Private Messages, Spammers and You - a Mature-Gamers interweb safety announcement.

Jason · Jason

Hey guys,

It's been brought to my attention that a couple of spammers have slipped the net and are sending private messages to people.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that you report any of these you receive to either myself or Konrad at the earliest opportunity - not only is it annoying for you guys to receive them, but there's also a high chance that these pose a security risk to either your forum account, or perhaps worse. Fortunately, the one we've caught appears to be fairly benign, but that will not be the case all the time - I've personally witnessed (on other forums) people's accounts being hijacked and used for spamming because they clicked the wrong link and so on.
I know most of you are far too sensible to need this advice, but it never hurts to cover all bases, so here's a few pointers:

If you get a spam PM:

For the love of Pac-Man, don't click any links if you don't know the sender. Not ever.
Be suspicious - if it's an unsolicited PM but you're not sure if it's just someone who's new to the forum, report the post anyway - either me or Konrad can look up the IP address from a list of known spammers.
Report ANY spam you get sent via PM - the only person that can read your private messages is you, so if you don't tell us, we won't know. You can use the red and white triangular 'warning' symbol to report any suspect PMs, and me and Konrad will get notified about it.
Use a different password for forums to what you use for anything else. Despite our best efforts, forums are still not 100% secure, and new loopholes are discovered all the time, and it's not worth getting your email account hijacked over a forum. I can retrieve your account here, but your email provider may not be so willing.

Reporting suspect posts and private messages is a simple process, and it helps us keep this site spam free.

Peace and love (and cake),
Jason