How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Recently there have been a number of spammers using Private Messages (PM) to try and get users to visit links that contain viruses/malware/etc. Almost always the PM claim they are an Adminstrator or Moderator from the forum. Additionally the link itself may contain your user name.

How to tell if the PM is legit? Here are some things you can do.

The easiest check is to look at the color of the username. Currently the staff use the following colors:

Administrators
Global Moderators
Forum Moderators

You can also visit this link which contains a list of all the staff, but it also has Patrons and Sponsors who are not staff members and should be considered the same as regular users.

When someone from the staff sends a PM with a link it will almost always have the destination of vadriven.com any other domain and you should be suspicious of the PM.

Look at the user's title (the words below their user name) spammers tend to be either Trial Members or Banned.

Still not sure? Report the PM, which is the warning icon that has an exclamation point in it. Someone from the staff will look into it. You can also post in The Help Desk.

If all else fails you can use the Contact Us link. While this will all but guarantee an Administrator will view the message it is the slowest method to get a response as it relies on the frequency we check our email.

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Say word son.

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Whats the point in this crap? I just banned two users tonight on another forum for sending out these emails/links...

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Same as any other spam, while most users will ignore/delete it there is a percentage that will click on it.

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

How are you handling the issue so I know how best to handle it on my other forum that I'm a mod on? I usually just ban the member...

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Ban them and delete all the PMs they sent (which I think is an administrator only function) since usually we only get a few reported PMs for all that they sent.

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Yea I don't think I have the function to delete their PMs... My admin isn't on all that often so its left up to me and another mod to handle it... I usually get problems reported directly to me through PMs by other members...

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

I received a PM from someone talking about I had a virus detected on my computer. I was wondering what was going on.

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

Re: How to tell if a Private Message is from a staff member
 

messege recieved from these freaks