Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

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YogiBoy
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Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

Post by YogiBoy »

Hello,

Over the last couple of days we have been alerted to a couple of forum users who have been using the forum's internal emailing system to send 'marketing’ emails about a certain company's 'audiobooks' to other users. Those two users have now been banned, of course!

But we wanted to let you know about this, in case you also received one of these marketing emails (which are routed to you via the board), and to let you know how to turn off the preference in your control panel, if you wish, that prevents other users being able to send emails to you.

Other registered users can only send you an email via the forum if your profile setting “Users can contact me by email” is set to “Yes”. So if you want to switch that to "No", then do this:

1. Log in, and at the top right hand corner where your username appears, in the drop-down menu, choose ‘User Control Panel’.
2. Under 'Board preferences' > go to the option 'Users can contact me by email' > set that to 'No' and click submit.
That means that no one other than Cat Chat admins can contact you via the board.

If you yourself, receive a marketing email in this way, please feel free to forward it to our Admins, so that we can make sure there aren't any more rogue users that we need to ban (!). Then delete it, certainly don't click on any links in their email, and then if you wish, change your board preference as above, so that you don't get emails that way in future.

KEEP SAFE • STAY WELL • FUSS YOUR CATS!!
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YogiBoy
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Re: Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

Post by YogiBoy »

Just a 'PS' to my original post...

I have edited it because initially I posted the incorrect information. So just to clarify, if you want to prevent other users from being able to send you emails via the board, you need to set the “Users can contact me by email” setting to "No" as described in my post.

And a question - do any of our regular users use the facility to email other users via the board, for legitimate reasons? If not, then we could switch that off across the board, literally! Please post here either way - is user-to-user email on here still useful to anyone...?

Love & Purrs
Yogi
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Mollycat
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Re: Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

Post by Mollycat »

I have used it once. a member whose cat had been ill and the subject of discussion, who wanted to let me know the cat had passed away but did not feel able to discuss it in public. I know it's very rare and very specific but it would be a shame to lose that facility. Unless we have personal messages on the forum? But that could be abused just the same.

After a spate of spam posts as well I was wondering if there was any way to increase security generally to deal with both issues?
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Sandra b
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Re: Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

Post by Sandra b »

Hi, I just received one of these emails too. I will try to block them.
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Re: Marketing messages via the forum - what to do!

Post by YogiBoy »

Mollycat wrote: Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:42 pm After a spate of spam posts as well I was wondering if there was any way to increase security generally to deal with both issues?
Hi Mollycat, those two issues need to be dealt with in different ways as the occasional spate of spam posts are almost always from automated 'bots' and the 'marketing' emails over the last couple of days have been sent by actual humans...

The 'bot' spammers get through whenever their systems work out how to crack the anti-spambot questions that we have set up for user registrations. We change the questions periodically anyway for that reason, but just sometimes the bot systems crack the questions before we get round to changing them! Since the last wave of bot spam we are now changing them more often.

The email spam to users that happened in the last couple of days can only be done on a one by one basis by an actual person sitting there emailing user after user. We have the forum set so that they can't email everyone at once. So now that we have banned their accounts, we are hoping they will get fed up and go away, as that kind of spamming is very labour intensive. (Both were from France, so I guess they are on lockdown and have nowt better to do!!!).

Thanks for the feedback. Stay safe!
Prrrrrs from
Yogi
xxxx
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