Putting a stop to private message spam

Yep.. Here is one I just received...!!

Private Message from zaina ishaaq
zaina ishaaq is contacting you via your profile page
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From : Zaina Ishaaq

Hello Dear,

Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I know this mail may come to you as a surprise, since we have not known or written before.

Afer you receive this mail kindly contact me on my private Email contact below. introducing myself, I am Zaina Ishaaq, the Only Daughter of the late Ishaaq Ismail, my father was a gold and cocoa mercahnt based in accra, ghana and Abidjan (Ivory Coast), he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their business trips recetly.

Before his death, He called me on his bedside and told me that he has a sum of $6.500,000USD deposited in one of the prime bank here in abidjan ivory coast, that he used my name for the next of kin in depositing of the fund.

Reply to my private e-mail box below: ( zaina_ishaaq1985@yahoo.fr ) Anticipating to hear from you soon.

Awaiting your urgent reply

Regards,

Zaina Ishaaq.

Reply to my private e-mail box below:( zaina_ishaaq1985@yahoo.fr )

I'm just glad you're doing something about it. It upsets me that there is someone out there that falls for this nonsense.

Nancy

I got it too. Thanks for responding quickly. I hope you can find the culprits and ban them.

What is the solution?

i got it too...

Hey Clarence, 

I guess we can have a feature where a groupsite member (does not apply to groupsite manager) can receive a private message at will (permission based). This would mean that somehow there is a control that a member can have to block / receive a message from any new member / user.

- Manish

There must be some way to unite and, if not end unsolicited email, at least make it difficult or ineffective to send it.  I receive an average of 125 unsolicited emails every day.  Most of them go to my junk folder but I still deal with a few that don't.  This is where America shines.  Give them a problem and watch them come up with incredibly inventive ways of dealing with it.  So what is your idea for ending spam?

Here is my idea:

Create a filter that only allows addresses in your address book to pass through.  Anyone desiring to contact you must have a validated account on a secure site.  No validation, no access to the user list.  A member of the subscription service would enter the email addresses they would like shared, but those addresses are never made public.  Anyone wishing to email that subscriber would do so through the service.  Again, no validation, no access.  A "knock-knock" message would be delivered to the subscriber alerting him that this third party wants to contact him and will deliver a short text message from the sender so the subscriber can evaluate whether to accept the email from the sender, reject it, or report it as spam.  Any violator would be banned from the system.

Hi Clarence,

Two simple solutions come to mind. You already include an "off topic" reporting link on the email blasts, and the landing page includes an option for Spam. That's a polite way of framing it. Maybe a link below that one could be "This is spam," and would immediately report the link. Set a threshold counter for each blast, and you could interrupt the send process if you trigger a spam message.

That's the 'social' way.

Another method of doing it would be using automated analysis. Since blasts use typical email-like language, you can run Spamassassin on the message before you queue it. If you find that these messages are more comment-like, check out Akismet, which is the web service used to automatically block comment spam. Akismet is from the fine folks that brought you Wordpress. It's offered as a web service and it's a snap to implement.

Best,
John

Personally, I think what you're already doing is great--not tolerating any spam and banning any members who abuse the system. Not sure how time-consuming it would be to create a filter as Maverick described, or how it would affect the other groupsites, but it would be a great option for managers to employ.

We have a few ideas on how to cut-it-off early, but I will not share them openly in this forum.  I wouldn't want any spammers to learn how to get around any protective provisions that we put in place.  If you have expertise in this area, and have suggestions, feel free to send me a private message

Actually, my suggestion was not meant for CollectiveX.  I would like to see an end to spam altogether.  I think a creative person or group of people could use my idea as a base to build a product for a world-wide audience.

In the wide-open world of the internet there exists those unfortunate souls whose only meaning in life is to generate meaningless spam. All are anonymous or use fake identities which adds to the sadness of why they even wake up in the morning. They are "wasters" (wasting time and space).

That being said, CollectiveX realizes that the ability to create private, invite only Groupsites allows for a sanctuary for real people who have a genuine purpose in life to make things happen by communicating sharing and networking.

In fact, 80% of our groups are private professional groups.

However, those Groupsites (like Champions) that choose to be public, run the risk of having "wasters" join the group.  The good news is, the legitimate members quickly identify these "wasters" and we delete them not only from the Groupsite but also from the entire system.

Thank you for your feedback in letting us know of this abuse.

I have a zero-tolerance policy with wasters.

Sincerely, 

Shaun

I also received the exact same message.  Good to know you're on the case.  Here's a recent entertaining NPR story about beating the scammers at their own game...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4716843

Good Stuff!