Beware free iPad messages

Tedious and Déjà vu. A lot of wasted time/effort/money in ‘human’ moderation and community users discussing the flaws of community software/processes/implementation, advised to change passwords etc, when community users should be discussing Sonos.

I got one from Administrator_Urijah

I’m at least happy people are reporting this, rather than falling for it. I’m unhappy that Gainsight hasn’t been able to defeat this. I feel for the moderators who have to chase it, and manually clean it up. 

Maybe. Potential issues will be minimal if you did not supply any passwords or email addresses. Unfortunately, when you followed a link, this indicated that you will click on links to miscellaneous sites. Often, you will then be “sold” to other SPAMMERS. None of my browsers will automatically execute a link or fetch an image suggested by an embedded link. As far as the SPAMMERS are concerned, I never viewed their page. Some browsers will allow you to view the raw text without following any links. Lately this has text has been very messy and difficult to decipher because the SPAMMERS don’t want you to analyze their scheme. I look at the headers. If there is a reference to *.ru (a Russian server) or any other far east address, I’m no longer interested in the page.

The “smart” scammers will attempt to concentrate their efforts during hours when administrators are offline.

The weekend should be interesting, maybe a bit of overtime pay for the person stuck dealing with it.

Same here:

How difficult is it to detect a new user immediately accessing the PM feature?  Even if they only send a single PM, that should immediately flag the account for moderation.  This isn't rocket science, and the anti-Spam/anti-scam techniques as they apply to support fora are well known and several decades old.  This isn't Instagram or Facebook (though Instagram and Facebook are certainly more effective in thwarting scams).

Not to mention there should be easily configurable parameters to shut off PMs for new users, or users in general, after the first hint of a scam.  Instead, our history of low expectations for this platform has people speculating the scammers will know to attack on the weekend due to a lack of vigilance by a company whose business it is to offer a safe and effective support site.

I agree. And for those messages that do slip through the cracks, why isn’t there a “Report” button to report them directly to the real Admins, rather than us having to post each fake account in the forum?

I emailed security@sonos.com because I couldn't find a report button anywhere and I didn't want to post publicly and alert the bad actor but just saw this thread and it's already out there so I guess they know people are on to them and will pivot to something else.