We've been getting some. Probably about 1 per week for the past several weeks. This is actually not a very high rate, compared with other lists I've been on. Most appear to be either trojan-bait (trying to get you to let a trojan be put on your system) or phishing (trying to persuade you to provide lucrative info).
So, here are some things you should do whenever you see a post by a member you don't recognize: - If the content isn't SF'nal or otherwise relevant, and you don't know the poster, you should probably ignore it anyway. Bots are not devious enough to stay on topic. - If it contains links, don't follow the link without examining it closely. If it's a full-length URL, use the "hover test" (hover over it with your mouse pointer and look at the destination that's displayed in the status bar of your browser) to see where the link actually goes; make sure that it's not a "spoof link", designed to look like YouTube or NASA (e.g. " youtube.com.xz.kg"). - If it's a shortened URL (e.g. *http://tinyurl.com/yl4s6ex*), be leery of it unless it comes with a plausible explanation. E.g., Dave H. often uses short URLs so you can more easily pass them along to others, but he more often than not tells you that's what he's doing (either explicitly or implicitly). (Anyway, his stuff would always be on-topic.) - If you do follow a link and it pops up a dialog asking you to download something, for pity's sake don't. And don't click any buttons on such a popup window, even if that seems to be the only way you can get rid of it. You can usually get rid of the window by clicking the CLOSE button on the browser chrome for that window (an X in the upper-right on Windows and the red dot at the left on a Mac). What I've been doing to these messages is this: 1. Reporting as Spam using the Google Groups spam reporting tool. Hopefully this helps to train our Group's spam filter. 2. Banning the poster, if they are in fact a member.* 3. Posting a warning about the message. [Haven't always remembered to do this.] 4. Removing the message. That's all I'm planning to do, for now. There are some steps we can take, but: - I'm not sure they'd help. It's not entirely clear that the people posting these messages are always members at the time they post them. (I.e., it's possible someone's found a way to post to Google Groups set to allow posting only by members, without becoming a member.) - They'd require making the group less accessible to new participants. _ *In most cases, the person posting doesn't appear on the members list by the time I get to the group membership screen on the web. In cases where they do, I suspect the person's account has been co-opted by a bot. -- eric scoles ([email protected]) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
