viral PM from adventuregamers.com
 

I got an email today saying I had a PM at the adventure forums.
I've deleted the links.
It obviously is bogus. Anyone else get this?

If anyone receives a suspect PM like this then please let one of the forum moderators know. You'll need to ensure the username sending the PM is included.

The list of forum moderators can be obtained by clicking the "View Forum Leaders" link at the bottom of the main forum index page. Needless to say "AdminLady" is not on that list and has no connection with this site.

I got it also.

I have a suspicion those valentine 'spammers' have something to do with it. No proof of course; I didn't get the PM.

Yeah, the one that sent to me, got banned :) Hurray.

I got the same thing in my PM's today Colpet. A false virus checker shows up if you open the link. This spyware can be dangerous as there's a form of it that paralizes computers and it continuously pops up telling you a virus has been found, opens porn sites and just doesn't let you do anything. Luckily a free spyware checker and remover gets rid of this (Malwarebytes.com. Just download, install, update and run the program, the quick scan works fine)
This is actually the best spyware detector and remover out there, even better than the ones that charge for their apps.

Regards,

Bill

I got the PM too. Nothing like sending "An important message from the forum administration" to one of the forum's administrators. :crazy:

And today we have another one pulling the same stunt. Also banned, of course. :shifty:

Must be the same person or a list of our AG user names is being circulated.

Did you notice that we all have a join date of Sep/Oct 2003?

These are PM's, which can only be done from within the forum, and any forumite can view a list of user names. Nothing is being circulated externally.

And the common join date is because that's when AG's forums re-opened after its long down time. Any previously-registered users were all given that date by default.

I have also been receiving these malicious PMs, from this and other forums. Last one I received here was from some "luckkyman" user who has apparently been banned already.

This is clearly an automated process, I just don't know if it means that legitimate users are unknowingly sending these messages due to their PCs being compromised or if it means that a bot is creating these accounts and sending the messages.
Either way however it's also clear that this won't just go away by itself so could the admins kindly make sure this doesn't happen? If it's a bot, you could make registration harder, perhaps with more elaborate capchas. If it's legitimate user's machines doing the nasty, implement some kind of filter where messages like these are prevented from circulating, it's fairer than banning less attentive users altogether.

In this day and age, are people STILL clicking on links from people they don't know, that claim to find VIRUSES!!OMGOMG on their computer?

It sucks that people pull this crap, but, really, if you clicked on it, you deserve whatever happens. IF YOU DON'T HAVE PROOF THAT WHOMEVER SENT YOU THE LINK ISN'T LYING, DON'T CLICK ON IT!

They're not legitimate users. We're looking into possible ways to prevent it on the registration side, but in the meantime, alerting us if you receive a PM like this (either in this thread or by sending a message to a moderator) would be helpful. Specifically, we need to know the username of the person who sent it to you.

I got two such a PMs, but both senders are banned, so I guess they are already taken care of.

Another day, another e-mail. 3 so far. :\

Same here. Senders were AdminLady, luckkyman, and (today) LadyXAdmin.
Of course, I clicked all of the links and ordered all of the products offered, using my complete credit card and bank account details.

I've gotten a couple of these as well, but not from anyone not mentioned so far.

Today was number 3.
 

I've also gotten a total of 3 so far. :spam:

AdminLady, Mstr. Bankol and LadyXAdmin

I'm jealous! I haven't gotten anything (yet).

I got a couple from both Lady_Admin and Luckkyman. Also a few months back, I received a prescription pill advertisement from AlexDixi. Shows how much I check my PMs here, haha.