Join groups to spam members: a new trend?

I've had several complaints today alone of people joining my group, then sending out tons of note cards to all of the members advertising their businesses (clubs, discos, escorts...etc).

These people seem to be a month or two old and have nothing in their profiles but the groups list (many belong to the 25 max).

Is this a new trend, or are they just getting around to the groups that begin with "N"?


~Ari

I had one of these the other day, what they sent me though was a Teleport invitation (I declined, but research showed they usually go to a casino/club trying to boost traffic, and the person gets a bonus for everyone who accepts.)

I did a people search on the person and was surprised to see they were joining/dropping groups even as I watched.

Apparently Groups with Open/Join are now seen as the newest version of a bulk mailing list spammer.

Only way I see this trend slowing, is if groups eventually switch to membership applications -- a pity.

This happened to me a short while ago. A person came into IM and offered to let me a discount if i rent a booth at his mall .. I asked him where he got my name and he told me it was in a well known group to which i belong. I told him that i didn't like spam and would in principle avoid any business that participated in it. He said he wasn't spamming, that he only was offering a few people this offer.. I didn't believe a word of it.

Its very annoying and gets my back up straight away. Nothing will make me say NO quicker.

Imogen

Yep, I just closed enrollment a few weeks ago, sad but true.

I've gotten 4 unsollicited group-invites in the past week alone .

I do like the "it's not spam because you can decline" defense they all come up with though. I don't even bother checking if it was a mistake or purposeful anymore, it's spam according to the CS so any group invite I get gets AR'ed.

(It's never anyone I know, heard of, or any place I've ever been and usually there's a common open enrollment group so it seems they just harvest group member names)

Used to happen to me once in a blue moon through Groups, now it's a few times a month. Somebody harvested loads of names (including mine) from the official blog once so they could ask people to fill in their survey. Person claimed to be from the London School of Economics. Maybe they should have enrolled at the London School of Common Sense first.

This happened to me a ton of times. They will join, spam, then leave.

Also the "Let me IM as many people as I can to spam them with rental opportunities!" people are getting worse and worse.

So irking!

I'm not surprised.

So the new marketing trend is to beat customers down until they give in and visit your business.

Niiiiice.

seems like every time i log in, i have 1-2 that pop up immediately. especially the last 2 weeks.

i get them in my email. that means, people are sending them to avatars that are NOT even inworld.

I would guess they are just copy-pasting to the entire group list as if it were a free mailing list ...

Does Linden Labs have an official policy on spamming? Can they be reported for spamming groups with unsolicited advertising, or is that pretty much free game for them? Is it worth it to file AR reports?

We need a new feature to dissalow enrollment to certain names. A 'Kick and Ban' feature for groups.

Perm-a-ban.

I like how you think.

I know some of my members have filed AR's on the spammers. Will it help? One can only hope.

~Ari

Although what happened some days ago to me was not in group, someone on my friendlist spammed with some advertisement...

I went as "I hate spam. Bye!!". And kicked her from my friendlist. Bah and mostly I am so careful with adding people to my friendlist.

(I think she used the calling cards to make one group.... so kicking may not be enough. I hope that mute will work if she tries again)

Morwen.

I do get annoyed with the group invites that are always groups for some business to annouce its new products. I usually IM the sender that they are spamming and in violation of the TOS. Lately I go directly to AR. Spamming violates the TOS, but I don't think there is a very precise definition of is considered spamming. All I know is the group invites are REALLY annoying.

Spam is spam is spam. Sending it is a TOS violation. AR the people sending it.

It falls under "Disturbing the Peace" of the Community Standards ("repeated transmission of undesired advertising content".

A single report probably isn't going to do anything, so encourage everyone else to AR for it as well.

I talked to a very intelligent griefer once (odd that I use intelligent and griefer in the same sentence). Anyways he griefs people for fun, and they all threaten to AR him and he basically encourages it, because he knows that those AR reports will never be read, and if they are, the Lindens are so backwatered in them it would take 5 months to get to him.

Agreed Strife - the relevant section for those of you who want to know is

TOS 4.1 (vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature;

I've twice reported the same person for this, but unless you can pick it up on the police blotter you have no way of knowing whether LL have acted on the AR. However, if enough people start quoting the TOS, LL will hopefully realise that this is an issue that annoys the hell out of most people.

This drives me mad. I equally can't stand idle chat in a group IM so tend to leave the group.

I read a statistic the other day in an article about SL where LL said they get around 2000 abuse reports every day.

Worse is One person sends a Spam message, then 50 in the group send"No spamming Group IM" messages.

To make this even worse, SL is having 'one of those days' and you've closed that particular IM session and keep closing it, because it keeps popping up the 'No spamming Group IM," or more!

I had to leave one group because it was finally overwhelming.

To take it even further, one group I left had the spam, the 50 complainers, and 50 more screamimng they were leaving the Group because of the spam, then the owner threatening to kick off everyone spamming the group......

Oooh chat spam is evil!

I'd love to see an option for "allow/disallow" group IM's" placed on the groups so social groups could chat while update groups wouldn't have to deal with it. That would take care of a lot of the rioting!

Even if the spammers are AR'd or simply ejected from the group, most of these accounts seem to be throw away accounts and they just go get another one and start over.

With 2,000 AR's a day....the jerk who is orbiting/caging/being a general-all-around PIA is obviously going to get the well deserved LL attention.

~Ari

I left a group like that without making a peep. I'm pretty sure that if the others had noticed my silent departure, they'd have been grateful that I didn't add to the chat spam.

Group spammers get AR'd and then muted. The place that they are spamming for never gets visited, nor do I recommend those places to my friends.