Do You Know What A Scammer Looks Like?
Hi Chatters,
Today I received an email from an obvious Scammer that was so typical of somebody intent on trying to cause disruption within our community that I thought I’d write a quick blog post about it, and for those unsure, what you can do to arm yourself against this sort of thing happening to you.
Here is the message I received:
“Hello My Dear,
how are you today i hope all is fine, My name is Miss peace,i saw your profile today at seniorchatters.co.uk and became intrested in you,i will also like to know more about you,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address ([email protected]) believe we can move from here!I am waiting for your mail to my email address above.
Yours peace.”
What You Should Do If You Receive A Message Like This:
Use Scammer Watch to report it immediately! The more information you provide about a suspect message or profile the quicker and easier it is for a Site Admin to investigate your report and remove a Scammers profile. A good tip would be to copy the message in its entirety by holding down your left mouse button at the start of the message and drag it over the message so its completely highlighted. Then, right click on the message and click the copy option to copy the highlighted text to your computers clipboard. As shown below:
You can then easily report the Scammer by pasting the message into the Scammer Watch input box As shown below:
Important Safety Warning
You should NEVER divulge any personal information about yourself to any other member asking for more than what is displayed on your profile, and you should NEVER reply to any message that you are unsure about, especially anything matching the style of writing above that blatantly asks you to reply outside of Senior Chatters.
What You Can Do To Prevent Messages Like This Being Sent To You
It is possible to filter messages that are sent to you. Either to allow ALL members (default) to be able to send you a private message whether they are on your friends list or not. Allow ONLY friends to be able to send you private messages, or you can even customise this further by actually specifying who can and who can’t private message you. To configure your mailbox privacy settings go to:
My Account > Settings > Message Privacy which is located at the top of any page.
Remember though, if you do modify your message privacy settings you WILL be restricting members being able to private message you. Not ideal. Therefore, I would advise you leave this setting alone unless you are constantly being messaged by Scammers (extremely unlikely) or you want to add finer granular control over who can private message you.
Fortunately, thanks to the vigilance of our community Scammers are dealt with very quickly indeed and measures are in place to keep these parasites creating new profiles. If we all work together by reporting anything bogus or suspect we can continue to keep Senior Chatters a vibrant, safe and fun over 50’s community.
All the best
Rob
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I just got the same message Rob – thank you for explaining all of this. Take care xoxox
You’re welcome FY
I got the message as well but they must have been booted off as when I was going to report it the profile had gone..
A huge Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and worse to these people!
🙂
x
Hi Debz, yes that would be correct. As soon as a member reports via Scammer Watch, ALL Site Admins are immediately notified. It’s just a case of whoever is online first will delete the Scammers profile. As we send the notification to multiple admins it ensures that Scammers are removed as quickly as possible.
Good, good and triple good Rob, do they seriously think people would reply to such a corny message?…
I mean a woman wanting to know me a little better!!!!???……I don’t think so love!!
Well done Rob for informing other chatters of messages to be aware of!!!!
debz
x
Thanks Debz
Got exactly the same message, Rob. It just seemed wrong and not from a genuine person. I reported it right away-thanks for dealing with it so promptly, and telling everyone what to do.
Maize x
Hey Maize, You’re welcome. Thanks for using Scammer Watch to report it.
Rob, some time ago, I thoroughly investigated what to look out for in scammers, and wrote a blog about it. There are several red flags and I listed them. I no longer have this blog, but maybe you do? It might be a good idea to post it again? Just a thought …
Hi Jo, yes I remember it very well, it was very informative and would certainly help anybody not familar with the tell-tale signs of spotting a Scammer. I’ll see if I can find it. I think it probably was posted on the old site…
Rob , I got the same message and thanks for this information but have not had a scammer send me a message in quite along time and was going to report her but she had been removed. So thanks again for the blog about scammer’s.
You’re welcome Annmarie 🙂
thanx Rob for this action you’ve taken … it’s things like this that can ultimately defeat the scammers and trolls on chatsites … we have to remember that we have the benefit of intelligence on our side … think how ignorant and subhuman these mentalities are.
Hi Dianne, thanks for your input. Yup, if we’re all aware of what to look for then we can protect our community from these parasites.
i feel so ignored..lol..i rarely get these message here..used to get them a lot on the old site…i guess i’m just not scammer bait..lol..thanks for posting this,rob..now if only the scammers would get the message and disappear..
Thanks Kat, unfortunately, it’s very much like cat and mouse with these people. No pun intended 🙂 – We’ll beat them together
kat your just to sizzlin hot to handle lol!!! xxx
Thanks rob, I got the same message, was gone before I could report, great job xxx
Thanks Skip, nothing can beat crowd-sourcing and if we all pull together like we’re doing, then Scammers don’t stand a chance 🙂
I received a message from someone…not a member of Senior Chatters….who was able to read my profile. She claimed to be in a Senegalese refugee camp. I Googled the refugee camps and found the same photo she had sent me listed as Erina; Lorita; Angela and Jenny. Each alias had a different email address. I am 83 but I am not senile or stupid. I reported all the names and email addresses…hope it did some good. I don’t like the idea that anyone other than a Senior Chatter can read my profile.
All members should read this on what to do if this happens
Be a good idea if members could read this blog Rob wrote a few years ago. Very informative 🙂