Getting added to groups without permission

I mean what the hell, it's at least once a week, some arsehole creates a group, adds a load of invites and all of the people are all automatically added and sent some shitty spam to an external site?

And so every time I have to leave the group that I didn't join.

Joining groups should be the choice of the member not some sort of auto enrollment that wasn't agreed to

Yes I raised my point directly and no they're not doing anything to stop it ( that I'm aware of since I raised the ticket.)

So fed up with it.

I experience the same thing. And had the same thought - why can they add me to a Group I didn’t ask to join? Maybe more of us need to open tickets until the issue is fixed. Joining should take an affirmative action. It can’t be that hard to write that code.

I presume you mean a mail group and not a group?

It's designed to work the same way as messaging services on your phone, where anyone can be added to a mail group.

Please continue to report scammers and we will take care of them as best we can. We are looking into who has the authority to set up a mail group, which should help mitigate.

Thanks

Quote by Jen

I presume you mean a mail group and not a group?

It's designed to work the same way as messaging services on your phone, where anyone can be added to a mail group.

Please continue to report scammers and we will take care of them as best we can. We are looking into who has the authority to set up a mail group, which should help mitigate.

Thanks

I’m sure it’s a mail group. But if all they’re doing is pulling random member names out to add, it’s no different than getting spam in your email. I don’t like it there and I don’t like it here. Anything you can do to mitigate the ability of these scammers to do it would be greatly appreciated.

Is this "group messaging" used by a lot of people?
Not the scammers. People with good intentions that want to add and be added in groups. Like a group of Lush friends that use that feature to plan whatever.
Because if it is only used by scammers, you could just disable it but it is important to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease.

Us mods and various panel members use it now and again for discussing site matters. I don't know about usage among other members.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Us mods and various panel members use it now and again for discussing site matters. I don't know about usage among other members.

Unfortunately, for most “non-mod” users, we just get added to these group messages by scammers

Thanks Darkroot, and yes that's exactly it. A private group is created by someone usually with only a couple of days membership, and they add the max number of members to it with some rubbish spam promoting another site.

The only thing you can do each time is to leave the group, but we shouldn't even be in a group that we didn't choose to join.

@Jen and @Wannabe thank you for responding here. If it's not possible to resolve the auto enrollment, perhaps the solution might be to not allow new members ( until maybe they've been here for a week or 2, or 4 idk what would be acceptable to everyone) to create groups. It's not like it's something that a genuine new member would set out to do anyway, in my ( hopefully humble) opinion. 😁

Quote by ChainMale

If it's not possible to resolve the auto enrollment, perhaps the solution might be to not allow new members ( until maybe they've been here for a week or 2, or 4 idk what would be acceptable to everyone) to create groups. It's not like it's something that a genuine new member would set out to do anyway, in my ( hopefully humble) opinion. 😁

They will just create users to spam in a week / month. I do not think that would solve the problem.

Quote by LeroyJerkins

They will just create users to spam in a week / month. I do not think that would solve the problem.

Yeah, I did think that too. Not sure what the solution is but it's a very frustrating thing.

Quote by ChainMale
perhaps the solution might be to not allow new members ( until maybe they've been here for a week or 2, or 4

That's certainly one avenue that has been considered.

Looking around the web at various ways sites have tackled this kind of thing, the common thread is that spam always finds a way, and all we can do is slow it down or make it more annoying so they go elsewhere.

If we say you can't create groups for N weeks, they'll create an account and wait N weeks then come back.

If we say you need to make X posts before being allowed to create groups, they'll just create X one-word posts.

If we say you can't post links, they will make links like h ttps://spamsite.com which will still automatically get made into actual links (like that) or at the very least get the domain name posted in many places to attract link juice/SERPS.

If we say you must post a story, they'll scrape one off another site and push it here.

Everything quantity-based that we would try to implement would backfire in some way or piss off members who want to create an account and start sharing legit content quickly.

It'll probably come down to implementing some sensible limits - like a bunch of hurdles - but quite what they would be and how we would use them to differentiate real users Vs people who just want to spam others is difficult to gauge.

Why not a yes/no Opt-in popup?

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

That's certainly one avenue that has been considered.

Looking around the web at various ways sites have tackled this kind of thing, the common thread is that spam always finds a way, and all we can do is slow it down or make it more annoying so they go elsewhere.

If we say you can't create groups for N weeks, they'll create an account and wait N weeks then come back.

If we say you need to make X posts before being allowed to create groups, they'll just create X one-word posts.

If we say you can't post links, they will make links like h ttps://spamsite.com which will still automatically get made into actual links (like that) or at the very least get the domain name posted in many places to attract link juice/SERPS.

If we say you must post a story, they'll scrape one off another site and push it here.

Everything quantity-based that we would try to implement would backfire in some way or piss off members who want to create an account and start sharing legit content quickly.

It'll probably come down to implementing some sensible limits - like a bunch of hurdles - but quite what they would be and how we would use them to differentiate real users Vs people who just want to spam others is difficult to gauge.

I agree on those probabilities. They can be persistent. This may be a coincidence, mostly hypothetical. Not to deter paid and potentially paying members. However, I noticed that after my paid subscription expired, I was never added again to any group messages while others still kept getting them. I was thinking that they are targetting those with an active paid subscription. I could be wrong.

As a solution, how about adding a message subfolder for 'Message Requests'? All messages from any member whom the recipient user has never interacted through Lushmail and not in the Friends and Following (excluding Followers) list will be routed there. This is how most social media and messaging platforms are currently set.

There will only be one message request notification from that sender regardless of how many messages are exchanged within that group, including succeeding one-on-one messages, until the recipient does an action, either to accept, decline or report.

You can put 'Accept', 'Decline', 'Report', 'Decline and Delete' 'Decline and Leave' and 'Decline and Block' options for the recipient. Or add checkbox suboptions for 'Delete', 'Leave', and 'Block' if the recipient declines.

If the recipient selects the 'Decline' option with no further actions, that message will stay in the 'Message Requests' folder as a read message for a maximum of two months (or less) until it autodeletes. Any option that is not 'Accept' will stop new notifications to the recipient.

In the case of massive requests, you can add an option for multiple decline and/or deletion. A checkbox before the group message sender's name will be accessible for a single, as well as an easy 'Decline/Delete All' option.

This may help to prevent if not mitigate the burden to recipients getting unwanted messages, too. More control on privacy for members, higher satisfaction.

I’ve certainly never used the group messaging feature, but I get at least one of these annoying messages a week.

I understand that the mods have good reason to use it … not sure if there are non-mods also using it and the cure would be worse then the disease, but what about making it so only mods or admins can create mail groups? Or make it a Paid-only feature like unlimited messaging?

Some good suggestions here, thank you. I'll point the dev team at this thread and see if there's anything they can add to the development roadmap.