CAF Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 Recently off-topic messages have been posted to a group to which I have belonged for a few years. The postings are totally unrelated to the contents of the site and are annoying members. The postings are regarding dating and now US stock-exchange investment (we are in Australia!), to which members have replied requesting that these messages stop. The moderator of the group is no longer contactible, so complaints were made to Yahoo who host the garden group (on Yahoo Groups), but Yahoo were absolutely no use at all, other than telling members to start their own group. Consequently, members are leaving in droves. My question is this - do the dating and the investment postings constitute spam if posted to a group rather than an individual? Obviously their intention is to get a wider audience, and as many of us have group emails forwarded directly to our inboxes, we are getting this spam in our inboxes as well as on the website. The investment posting in particular has all the earmarks of spam with words spelled with a mixture of lowercase and uppercase characters as well as numbers instead of letters (0 for o). If this is spam, to whom do I report it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farelf Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 ... My question is this - do the dating and the investment postings constitute spam if posted to a group rather than an individual? Obviously their intention is to get a wider audience, and as many of us have group emails forwarded directly to our inboxes, we are getting this spam in our inboxes as well as on the website. The investment posting in particular has all the earmarks of spam with words spelled with a mixture of lowercase and uppercase characters as well as numbers instead of letters (0 for o). If this is spam, to whom do I report it? 40267[/snapback] spam, as they say, is about consent, not content. You've consented to receive emails and the clear evidence that some of them are off-topic doesn't alter that. Matters of content are for the (absent) Moderator, I would say. If you report the OT ones, it will be the Yahoo "originating IP address" that gets reported (you can always do a trial to verify and cancel the report). Maybe DavidT ( http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...indpost&p=15986 ) or someone else who is more familiar with this territory could comment? (David was talking in that instance about the consequences of reporting group emails). Sounds like you need a new/another group Moderator to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agsteele Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 I'd agree with Farelf, with newsgroups and forums it is the role of the moderator to tackle the problem. He/she could be in touch with the sending ISP about the problem but probably will not. Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff G. Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 None of the preceding should preclude you from reporting any stock scams to Enforcement[at]SEC.GOV and spam[at]nasd.com. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btech Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 The postings are regarding dating and now US stock-exchange investment (we are in Australia!), to which members have replied requesting that these messages stop. 40267[/snapback] Message lists aside, it's illegal for businesses to email/advertise stock picks & information, so yes, it's spam and should be reported. If the moderator doesn't want to pay attention, then you may want to leave the reporting addresses for the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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