Apologies for the Private Message spam

[CarolineS]

Thanks to everyone who reported the spam that showed up in many of your Private Message inboxes earlier today. The user in question has been banned, and we're looking into ways to prevent this kind of thing in the future.

We'll likely restrict the ability to send a private message to members who have achieved a certain rank in the community, so spammers can't just sign up for the community and immediately start sending messages. Stay tuned for more news on this.

Have a great day!

[CarolineS]

See also @PhilipDAth's great post: "How to spot a community spammer 101"

[PhilipDAth]

>We'll likely restrict the ability to send a private message to members

A method I have seen in other forums is to require people to have had a certain number of posts and/or to have been a member for a certain period of time before that can use the private message function.

[CarolineS]

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@PhilipDAth wrote:

A method I have seen in other forums is to require people to have had a certain number of posts and/or to have been a member for a certain period of time before that can use the private message function.

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That's the plan!

[CarolineS]

DONE. When you first sign up for the community, you can't use private messaging. You have to [content redacted] before the feature is enabled.