Hi Everyone,
We’ve put together some questions and answers to help explain the current spammer situation and what we’re doing to fix it. If you still have questions, please join us in the chatroom next Wednesday (18/06) at 1pm when we’ll be hosting a live Q&A. All 4 of the community team will be on hand to tell you about up-and-coming developments, address any concerns and listen to all your ideas for making the site as good as possible.
What’s a Spammer?
Over the last few weeks, a spammer has been posting messages across the community. The content of these messages has been consistent: promoting a “cure” for cancer on behalf of some so-called advisory group . Spam is the name given to messages repeatedly posted across any website where the purpose is to force a message – or in this case, product – on a site’s members. Some spammers are actually intelligent computer programmes, but the one we’ve been dealing with is a person (or people) acting on behalf of a business promoting a drug.
Why is the community being targeted in this way?
All community sites encounter problems with spammers at some point, and we’re aware that this isn’t the first time we’ve been targeted. This particular spammer has been targeting cancer support communities and Facebook groups across the globe, so we’re not alone in facing this problem. Ironically, the more respected and better ranked a website is, the more likely it is to be attacked by spammers. The intent of the spammer is not to upset, confuse or mislead users (though there’s no doubt this is happening) but is rather a systematic, albeit callous, method of making themselves look legitimate in search results by associating themselves with well-known websites such as ours. Not only does this behaviour go against all guidelines for good practice online, it’s also disgusting to us that they think it’s acceptable to cause a charity to waste valuable resource on dealing with this.
What are we doing about it?
We’ve put a number of measures in place to stop this from happening but they have not been entirely successful yet. Here’s a run down:
In all of these instances, we’re up against a person who’s able to spot what we’re doing and work out ways to get around it. The challenge we face it to make it harder (in an ideal world impossible) for a spammer to post messages, but in reality this just isn’t possible without taking away freedoms from the whole community.
Why haven’t we made registering more difficult? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
A key aim of the community is to offer a safe space where members can receive support. In order to make this service as accessible as possible it’s essential for us to keep the registration process as simple, straightforward and swift as we can. We could easily put security measures in place which could act as a barrier to potential spammers, but it might also deter people genuinely in need. This is not a risk we are wiling to take.
When will the new strategy take effect?
We are working extremely hard to put measures in place that will prevent the spammer from operating. As with any development work, we’ll need time to test that it works before deploying it on the live site. Even then, we should expect that tweaks will need to be made. It could be up to a fortnight before our new measures are up and running effectively. If it’s humanly possible for us to put this in place any sooner, we will. Additionally, the site upgrade we have planned for later this year should help protect us from spam in the future.
What can you do to help?
Whenever you see any content on the site which offends, abuses or in any way breaks the site rules, please do not hesitate to hit the ‘report’ button. If for any reason this isn’t possible, you can always email us: community@macmillan.org.uk, stating as clearly as possible what the problem is, and including any relevant links.
This spammer is harassing us. Why haven’t you got the police involved?
There’s absolutely no doubt that what the spammer is doing is immoral, insensitive and deeply offensive – but we’re still trying to ascertain whether any illegal activity is going on. We’re working closely with our legal team to discover our options and find out more, but rest assured we will involve the police if we need to.
We hope that this will have addressed some of your immediate concerns. If you have any further questions, please do let us know by leaving a comment or emailing the address given above. We will be communicating any changes/updates every step of the way. The whole community team will also be answering your questions in a live chat next Wednesday (18/6) at 1pm. If you have any ideas, questions or comments about any part of the site, please drop in to say hello.
Online Community Manager
