Spam sent by PM

I want to make everyone aware of what may be a potential problem with spam being sent via PM. I'm a member at a site called Lightspeed Art (Formerly C.A.S.F.).
I received a PM there along with many others that was deemed as spam. The PM simply said:

Quote :

Hi ,I'm new here, how's it going?" Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives." - Louise Hay---James -Link removed-

And contained a link to some site. Now only one member there came forward questioning this PM. As most who received it (myself included) simply disregarded it. However, after the first member posted a thread about it, many others came forward saying that they too had received this very same PM. One of the Admins then requested that these PMs be forwarded to him. After receiving a few copies of the PM by various members, he had this to say:

Quote :

Looks like it and after investigating it, people are saying that the link can change option setting.

I happen to be friends with the Admin there, and he told me that they had banned the user as a spambot. And gave me his email and I.P. address should I decide to go ahead a place a ban on the I.P. I thought that this might just be an isolated incident caused by a single individual until I remembered a PM that I had received over at the F.E.A.R. 2 Forums sometime in early January. This is what that PM said:

Quote :

Hey ,I'm new here, how's it going?" The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently" - Pema Chodron---Symbiosis [ -Link removed-]

You can clearly see the similarities in the two PMs. I never visited any of the links, so I cannot say if they are harmless or not. But given that these are being sent by PM makes it much easier for site owners to not even become aware of this potential problem.

I help out at a site that helps other forum site owners with forum coding and graphics. So basically we get a lot of site owners visiting us there and we go to a lot of sites to help them with whatever coding needs they have. Naturally I posted a warning there to watch out for these type of PM spams. This was posted by Ikat concerning the PM spam. (Ikat is always posting new security tips and sites to look out for etc.)

Quote :

No. They are not harmless.

I may be lurking in the shadows all day, but, that's because IOD is ran properly and isn't bugged with many members who try these stunts (We ban on sight), but, I will say that there are a few forums which I have helped on and have seen similar PMs.

Such PMs contain variations of such links, some are mostly adverts and other malware based tricks, while others look for holes in your computer and opened ports to try and silently install viruses like lesser known Trojan which encrypts your entire harddrive and forces you to pay an anonymous source a random amount on money in order to receive a password to unlock your files.

Another one is the flash hack, which, in all simplicity disguises itself as an annoying popup and\or a delightful game and when you're clicking around trying to get it off, it'll force you, the administrator\user to allow it permission to use your microphone and\or web-cam and with this you have two outcomes.

The most popular is a false alarm prank which claims to be recording you and control you computer and allows you to see yourself VIA a small window which is showing what you're doing because of your webcam and microphone.

Another outcome is more malicious in intent and blackmails you with what they've recorded.


By all means, block the E-mail, IP and links and please PM me both the E-mail, IP and the links ( I removed them for safety reasons), so that I may check them against what I have already found.


Thanks for the thread, Ven, I was going to make one myself, but, I have been distracted.

UPDATE:

Ikatsui has already found this:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Apparantly it's happening everywhere, the links above are safe. They are discussions about this spam by PM from this James character. It should be noted that the last link above, shows a PM from James. However, that PM is identical to the one that I received at the F.E.A.R. 2 forums, only he used a different username. My point being is that he is not always using the same username and site links everywhere he goes.