Apologies for the Spam Mess in Aisle Three

OEGlobal Plaza
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I apologize for a series of spam messages that recently got posted here. To simplify access to this site, the account creation process was relaxed in October for the OEGlobal Tour. Guess who forgot to reset the settings?

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I hope the clean up is complete. Please let is know of any suspicious or inappropriate behavior in OEG Connect by clicking the :black_flag: button at the bottom of any message. This just alerts the admins of the site of a possible issue to investigate, without identifying yourself.

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Very often these rogue accounts are created with profile information that is easily identified as bogus. It always helps us, and the community in general, if more people have a more complete profile that every logged in user can access directly via https://connect.oeglobal.org/u/my/profile.

Sadly, spam is of course a modern internet fact of life. I can remember long ago in more optimistic times, educator pundit Clay Shirky described spocial media as “stuff that gets spammed”, a sentiment that heavily feels still true.

If you have any questions or concerns or spam spottings you can contact me or our admin account @OEGconnect or email us via connect@oeglobal.org

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FYI due to a continued flood of requests for bogus account creations, I have had to turn off the open sign to register for an account. At least for now, we will send invitations to anyone who makes a request through our new web form.

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Just as an update, because I wish to maintain a very open community and not put up walls, the button as been re-instated that allows new people to create accounts here.

All new account requests need approval, and I am more than happy to reject them as the information they enter into the forms is completely obvious of bad intent or easily recognized as cut and paste / generated blarney.

I have enabled a captcha on the registration form, and still two new spam attempts were made today. I will just squash them like nasty bugs.