My forum gets invaded by a possible pedo

[RichM]

Ok here is my problem. Today somebody sent an email to some of my forum members (who are mostly teens). The email said exactly the following:

Due to the current loss of some of our most cherished members I have had to add new security to make this forum safe. So please can you fill out this form for your own safety and then continue using our forumThanks

Below that there was a form written in HTML that asked them to insert their real name and their post code. This is rather worrying and i am not sure what i should do. I have used a query to hide all of my members email addresses. I have also mass emailed and made an Announcement informing our members about this.

However the best plan of action i can think of is to disable users from showing their Messenger addresses as well as their email addresses. Though i cannot find where to do that.

My main question is; what would you do in this situation? Thanks.

[Floris]

I would definitly inform my members through a mass email, and I would make a site announcement for those who don't accept admin emails.

I would definitly try to take action against the person who did this.

I would definitly ban his ip (range?) from the server to avoid him from doing so again.

You can hide email addresses by setting this up in the admin control panel > options > vb options > email settings.

I have not tried much out with the instant message icons yet, so just read through all those options and see if you can find it

Anyway,

Good luck and I am sorry to hear that you are the victom of some loser who abuses your services to gain.

I am not to sure if he has 'spammed' your members for getting teens to give him his addy (pedo) or because he wants to send spam snail mail to them.

[RichM]

Thanks for your reply.
I have now disabled the option for users to email others via the board.
I have also sent an email to his/her ISP, i have no idea what they will do though.

[Floris]

You can setup vBulletin to allow users to email eachother, using a form on your site, without displaying their email address. This way, users can decide to reply or not. And it should show clearly who emailed. So tracing back the user and banning them is a bit easier.

You could also modify the template that contains the stuff that gets mailed, to include a footer with a short disclaimer: This email is NOT from an official staff member, we will never ask for personal details, our staff has access to the memberbase directly. If there are problems, contact [email protected]

Good luck!

[Dean C]

Get his IP and try and find his location. If so then report him to the local authorities. They can then do the rest from there...