We've had a recent spate of 419-fraudster accounts using the old suliati mabou scam from a few years ago, and people receiving messages don't seem to know how to deal with them other than posting in various forums. I've seen 4 different forum threads in General, Help and Only Chess about this pest.
Should we have a third button on the "read message" screen saying REPORT USER ?
Originally posted by Kewpie We've had a recent spate of 419-fraudster accounts using the old suliati mabou scam from a few years ago, and people receiving messages don't seem to know how to deal with them other than posting in various forums. I've seen 4 different forum threads in General, Help and Only Chess about this pest.
Should we have a third button on the "read message" screen saying REPORT USER ?
Yes, we should. This weekend was probably the worst we have seen for this kind of scammer messaging other members, and some intelligent blocking combined
with a handful of user alerts should stop any scammer dead in his tracks automatically.
Actually we can make this uninteresting by restricting messaging for new members to say the number of moves they made. I can't imagine a lot of people needing private messages before moving at all. If they know someone on the site, they most probably have been invited by that person, can set up a game and move...
{sigh} yet another one today, and TWO threads started in General and Help forums about it so far. Seems we have some awfully stupid people playing on this site. To protect them from their own stupidity, please could we have a restriction on new users? No PMs or forum posts unless 10 moves made. Sure they could get around it, but most spammers/fraudsters wouldn't bother.
At least one of them got caught up in the scammer ban, and he was a tourney opponent, it scrambled my games until it was sorted out. Entirely self-interest. And I do get tired of people starting new threads over and over reporting similar incidents, don't you?
Originally posted by Kewpie At least one of them got caught up in the scammer ban, and he was a tourney opponent, it scrambled my games until it was sorted out. Entirely self-interest. And I do get tired of people starting new threads over and over reporting similar incidents, don't you?
*Shrug* Doesn't bother me. But people not being made to learn from their mistakes does, particularly on the 'net. Remember, the 'net is like a chessboard: if you protect the doofuses from their own mistakes, they'll make them again. And again, and again. Usually when it is least convenient for you.
Heh, my friend got banned for replying to her because of unintelligent banning; I imagine that issue has been fixed now.
Interestingly enough, the Suliat Mabou scam is one that penetrates the entire internet, not just RHP. Google it and you can see; originally, it's one of those bank scams where they take all your account information to wire money into it and save it from the Senegal government. No idea what they expect to find on RHP except suckers.
Anyway, a 'report' button would be good; it would be an obvious way for spam-victims to solve the problem. Not allowing anyone to send a PM without a move number of '1' would be nice; if this site works like other sites I've administrated, you could automatically assign a title as soon as someone reaches '1' move and that title allows PM's to be sent.
I'm assuming, since Suliat Mabou seems to be a pretty widespread scandal, that the perpetrator has an IP scrambler. If not, you can ban the IP of the computer doing this. You can also ban the e-mail accounts instead of the user. Though, I'm sure you guys have figured that out since 2002, but I went through a lot of headaches trying to battle spam. Had a spammer so bad once that the moderators had to take shifts over the weekend where they promised to be online to delete the massive amounts of threads!