Ignore phishing attempt delivered to pm boxes

[Lesley Robertson]

Since I have just had a message from someone claiming to be in Ghana and wanting to transfer pots of money into my bank account, delivered into my pm box, I am assuming other members have also had one.

PLEASE, if you do receive one, treat it with the contempt it deserves and ignore it. Do not respond to it in any way, that just tells the parasites that your account is active.

Admin have been alerted.

[stepives]

May I ask how this can happen. Surely he must be a member of the site, to be able to do that.

Does the site have any measures, not to allow a first time user or member to be able to do this. It seems any easy thing to set up, to prevent this rubbish.

[Lesley Robertson]

He/she was a member, and is now banned for life.
It doesn't look as though it was as widespread as I first feared - the person was only in the group for about 30 minutes and looks to have been sending the things individually. I still needed to get the warning out because we didn't know how widespread it was, and some of our members are fairly new to computers.

Anyone can join, we can't vet new members so we are always going to get the odd spammer, etc. Thanks to the very active Modding system, and the help of quite a lot of members, they rarely last very long.

[stepives]

Several sites I use, you have to have 3 moderated posts, before you send any messages. Could that be set up on this site.

As you said, it was lucky it never spread further. This time the message seems to be obvious phishing/spamming......I just wish at sometime, it could be true....that I'd have access to millions.

[Lesley Robertson]

This one was very obvious, dead relative, threats to life, wanting to move and move pots of inherited money first, scattered with "beloved", "god", etc... The main hazard from them seems to be people answering with protest/nasty messages, thereby telling the parasites that they've found a valid account.

Oddly, I seem to be the only Mod who's had one. My photo must look gullible!

[Ladkyis]

I am touching wood as I write this but we really don't get enough of these kinds of people joining for us to need to increase the security measures. Keeping the balance of safety for the members while not encroaching on privacy or making too many hoops to jump through is of paramount concern to the Moderators and to Forces War Records who own the site. There will be discussions about how this person was able to do this and what we intend to do to prevent it.
We might not tell exactly what we come up with but we will ensure that membership remains as easy and as safe as it is today.

You should ask us about the weekend of the spammers when I banned over 1000 names and the other Mods did even more. We might tell that tale for Halloween - if we remember.

[stepives]

I think I may have mentioned before......3 moderated posts, before any Private messages can be enabled. If genuine members are that impatient, to wait for there posts to moderated in this 'high tech' age, then Family History is a no no..

But any measures would be better, than getting rid of 1000's, or even single phishing/spamming messages or posts.

Good luck with any counter-measures. The site, and you Mods deserve it.

[Lesley Robertson]

I'm a member (not Mod) in a couple of other forums where they have the 3 posts system and it doesn't stop the determined. They just post 3 innocuous messages, then let rip.

Because our Mods are spread around the world and a lot of our members are also vigilant, they're rarely on-Forum for more than an hour or so. Unless they're online when the parasites turn up, most members don't even see most of them.

I rather think I'd give up modding if BG went over to such a system - can you imagine how much extra work it would be? I'd never get any of my own research done, let alone attend to other interests!

[stepives]

I'm a member (not Mod) in a couple of other forums where they have the 3 posts system and it doesn't stop the determined. They just post 3 innocuous messages, then let rip.

Because our Mods are spread around the world and a lot of our members are also vigilant, they're rarely on-Forum for more than an hour or so. Unless they're online when the parasites turn up, most members don't even see most of them.

I rather think I'd give up modding if BG went over to such a system - can you imagine how much extra work it would be? I'd never get any of my own research done, let alone attend to other interests!

It doesn't require any more work, as it may only take a few seconds to either get rid of, or let through. I don't know the inner workings of BG.......or it's methods of security, but surely, a few more minutes, by whatever Mod, from whatever part of the world, will eventually see these phishers/spammers for what they are. Not as if any posts or messages are moderated the minute they are posted.....that would be impossible, and unworkable. Hence, if Family Historiians are patient(as we have to be), then surely they will wait for moderation, and by then....these worthless spoilers will never get posted. Surely, this will make life a little easier for the Mods.

You all do a superb job, so maybe anything I say is mute.

Thanks to you all.

Steve.

[MrsPoppy]

I am not sure if the person posted on the boards - but I have been wary of one thread recently and I am always suspicious of any links to other sites which don't look familiar, also any links to someone's personal information or cloud storage I would stay well clear of. I always say 'sorry the link didn't work' but in actual fact I have no intention of trying it. Also I am wary of anyone who puts up a personal e-mail address on the public boards as the whole point of the forums is, to some extent, to keep personal information private but still allowing interaction with others with a similar interest. I would never send information via an email to someone unless I was very familiar with the person on the boards.

It is a case of being aware and as you say not answering anything you receive which isn't welcome.

Mrs P