Seems like a lot of work for a spammer for such a small community.

Posted by
368 posts

Actually they could spam pretty easily once they are in by just changing the user ID in the URL. Seems to be a sequential integer number so you can just change it to whatever you want and get a message prompt for that user.

If any admin is reading this, you might want to considering moving that into the HTTP header instead of the URL as it would make it a little bit more secure. I would imagine that someone could easily create an app to iterate through the users and spam everyone.

Also to the admin, please don't suspend my account for playing around. :-)

Posted by
8293 posts

I got a message from someone called Stanley wanting to sell me groceries. So that's what they're calling it now?

Posted by
83 posts

I have only been part of this site for a short period and I received "Blessings" blessing.

Posted by
32212 posts

YES, one so far from "blessing". Looks like she's a busy girl!!!

I've also reported it to the Webmaster. Hopefully they can find some way to block that particular URL, and any others she might use in future.

Posted by
1170 posts

From: blessing

Date: 1/30/09 12:31 PM

Hello dear new freind, i am blessing doma good looking girl i am humble and respectful above all i am loving and caring i have gone through your profile treuly it is quite intresting to me i will like to have a good relationship with you so kindly get incontact with me through this mail address (blessing200doma@yahoo.com) so that i can tell you more about myself and also give you my picture hope to hear from you soon, blessing.

Four of these came today! I guess Blessing likes me.

Posted by
10344 posts

I think someone (not me) should volunteer to reply to her and get her photo, that could be an interesting photo!

Posted by
1717 posts

Oh No -- our wonderful travel website's Private Message service has been infested by hideous spam. Today I received two Private Messages here : the topic is "blessing200doma@yahoo.com". I did not open it. I deleted it.

Posted by
32212 posts

Kent,

Just curious, which European country did the message originate from? The grammar wasn't exactly perfect, so I wondered which language it had been translated from.

Posted by
368 posts

Ken,

I would say it might be West African in origin. Many 'phishing' spams originate there. The wording is quite like other ones I have had in the past and the name Blessing sounds like many of the names my in-laws mentioned from when they lived in Lagos Nigeria.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. :-)