PSA: Getting spam?

agentkoval

Hey all,

I wanted to give a quick public service announcement about spam. Recently over the past few months I would get spam in my inbox at least three times a week.

It would not matter how many times I right clicked and reported spam, I would again get the exact same message telling me to go to a website to buy EC or ships.

These messages were being sent by new users each time, clearly getting around my ignore setting.

I then decided to delete a large portion of my friends list, the people I had not spoken to in at least 3 months— the messages stopped.

So if you are getting similar messages and are unable to stop them, it is because someone had added you as a friend to create a master list of accounts that could be used by spam accounts without the risk of being of being censored. Just go ahead and purge your friends list and they could stop for you too.

I also want to note here that you should never go to these websites to buy gear, ships or EC. This equipment​ is often stolen from accounts that were compromised and places you at risk of have your account also compromised. It also states in the EULA that you can be permanently banned for engaging in this activity, so if you get screwed over, Cryptic won't be inclined to help.

Best of luck and enjoy,

Admiral Koval

This message has been brought to you by Ignotus Agenda— a level 65 fleet with hundreds of active members always looking to recruit and help players.

legendarylycan

won't help; they just send friend requests to get around privacy options, send the spam PM, then immediately unfriend again - all within a second, so you can't reject it before they send the PM​​

agentkoval

> @shadowfang240 said:
> won't help; they just send friend requests to get around privacy options, send the spam PM, then immediately unfriend again - all within a second, so you can't reject it before they send the PM​​

What they are doing is using one account to maintain a list of "friends" (this is a list of potential victims). They then use this list to provide names to other accounts that are disposable spam accounts that will most definitely be blocked and deleted.

This was evident to me by the fact that I would receive the same message around the same time on similar days of the week but from new senders.

I must have deleted the account that was feeding my name to these bot accounts because I have not received my usually timed spam.

Of course this will not stop all spam, but I suspect this form of phishing will be hampered if people clean out their friends list.

Thanks for your input!

jaguarskx

That will not solve the issue of getting spam. Every week I get at least 1 spam mail in my inbox.

I only have one "player" on my friend list and that "player" is an alternate account I created to test out some privacy settings. Both of my STO are getting spam mail. Trust me, I am not sending spam emails to both of my STO accounts to convince myself to buy EC from a 3rd party website.

agentkoval

> @jaguarskx said:
> That will not solve the issue of getting spam. Every week I get at least 1 spam mail in my inbox.
>
> I only have one "player" on my friend list and that "player" is an alternate account I created to test out some privacy settings. Both of my STO are getting spam mail. Trust me, I am not sending spam emails to both of my STO accounts to convince myself to buy EC from a 3rd party website.

Well, as you will read in my OP and in my comment, I was getting several a week for an extended period of time and they have stopped now. I also said that this will not stop all forms of spamas clearly these people can be rather persistent.

I suspect you may actually have an alter ego that comes out at night to spam you while your dominate ego is dormant. It could last only a few seconds so try to record your sessions of gameplay to see if you can catch yourself in the act.

Good luck!

discojer

Generally speaking, it's where your character is. Whenever I log out a character on ESD, sure enough, the next time I log in there is spam.