Spam Attack on the Roundtable

As some of you know, spammers have recently joined the Roundtable (one on April 2, another on April 13) and left comments for several members of the site. Basically the spammers are trying to solicit email addresses from members (presumably to send more spam). By default, adding a comment to a member's profile triggers an email, so each targeted member also received an email message—not directly from the spammer(s), but from the Roundtable notifying him/her that a comment had been left.

This happens occasionally. The Roundtable has pretty good securities to prevent automated spammers (i.e. "spambots") from infiltrating the site, but there's nothing stopping a real live person from signing up and leaving comments. (We've toyed with the idea of implementing an approval process for all new accounts; the problem with that is you don't necessarily know who's a spammer until they spam.)

The good news is that we usually discover the spammers pretty quickly. When we delete their accounts, the system automatically deletes all the comments they've left for other members. Unfortunately, any email messages trigged by those comments have already gone out, so people get the spam in their inboxes regardless.

However, you can change your privacy settings so that comments left on your profile do not trigger email messages. If you're a frequent visitor to the Roundtable, and check your profile regularly, you may not want/need the email notification. If you wish to turn it off, do the following:

1. Click the My Page tab above.
2. On the next page, in the box on the upper-right part of the screen (with your name in it), click the Settings link.
3. On the next page, in the left-hand menu, click the Email link.
4. On the next page, uncheck the box next to A comment on My Page under "Humanities Roundtable Messages."

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in response to this announcement, or, if you prefer, send them to me privately via my profile page.

Best,

Jason Neal
Site Administrator