spammer

[mPetetele]

Hello i was contacted by a spammer this morning as you have listed him on the spammer list.My question?How are these people allowed to get my personal e-mail address?

[audiohatemchine]

You could've left the option open when signing up. It's something like "allow forum members to contact me directly via email" or something to that degree.

If I'm completely off and not allowed to reply here, mods please delete my post.

[TDPRI]

They don't have your email address... unless you email them back.

See, they use a "bot" to patch into the Classifieds userlisting and they use the bot to automatically send emails to everyone with a Classified ad. Email addresses are NOT publicly available, but the bot doesn't see them it just makes our system email you.

So, unless you respond to them they don't know you exist and they have none of your information.

The reason we are seeing so many of these lately is one of our members in the UK responded to their email and then fell for their story and sent them 400 pounds. Once they've had that kind of luck they're not about to stop trying to get some more cash out of our members.

[TDPRI]

Originally Posted by audiohatemchine

If I'm completely off and not allowed to reply here, mods please delete my post.

You are completely off. See my response above. But it's no biggie.

[mPetetele]

Ok changed it.

[TDPRI]

Originally Posted by mPetetele

Ok changed it.

I'm guessing you didn't understand my post. The options that user "audiohatemchine" told you to disable have absolutely nothing to do with your Classified ad. So, you turned off the option of having people in the forum contact you only.

But if you put an ad in the Classifieds they use the Contact form there and you can't turn that off. However, as I said previously, they do not ever see your email address.

[mPetetele]

I understand that but there are also people if you look in my classified ad who never posted yet i believe they are also scamming.Look at the person who responded to my ad-never posted and joined but is very vague in his profile.Just here to hear about guitars and other things,dont want to hassle anybody but wont also be taken.

[TDPRI]

Think about it. For anyone to respond to your ad they must be able to contact you. The Classifieds uses your email address for this, but does not make it public. The people contacting you MUST be members, but they don't have to have a post on the forum.

Out of our 85,000 members over 45,000 don't have any posts. So, we can't limit it to just people that post and have it work.

The only way to not receive emails from scammers is to not use the Classifieds. That's the only way. The classifieds/scammer problem exists everywhere not just here.

[mPetetele]

Ok i changed back the settings.

[TDPRI]

Originally Posted by mPetetele

Ok i changed back the settings.

Just to clarify, those setting have nothing to do with Classifieds. Only the forum.

If you put an ad there people will contact you via email. They will not see your email address at any time until you respond.

[mPetetele]

I am awre of that.