Received a suspicious, inappropriate or abusive PM?

To report a post, at the bottom right of the PM window it says "report this message".

Hit that, and we will get it and deal with it.

We've just found out that a new member, Carina Garang, has been sending out PMs in an attempt to trick people into contacting her and giving her their bank details and personal info.

PLEASE ignore her request.

Also, if anyone ever receives a suspicious PM, please contact me, or any staff member, as soon as possible so we can deal with it.

Until now, we've allowed new members to send and receive PMs as we want people to be able to contact each other about seed swaps, or give advice, or meet up with each other even if they have never posted. But the downside of this is that just occasionally we'll get a spammer trying to take advantage. Hopefully we'll find ways to keep the damage to a minimum whilst allowing real members to continue to use the PM facility.

I am so glad that we moved away from "personal message" and toward "purple moosage". This gives us a lot more flexibility to crush this sort of thing.

It's good that you published the name. It's bound to be made up but it's better than arousing general suspicion.

Oh I'm absolutely certain this was a made up name!

It was a very professional job, and they made a concerted effort to cover their tracks. One member was suspicious and raised the alarm and we were able to put a stop to it all.

We've also done some tweaking in the background to make it far less likely to happen again.

But if anything does slip through the net, please tell us!!

Just bumping this up and reminding everyone to be careful responding to PMs, especially unsolicited ones that offer millions in return for your investment.

If you receive anything that makes you even a teeny bit suspicious, PLEASE contact me and we'll investigate.

Just a reminder - if anyone receives a PM from someone claiming to be a deaf, paralysed retired bank manager with blood cancer who needs help because her husband just died and she is now suffering from heart problems due to the stress, please don't believe a word of it.

And certainly don't get embroiled in sending out any kind of bank details to her. She doesn't really have millions of dollars that need moving into your account.

Also, if you receive any similar PMs, please report them to us as soon as possible so we can stop them.

- - - - But, but, but I mean the picture of the nursing mother setting on a bench in the middle of a grape arbor and the setting sun And the Double Rainbow -

Please Don't tell me I cant trust that Big AL

I'm bumping this up again, this time because of problems with abusive PMs.

If anyone receives a PM that is any way abusive, please contact me immediately and I will investigate it.  Any member sending abusive PMs is in direct contravention of the Be Nice rule and such behaviour will not be tolerated.

Bumping this up again as we've had more problems with scammers abusing the PM system.

If you've received a PM from a member calling themselves joyce philip, please ignore it.  

If you've received any other suspicious PM, please let me know as soon as possible!

And now we have people using the PM system to randomly search out people to cast in their tv series...

I just want to point out that we consider this behaviour to be an abuse of the PM system and likely a banning offense.  

Just bumping this up as I seriously doubt that Sgt Ralph, claiming to be from the USA, really has anything sufficiently interesting to tempt you to email her, despite the number of PMs they've attempted to send out.

Yup, just got this message less than thirty minutes ago.


I'm Sgt Laura Ralph from USA

Email me right now at

sergeantlaurara@gmail.com  (I deleted a bit of the email address)

I will tell you in details the reason why i contacted you there ok.

I just got this too.

They tried to send out rather a lot but I *think* we've managed to remove all but three before they were read.  

Man, this site is so heavily policed.

Y'all won't even let me cash in on that Nigerian prince's millions.

Or help out this poor, blind, one-legged rheumatic widow whose house will be repossessed and her left to live out her last few miserable days on the streets begging leftovers from the hot dog cart unless she can muster up the funds to stave off the greedy bank by the end of the week.

Heartless.

On the off chance that any of you have some spare rich princes you haven't plundered millions from yet, I've got this half empty coffee can buried in a National Park that could use some topping off.
On a serious note, we the people do notice the general lack of spam here, and it's appreciated! Keep stomping the gick out of Permies!

Just bumping this up again with a reminder than any member who sends abusive PMs is exceedingly likely to find themselves banned.  

So if you've received anything that might qualify, please let us know!

I'm sorry you guys have so much spam and annoying stuff to deal with, but it is much appreciated.  Thanks for keeping this such a great site.

BUMP!

We had another new user who spammed people's moosages. Please do not respond to any messages by "miss sob." We have already closed and locked the account. If you ever encounter any other suspicious spam moosages, please don't reply to them and moosage us, as we don't want any permies spammed!

Nicole Alderman wrote:BUMP!

We had another new user who spammed people's moosages. Please do not respond to any messages by "miss sob." We have already closed and locked the account. If you ever encounter any other suspicious spam moosages, please don't reply to them and moosage us, as we don't want any permies spammed!

Hey Nicole! I got one of those and just come here to report it Anyway - an idea to pass along to whoever needs to see it, but it might be a good thing to integrate a "report this PM" feature or at the very least, for us to be able to forward the messages to someone else (IE, admin).

Reminder - please report any suspicious PMs to staff.
Suspicious PMs include people claiming to be from TV companies.  please see this link for permies policy about television show recruting.

Bumping this again, problems this morning, report any suspicious PMs to staff, and DON'T reply to them! At the bottom right of the PM window it says "report this message" hit that, and we will get it.  

Bump.

Weird one tonight.  

If you get an unsolicited  pm from someone with zero posts, please be cautious.  

Bump!

A friendly reminder to please use the report button on suspicious and peculiar purple mooseages. And also a big thank you to those who do report them!!!

WOW!  It's been an interesting week.

Permies is a forum and we aren't really set up as a private messaging service.  This is why we have this note at the top of the compose a new PM.

We don't have 'private' messages. The closest we have is 'purple mooseages'. This is where you send a message to one other individual, and it is made available for all of the staff to see too, so they can forward it to their co-workers for a good laugh. ...

I also want to mention, when we sign up for an account on permies, we agree to be nice.

If you receive any PMs you feel aren't nice, please use the magic "report" button you all have and the moderators will have a look and act accordingly.

Some of the things brought to my attention this afternoon are SERIOUSLY NOT OKAY to post on permies.  Neither on the forums nor via PM.  

As many moderators as we have, we don't read every post and we don't read every PM.  We rely on you, the members of our community, to report abusive or inappropriate content.