About The Pm's You Are Getting Reference A Survey

[kitchenelf]

We are checking with the site owner now, Andy R., to see if he wants this to continue. This has taken us by surprise too. If you want to you can just ignore the survey until we figure out what's going on.

Thanks,

Admin Team

 

[goboenomo]

Oh, good. I'm not the only one who got that. That made me kinda angry.

 

[Jeekinz]

Why would you let a spammer continue to send junk emails to your users?

 

[GB]

Often times we get requests like this that are legitimate. This person is not looking for any money or trying to sell anything. At the time we started looking into this he has only contacted one or two people. Once he started contacting everyone we took steps to stop that action as that is when it became spam.

 

[Franca]

Often times we get requests like this that are legitimate. This person is not looking for any money or trying to sell anything. At the time we started looking into this he has only contacted one or two people. Once he started contacting everyone we took steps to stop that action as that is when it became spam.

I don't think a "Dear Sir/Madam" message is ever appropriate for private messaging.... And this one has absolutely nothing to do with cooking!

 

[GB]

But it does have to do with online forums, and when we were first made aware of these PM's they were sent to staff members only, therefore we saw it as asking permission to see if sending something like this would be OK. Doing that most certainly is appropriate. Like I said, once we saw that it went beyond that we took action to stop it.

 

[Jeekinz]

IMHO....any mail, especially PM's from a company looking for a survey is SPAM. PM's are for users/admins to contact each other by means other than a forum thread. If the survey was requested for/by discusscooking.com, it would still be spam, just acceptable spam. I think a continuation of third party advertisements would be a detriment to this site.

 

[kitchenelf]

PM's are not under our control. Unfortunately especially in this instance.

I know we've talked about "etiquette" a lot lately on the forums - I don't think these people had "etiquette" in mind.

We really are doing what we can - some actions can only be taken by the owner of this site.

 

[YT2095]

Typical.
Absolutely Typical!
even Spammers are being stopped from talking to me now, how am I EVER going to make any friends *sob* *sniff*

 

[kitchenelf]

Typical.
Absolutely Typical!
even Spammers are being stopped from talking to me now, how am I EVER going to make any friends *sob* *sniff*

You are BEYOND so very, very bad!!!!!!!!!

 

[Candocook]

Who knows what that link might lead to. Not me boy.

 

[kitchenelf]

Who knows what that link might lead to. Not me boy.

And that's the smart thing to do.

It does, however, link to a survey and is posted from a legitimate university. This might very well be a project like they say, they just went about it the wrong way.

 

[Buck]

Any message like this sets off alarms in my head. That's inconvenient because it keeps me from hearing what "the voices" are saying. I deleted it.

 

[BlueCat]

Who knows what that link might lead to. Not me boy.

Exactly. I don't think they should be allowed on the board after sending a PM like that. We're warned regularly at work about unknown people sending viruses throug links in messages.

BC

 

[jpmcgrew]

I got one to I didn't click the link for fear of a virus and to think I was so excited to get a PM.

 

[CharlieD]

Yeah, I just ignored it. I think it was very rude to PM. Now I wouldn't even bother to answer them.

 

[kimbaby]

I personally hate spammers, I haven't recoeved this pm
so I don't know if it is legit or not, but would rather not recieve any type spam in my pm...you wonderfull members are more then welcome to send me friendly pm's but I do not want any junk mail if possible
thats why I have filters for spam on my emails, I don't want it,need it or have a reason to keep it!

 

[carolelaine]

Thanks for the update, I didn't notice I had a PM until I read this thread. I would have been concerned if you hadn't cleared it up.

 

[Franca]

I personally hate spammers, I haven't recoeved this pm
so I don't know if it is legit or not, but would rather not recieve any type spam in my pm...you wonderfull members are more then welcome to send me friendly pm's but I do not want any junk mail if possible
thats why I have filters for spam on my emails, I don't want it, need it or have a reason to keep it!

I quite agree. You're fortunate you haven't received one of these, probably because there are so many members in this forum. However, if the person isn't moderated or banned you may still get one!

To admin folks: here's a suggestion ... make it as easy to report undesirable PMs as it is to report undesirable forum posts so that something like this can be stopped a lot quicker.

I really think that PMs should be personal - anything else belongs out in the public forum. If it is not deemed worthy of being in the public forum it certainly should not be broadcast by PM. There is nothing personal about a survey, and there was no introductory personal message indicating they were "asking permission" to post a survey anywhere on the forum. Big red flags all over the place.

Can individual members have their ability to send PMs disabled? That would be another option to stop this sort of abuse without going so far as to ban the member outright. (If there were any doubt that the member was simply taking advantage of the forum, which in this case, IMO, there isn't.)

 

[auntdot]

I got it and opened it and clicked on the link.

They listed serveral websites, the only one I had ever heard of was DC, and it seems to be the only cooking site (I know most of thefood sites and they tell you what they are).

Sounds fishy to me. Why DC?

Went no further.

Think I will delete it.

Even if they are legit there are ways to do things properly.