Dealing with PM Spammers on MyLot

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Recently there has been an incident where a person joined MyLot in order to spam a number of members by sending PMs to them and without posting any discussion, response or comment in the Forum. This sort of spammer is impossible for Admins to detect unless someone reports them and, of course, it is usually very annoying and irritating to the people who receive such messages. This kind of spam is, unfortunately, not uncommon on sites where there is a Private Messaging system and is something which must be expected from time to time. The most common kinds of message are * offers to earn ridiculous amounts of money, * health or 'weight loss' programs, * invitations to buy 'personal enhancement' medicines ^ invitations to contact young ladies by phone or chat/IM. This post outlines what you should do about it and how to guard against such messages in the future. 1. DO NOT reply to the message!. It is unlikely that the person will read it, anyway, but replying to a spammer will only encourage them! 2. Report the person concerned. To report an unwanted Private Message (of any kind), please copy and paste the text of the message together with the person’s username into a PM to @goaskalice. Sadly, it is not easy to select and copy the username. I find that the only practical method is to type the name in grey after the @ symbol, double (or triple) checking your accuracy! 3. Block the person concerned. Go to the person’s profile. This is not straightforward from a PM because the username is not ‘clickable’. You will have to open a new tab and type the username (without the '@') after “mylot.com/”. Once at their profile, click on the ‘Block’ button. 4. Change your Profile Settings. Click on “Settings” in the menu under your username/avatar and, on the “Account Settings” page you will see three options at the bottom: * Anyone can message me, except for those I've blocked * Only those I follow can message me * No one can message me The default is the first one but a more secure setting is to choose the second option (“Only those I follow can message me”). This may, of course, inconvenience a few people who may want to send you a perfectly innocent and acceptable message but whom you haven’t followed. 5. You can safely delete the message once you have reported it, as detailed above. (If you don't know how to delete a message, please ask!) It is your choice, of course, as to which setting you prefer. You may feel that just blocking someone is sufficient … but PLEASE always report the person to Admin! Spamming is hateful and definitely undesirable anywhere. Please don't just ignore it because it is highly likely that this sort of spammer has sent the same message to many other people, some of whom may be more vulnerable than you.