We hate spam and as Admin and Moderators, we take all incidents very seriously. We work diligently to combat spammers but as we all have come to know: spammers never quit (nor will we).
Recently, we experienced three spam incidents that used our private messaging (PM) feature as a vector to reach members. With each incident, we ramped up anti-spam measures to close any gaps but they simply pivoted their strategy to side-step them.
We are grateful to everyone for reporting each incident and after reviewing your concerns, I wanted to put you at ease regarding privacy concerns.
Some of you believe your email addresses were compromised given you received a spam message in your inbox. I want to reassure you that no such breach had taken place.
As part of your notification settings, any attempt to send you a PM will prompt the community to send a notification to your registered email address. While they do look like a direct email, it's actually a feature of our community to let you know you have a private message to review (it’ll also include a preview of the message) and no direct communication between the spammer and you.
For now, we've temporarily disabled private messaging and we’re working with our vendor(s) on a long-term solution to minimize future spam incidents. We’ll re-enable the feature once our solutions are in place. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to @ mention me or any member with the Administrator or Moderator designation found under their username if you have any questions.
Thank you so much for your patience and understanding on this matter.
