Announcements: Spam

Posted May 07, 2021 8:11PM EDT

Since the start of the year, we’ve welcomed nearly 900 new friends to the site. Along with this growth spurt, we’ve welcomed our first serious round of spam. It ramped up in the last couple of weeks, first with messages targeted at our demographic, then with generic spammers who didn’t read the room and posted pictures of themselves as large-breasted women in American flag tank tops shooting rifles.

We’ve banned the spammer accounts as we’ve found them, and I believe I just found and fixed the bug that was letting them post so many messages at once. This fix shouldn’t affect any legitimate messages you try to send, but let us know if you run into a problem. In the coming days, I’ll be making several other changes that should greatly reduce the chances that spam will reach you here.

In the meantime, this is a good reminder to follow basic online safety practices. Don’t share your personal information with anyone you haven’t gotten to know. When you send a message through the site, your email address remains hidden; the recipient will only know what you chose to reveal. If someone writes you, look at his profile. It shows how recently he joined and his activities on the site, such as posts to our discussion board. A few moments can show you if he’s an active member who’s a real part of our community — maybe even vouched for by other members who have met him in person — or a newcomer who’s posted questionable comments asking for phone numbers or promising news of a unique business opportunity.

Apologies if you were annoyed by any of these messages. We are working on it, and hope it hasn’t too greatly hurt your enjoyment of the site.

Stay safe,
Jeff