Dealing with malicious users

Most of the people I meet online are pretty sound. Ordinary people in an extraordinary medium.

Luckily, I don’t meet bad apples very often, but last night it seems I crossed paths with a particular rotten one.

A member of Tech Watch was last night sent a warning for spamming his ads and links on the forum. He was told his ads were removed, and that if he continued, he would be banned.

According to the vbulletin software, he read his PM at 00:40 this morning.

Then from 00:50 onwards, the Tech Watch email was:

• Signed up to a few hundred email lists for the name “DICK SUCKER” over 8 hours
• Mass registered to FFA (Free For All link pages) for the title “TECHWATCH.CO.UK - #1 FOR HACKED DOMAINS”
• Used in a mass spam email campaign which included the content:
  

  visit our site: http://techwatch.co.uk
  we hack into forums

The bounced emails from the spam campaign showed them originating from the Philippines - which also happened to be the country of residence for the user.

If it’s a co-incidence then it’s very remarkable that someone should spontaneously begin a malicious and large-scale campaign against TechWatch - and only within minutes of that member reading the first real member chastisement on the site.

Anyway, I’ve set up a warning on TechWatch.

Sad to see this sort of thing happen, but in the meantime, I’m simply redirecting the spam to my Hotmail account.