CAUTION ON THIS AND ANY FORUM!

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Please use caution when you get private e-mail responses to any post you make and the sender is asking you to respond to their own personal e-m or website. There are scammers who register with social websites and try to run a scam on people - it is often the same scammers you hear about on radio and TV - they have found just another way to get to you.

A hallmark of a scammer will be to say they are just like you, but they won't say any more about themselves - they won't seem authentic (you have the intuition to notice it). But above all, they will post a link to their personal e-mail address or website. RED FLAG! If you click on that link, they will have your personal e-mail address and that's when you will start getting scammed.

Someone tried to scam me here just this past week. I answered in this website e-m box, that if they wanted to discuss anything, feel free in this website only. I haven't heard bacl from them, so I think you can guess the rest.

Just be careful everyone!

I got a PM like that. I almost messaged back to give them a chance to convince me that they were real, but then I decided that was unnecessary. It was clearly a scammer.

Basically, the person said that they thought we were a lot alike and wanted to talk through an email address provided in the message, pretty much as you described. I thought it might be possible because I had just posted my introduction, but it still seemed fishy. I checked the user's profile and found that there was no information and the user had no forum posts, as if they had signed up just to send the message. Another red flag. I didn't check to see when they joined, but a long-time member with no posts might also be suspicious.

If people want to talk to you, they can use the forum or the PMs, or use the contact information you provide in your profile, if you provide any.

Please report these scammers/spammers, too. Marykalo has been taken care of, but we need to know about any new ones that come up, so we can try to stop them early on.

She's baaaaaaaaccccckkkk! She's the one who contacted me.

Via email or PM? If via PM, give us the user name.

This person marykalo contacted me in this website's Message Box - just earlier this week.

We already banned her. In this new contact, is she using email or PMs on this site?

Marykalo also contacted me. I have the email if proof needed?

That in itself isn't needed. But when? We banned her at about 8 am, Thursday the 6th (Australian Eastern Standard time, no daylight saving, about GMT+10 hours. Work out what that means for your timezones).

It's okay. We don't need any more reports on her. She has thankfully been banned and cannot sent any more PMs.

Thanks for your fast work on marykalo! You are a great website and I feel very secure that you are on top of it all. Thank you for being here!