Dear all

Apologies to any and all members who have received spam private messages from a member called '777111'.

Despite coming through the private message system please be assured that these messages do not indicate any insecurity in the site or that the site has been exploited in any way. Most certainly 777111 has not got your private email address - your email address is never revealed to any other member on here in any circumstances.

As all registered members will know, you need to provide a valid email address to register, and an authentication email is sent to that address requiring a link to be clicked to confirm receipt of the email. This eliminates 99% of spammers at a stroke because they invariably use faked email addresses.

So basically this person has registered with a real address, authenticated and then regrettably sent PM spam. The lengths they will go to in order to send their junk is quite amazing.

As soon as the problem was reported to me I deleted the user's account and using a SQL query deleted all the junk messages sent by the user.

I have also sent a complaint to Yahoo's abuse department since the address was a Yahoo Italy one.

If anybody has any questions please feel free to PM me.

Thanks,
Simon

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Note to spammers: To anybody considering registering on this web site to send spam messages, be warned abuse of this web site will not be tolerated, and the registered email address and IP details will be sent to the abuse department of your internet service provider as well as immediate steps being taken to remove your account and delete any offending messages.

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