am I the only one to have received a PM with spam from sidor18 pushing ###### etc

No I got one too and have now blocked him/her/it. I was just trying to figure out who to report it to and was also wondering if this had anything to do with this forum being totally inaccessible for ages today.

I just got one from sidor18. Why doesn't the administrator kick this @#$%^& off of the forum?

Kick him

Yes, me too. Same low-life, pushing the same crud. I'd very much like to know how to report this to the Lavasoft forums folks - this message thread is the closest I could find.

have just received the exact same PM from this same sender .
can LAVASOFT regulator advise/or devise a way to report this SPAM automatically ?

the only email i wish to receive from LAVASOFT is -about- LAVASOFT , not from spammers !

this SIDOR18 is a freebie who joined yesterday and is probably the start of a new way to spam people via the back door...
...through LAVASOFT . (since we would not block LAVASOFT from sending us emails )

as in email spams guess they will have created dozens/hundreds of new freebies usernames which will also be used to send PM's when one of them is blocked , so blocking could become tedious !

I guess I'm not the only one to be spammed by sidor18 - can Lavasoft find a way to block ?

Confirmed; received it also

Hello All,

The official Forum Administrator, LS CalamityJane is away on a week-long press tour.

I have alerted LS staff to the problems that sidor18 is causing (sorry, my own moderating abilities don't extend to blocking a poster's access to PM/email functions).

Hopefully, this person will be dealt with soon.

Regards,

Spike

Yes, and me too, I'm a 'newbie' and having made my first post the other day was delighted that I appeared to have received my first 'personal email reply' only to find this **** sending the same spam that you guys received. Hopefully retribution awaits.

The spammer is now taken care of, thank you very much for bringing this to our attention!

THank you, Joakim for deleting that member responsible for sending Private Message Spam.

And Thank You to those members who reported the incident so that the matter could be attended to in a timely manner.

He was using the Private Message system to send spam. If you have set up your PM inbox to report any new PMs to you via email - that notice of a new PM is what you received. Emails are strictly controlled here with restrictions on the number of emails that a member can send in a 24 hour period (I believe it is set at only one per day). PMs however, do not have a control to limit the number sent in a 24 hours period. Although we have general filters in place that reduces 99% of all types of spam from being posted by new members. This is the first instance of PM spam posted in this forum in over one year's time (not bad, if you ask me!)

Several others received this PM spam and it was reported in a number off-topic thread and by PMs to the Administrators here. That member has been deleted and his URLs have been blacklisted.

This forum does have a number of filters in place to prevent spambots from registering in the first place, which prevents most spam from ever being posted, however, it is not possible to block all in advance. Sometimes, they will get through and we rely on members reporting such incidents to the Admins so it can be dealt with. We do take such reports seriously and they are taken care of within hours usually.

I'm glad that most of you know how to spot a spam post (or in this case, Private Message) and you can delete those and put the user on your block list to prevent any further such spam messages.

We only have two choices for blocking PM spammers automatically in the forum software:

1. Disable all members' use of the PM system altogether (not really an ideal option since some members need to validly use the PM system to contact board Moderators and Admins) or;

2. We can make it a requirement to have (x) number of posts in the forum before being allowed to use the PM system (again, not ideal as some members need to contact us when having problems when trying to post or other similar problems).

The best method is to use the PM block list and then report the spammer to one of the Admins.

The PM block list is located under "My control" section (link is at the top of the forums which takes you to your control panel). If anyone has any questions on how to do this, please post it here.

Again, many thanks for reporting this and helping to keep our community clean

Regards,
LS CalamityJane