Creepy PMs. What do you do?

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I'm probably not the only one with this problem but I'm don't know how I'm supposed to react. If someone sends you a creepy PM asking you about your sex life or something else inapropriate, what's the best thing to do? Ignore it? Send a PM back asking the person to live you alone? Or will that make things worse? I could have reported it, but I've already deleted it because it was making me unconfortable.

I just say 'i'm not comfortable answering in a PM. if it interests you - make a board and you'll get a variety of answers there!'

Good advice I'll try that next time I get a creepy PM. But hopefully there won't be a next time :/

yeah - try not to let them get to you, they're probably not intending to be creepy, just unsure of where the boundaries are, perhaps.

I've had this happen too...Apparently the person who contacted me was a 'troll' and was removed, but I am still intensely disappointed in how it was handled by Alex and the moderators...especially since I had full intentions on pressing criminal charges against this person who lived in the next city over from me.

I think it's disgusting that we don't have the ability to block other members from PM'ing us if we don't want them to. The answer I got was simply to delete the message...well that's all well and good, but when you are being harassed and it is stressful to even SEE that there's a message there waiting to gross you out, simply deleting it doesn't solve the problem.

Replying only encourages these people to reply with intensifying degrees of disgusting messages. IMO, the only thing you can do is to delete it and try to forget it. You will not get any help of that kind from Alex or the mods. I am still waiting for my complaint to be acknowledged by Alex....nice that people are being sexually harassed (and I'm sure other forms of harassment) and the owner of the site is too chickenshit to be a man and make this a safe environment for its users. I've considered leaving, but that means that this harasser has won, so instead I have not been participating as much because I don't know if I can trust anyone here to NOT harass me. That sucks too, because there are plenty of topics I'd like to engage in also, but I don't because I don't want a repeat of the situation I'm describing.

There should be a 'name and shame' creepy pm's thread, I bet that would put them off.

Ive never had a creepy pm, I feel quite unattractive now lol. Im very unfriendly though and dont reply to any pm's.

i can't help but reply.
i feel so rude if i don't.

but if I reply to peoples pm's they will write again and I will have to write again and I hate making pm messages and would much rather be though rude once than be stressed repeatedly trying to keep up an interaction Im not capable of.

yeah, i agree.
i wish i'd leave some of them but when i do i keep thinking i should.
although saying that - i've had some nice PM conversations too. ^.^

Unwanted PM: *delete*

Send a creepier one back.

You can ignore it or report it. But before reporting it I would look at the person's profile first and their posts to make sure they aren't a troll and then it be a possibility that person is just socially inept so I would just ignore it. If that person sends you another PM, then I would tell them to leave you alone and you don't want to talk about that stuff. If they send you another PM, I would threaten to report them to the mods if they send you another PM. Then report them if they do send you another PM unless it was an apology then I would leave that one be and not do the reporting.

Report it to the mods so that they can take it up with the creep.
I agree with Cinnamongirl, though, that it would be nice to have 'block' and 'ignore' features on WP.

I ignore them.

It's not rude to not reply to someone being rude.


Love this idea.

So glad I've not had any of these.

It is entirely possible that they just don't understand though. I had an aspie friend irl that we had to go through and point out all of the boundaries to him. He was perfectly lovely once we'd pointed out the difference between what's creepy and what's friendly.

This has occurred to me, which is why I have not been overly harsh about it and why I mentioned in the thread I posted in the Adult Autism section that they might not know what is and isn't appropriate. But then it seems (some of) the men who have responded don't care that many of us find it inappropriate. So it's not simple ignorance on their part.