It has come to my attention that we've seen more and more spambot activity through Private Messages sent to members here at SOC. The bots register and rather than take the chance of getting banned because of posting out in the open, they suck you in by PM'ing you to get you to click on links they supply in the PM -
What's worse is they sign the PM as being a staff member or administrator to convince you it's an official notice. They'll tell you about anything under the sun to get you to click links or sell you things that you don't want or really need. Here's an example of their deceptive PM's sent by a spambot with the SOC nickname of
Lady_Admin:
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Dear, SOC member!
A virus alert was noticed on your computer.
We highly recommend you to check your computer and perform online virus check at our site immediately: http://anti*ir*s.ef*ectm*ds.com
Sincerely, Forum Administration www.spyder.tv.
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This is total BS!!!
DO NOT CLICK ANY SUCH PROVIDED LINKS!!! There's more a chance of getting a virus than getting rid of one that you don't have in the first place by clicking the link. I threw some
asterisks ** in the URL to disable it -
If you receive anything that looks like this, please post the name of the bot/member and your experience in this thread. As an additional precaution, please forward the PM to an active mod or administrator so we can permanently ban these scumbags from our forums -
Your cooperation and assistance is greatly appreciated. Help keep your SOC boards free of those that would take you for a ride or harm your computer as well as preventing them from doing harm to other members of our beloved boards. Thanks -