> Do "smart" people regularly send mass spams to various forums in order> to hawk their self help books? Perhaps you need to change your message> if it can't stand on its own.
I haven't written any books. Are you referring to the zenofeller.com PMspam that's been going around? If so, here's the template I currently send to forum admins about that:
--- This is a heads up that you have a PM-spammer on your forums. For severalweeks someone has been signing up for dozens of different forums using otherpeople's email addresses, including mine and my wife's, and then PM-spammingpeople with a link to an ebook.
I don't know who the spammer is, but itcertainly isn't me, and it's not the person whose link is being spammedeither (zenofeller.com). I've been in touch with the guy who runs thatsite, and neither of us know who's doing this yet. Based on the number of verification emails that have been sent to me as aresult of this spammer using my email address,
I know he's hit more than 200forums now, all running VBulletin. He's been doing this at least sinceOctober, possibly earlier. I've put together this template to share what I know and to explain how toedit your forum settings to make you less vulnerable to PM spammers likethis in the future. Feel free to use this info however you see fit. I never signed up for this account on your forums, so I'm not going to clickthe verification link of course. But even with an unverified account, yourforums can still get spammed. This works because many forums allow PM'ingfor unverified accounts (the default for VBulletin). If you have PM'ingenabled for unverified accounts, he's probably PM-spamming your membersright now. You can disable PM'ing for unverified accounts in your VBulletin adminpanel: Usergroups -> Usergroup Manager. Click on each Usergroup thatshould not be able to send PMs, scroll down to Private Message Permissions,and set Maximum Stored Messages to 0. I recommend doing this for the COPPA,Unregistered, and Users Awaiting Email Confirmation groups. Also, you can nuke the PMs that have already been sent by bringing up theaccount page for that user. However, any email notifications of PMs thathave already been sent to your members obviously cannot be recalled.
A couple of the account names he uses for spamming are Erin Pavlina (mywife's name) and fluffygrrl, but there are many others.
Here's the PM the spammer tries to send (there are variations):
> Sorry for PMing out of the> blue. Here's the thing.> > I wrote a book with a friend of mine. My husband keeps saying it sucks.
> I think he's just jealous tho.> > He spends a lot of time on these boards, so I told him I'm going to > pick a random person here, and ask them, and we ended up betting on it.> > So go to
Asylum by Zeno & Chet : Chapter one and > make the call. Does it suck?> > Thanks.
On the forums I administrate, which he PM-spammed twice in November, he usedthe IP address 78.96.82.26, so you may want to do a search on that IP viayour VBulletin control panel to make sure you don't have other accounts thatgot through. I've already banned that IP on my forums -- it's up to you ifyou want to do the same on yours. As far as what this guy's motives are or why he's involving me, my wife, andthe owner of zenofeller.com in all this, your guess is as good as mine. Itseems to be a very stupid prank someone is playing. Please feel free to share this info with your forum members if they'vealready been spammed. If you happen to discover any new info about this spammer that isn't alreadyaddressed in this template, please let me know, and I'll add it to thistemplate for the benefit of others. FYI there's a thread about this spammer on the VBulletin forums here:
How is someone sending PM's to my members? - vBulletin Community Forum
I also recommend you email the VBulletin team to disable PMing forunverified accounts in their default installation to prevent this fromhappening again to someone else. I'm sorry this spammer decided to target your forums. - Steve