Private message which is spam

[garybs29]

@Anonymous the mods are bt employees here to help & advise on occasion.

What's happened here is that scammers have signed up to a public forum (which anybody can) & have sent some private messages trying to scam people. I actually fail to see what else BT can do here apart from what they've done already - ban the perpatrators & remove the messages given that anyone can sign up. If you've clicked on the link however i'd maybe think about changing your passwords etc as they were after those sort of things

[Uncle1Bob]

The text of scam message received, followed by further question::

'You’ve received a private message in the BT Community.

Subject

Blink and it is gone! The best cool bonus offer for you! Today you will be lucky! Hurry up!

From

Hottielz

Date

13-12-2020 2h25'

Question: Below the scam message is the following, which leads me to preferences, but no clue as to managing private messages::

See this message in the community

Manage your private message options   Hope to see you soon, Your BT Community Team

[Andy_N]

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@gg30340wrote:

You will have received an email to notify you of a message because you will have "subscribed" to a post in the forum, 

It would appear that somebody, possibly a scammer, posted on the same post, hence you getting an email notifying of it.

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Judging by the reports, it seems like a spammer has managed to work out how to use a bot to register and send private messages, or the miscreants have "employed" a mass of people to do it.

[Maryemm]

I clicked on the link as it looked absolutely genuine. Do I need to do anything about my stupid action?

[dazbon]

If after clicking on it & only being redirected to this forum, do you think changing passwords etc is still needed. It appears that most comments suggest that BT has deleted the message concerned & the email we are getting from the BT community including the link is genuine.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that and good to know that Neil is a BT employee and hopefully by implication his advice can be relied upon. I think what BT could do in this instance is:

1) Make it clear that someone like Neil, when they respond, is responding as a trusted BT employee authorised by BT to advise forum users (I could see not mention in his profile or post signature that he was BT).

2) Proactively send a message to forum users as soon as a scam / spam is detected and deleted, to say that 'You may have received a [details and warning about link in the email] email. We have taken action to delete the spam post. However, if you have clicked the link, and to be safe, we recommend changing your password'. I have a forum on Facebook that was subject to a similar experience recently and my immediate action was to notify forum members in just that way. 

I think those actions combined (and especially (2) ) might stem the tide of posts (and those are only the worried customers we know about) from worried BT forum users (who I would have thought are at least more likely to be BT customers than the rest of the world). These posts, and the notifications we all receive each time someone posts, have an aggregating effect on taking up each forum users time.

For the rest, my complaint about BT (partly evidenced by my experience on this forum, but also from inability to stop me receiving scam phone calls (blocking numbers isnt working), the out of date format of BT email, and their very poor (character number limited) feedback forms). I expect more from such a high profile organisation. In their defence, I'm sure that other providers could be hauled up on various points, but I am a (very longstanding and loyal) BT customer so it is them I am dealing with. 

Hope this helps. My criticisms are not personal but aimed at BT as a brand. I used to be a brand manager and we were always fierce on listening to the customer. I think large organisations today sometimes think they are above paying more than lip service to that

[Anonymous]

Maryemm - not stupid at all, very understandable since we are not experts and my argument (and, slowly, of governments and regulatory authorities I think) is that corporations  providing services (including this forum) must hold more responsibility for protecting their customers. I believe corporations could do better and should be obliged to. This point has had to be impressed on the banks and maybe just maybe is now getting them to behave better both in protecting customers (or at least helping them to protect themselves) and to accept financial responsibility for some of the scams they have, through inadequate diligence, allowed vulnerable customers to become victims of.

[Muddles20]

For members security I would hope there is some kind of limit on the amount of private messages and emails a new member can send to other members, but it appears not. I have that setting on a few forums I run. There's also software running on my forums that links to sites holding spammers details on their databases so any matching username or/and email is automatically picked up, banned and reported/added to the spam/scam databases. If I can protect my members from spammers surely BT have IT boffins that can do likewise on here. But then we see so often large companies with useless IT 'experts', Talk Talk springs to mind, who were hacked not once but twice by children using the most common hacking method on the planet. There are other companies with equally useless IT teams. 

[Andy_N]

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@Anonymouswrote:

Thanks for that and good to know that Neil is a BT employee and hopefully by implication his advice can be relied upon. I think what BT could do in this instance is:

1) Make it clear that someone like Neil, when they respond, is responding as a trusted BT employee authorised by BT to advise forum users (I could see not mention in his profile or post signature that he was BT).

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Against his name is Moderator - only BT employees will have this designation.

[Ldtravs1]

Before anyone starts beating up on Neil0 the simple facts are these:

 - the forum account is not tied to your BT account

- nothing has been compromised as a result of these messages, just that fake profiles have been setup with a view to firing out spam messages. BT have stopped the PM function to avoid any more episodes while they look into it

- the concern at the moment is how profiles can be setup freely in the first place - but its a fairly loose sign-up process

- any compromise will be from recipients clicking on links; longstanding advice is to not click on links or attachments in messages/emails 

- if emails look very similar to BT, that isn't exactly BT's fault.

Before my message gets undermined, I'm nothing to do with BT, I'm not even a fan of their customer service but in this respect, Neil0's responded to these reports on the forum and, as a moderator, he has authority over the forum.

BT representatives do indeed respond to messages on here as well as other members giving advice. You will see their position in the forum in their avatar