Am I right in thinking that our personal e-mail address is not visible unless we want it to be? I have received an unsolicited private e-mail from someone who claims to have read my profile on the RSPB forum and now wants to be my 'friend'. When I checked my profile I can't see anything there that shows my 'home' addy. Needless to say I am ignoring it.
Caroline in Jersey
Cin J
Both Caroline and Jenni have said these are private emails - not via the RSPB. I am sure they both know what happens when a genuine forumite sends a friends invitation.
This is very worrying.
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
Hello Alan,
No this did not read from rspb like it would usually do,it was from a persons email that I had never heard of and knew it was no relation of mine.
Thank you Cliff for looking into this for us.
Jenny
J
Hello Alan
It was one person with me.
Sometime ago I also had a private email from someone who might have been one of the regular forumites - whoever it was, used one of the well-known nicknames as the front part of their email address.
As I wasn't sure who it really was, I deleted it without replying. How did they get my email address?
Anyway Cliff, thanks for dealing with the problem.
Regards,
Jackdaw
Seriously thinking about trying harder!
Would've thought it could be either Doggie. Let's wait & see what Cliff finds out.
:-)
As TJ said, all friends requests come as an email, even with email notifications switched off. They always did, and as far as I am aware they still do.
Best wishes Chris
Click Here to see my photos
This has happened before - last year sometime, to another member. I don't know any details but think it was taken up with the mods at the time.
Are your email addresses available generally somewhere else, such as Facebook or Messenger?
Hello Linda,
No I am not on Face book or Messenger let alone Twitter. No idea about Caroline though
Hi all,
I wanted to get back to you on this because I know I’d feel frustrated if I’d received something that looked like spam.
We’ve been running tests for several hours and these are now complete. We haven’t traced anything that indicates spam activity. However, we have amended how our profile pages work to add an extra security measure. The door is now not just locked, it's bolted. So please don’t worry, your privacy is safe.
I hope I can add another layer of reassurance (I’m keen to reassure you all because I really just want you to be able to enjoy using this site – and not to have to worry about irritating things like spam!). We run regular security tests and maintenance across our whole website (including the community section), covering all its various levels of hardware and software. So although there’s no such thing as a guarantee that no one will ever manage to do anything naughty, we’ll continue to do everything we can and follow best practice - particularly regarding your privacy.
Anyway, I hope this puts you at ease. You gave me and a few of our guys a bit of a scare today when we saw this thread! But that’s a good thing to keep us on our toes ;-)
In case it's helpful, one of the guys that's been helping out with investigating this suggested sharing this link, which is Microsoft's advice on dealing with spam emails. Hope it helps for anyone who's been subjected to spam over the years:
www.microsoft.com/.../spam-prevent.aspx
And I can vouch for the fact that we had some great people pedalling really fast to check and confirm we have everything locked down.
So please rest easy tonight and enjoy the community over the weekend. We’ll be checking in to ensure everything’s going well.
Kindest regards as always,Cliff
Sorry been out since I sent this. It was NOT a normal friend request through RSPB which is why I was concerned. I have had those in the past so know what they look like. Nor was it any name I have ever seen on the forums. It really seemed more like one of those "I am a nice (choose your country of option) girl and want to be your friend" . I suppose I am troubled that they specifically mentioned they had seen my profile.