Spam....Con-men trolling on Geni

Private User

With around 7 million registered users the spam level in Geni are very low, except for the 24 last hours, - probably spam generated by a spam robot and not a real user.

The curators usually react quite quick on reporting and hiding the spam messages all around the clock, but the final cleanup has to be done by CS staff.

I am sure that they are working on better solutions and one of the things curators have asked for is to be able to temporary suspend a user from posing to discussions and guest-books, but usually the spam are posted by hit-n-runners and suspending them would not help because they never return back, except in this last case.

I have had two date proposals from Women I do not know.
Yes, it is unfortunate that there are Humans who seek to disrupt and play Malicious games with serious matters. This Phishing Game, is not new, and infiltrates everything connected to the Internet.
I am confident that Geni Staff are already on this matter and will seek a solution.

Yes, I also noticed a strange profile from South Africa claiming to be a Bank President and appeared to be soliciting information from members. I suggest that no information, including e-mails, be shared with unknown individuals. Big alerting clue: Why would someone want your e-mail address if they can already communicate publicly or privately through Geni?

In Michigan, United States, there have been numerous e-mail solicitations claiming monies have been won.
Yes, Enrique is correct, be aware.

In California, the most popular scam is, as stated by Christopher, from solicitors claiming monies have been won. Another popular scam to keep an eye on is from solicitors claiming that some distant relative died without close heirs and that you have been calculated to be the next closest heir.

Private User

I would have to agree with Private User and say that we have a very low level of spam based on the number of registered users that we have. Unfortunately, there are period's like the last 48-72 hours when there is a spike in the amount of Spam. We do have tools in place to automatically address if a users is sending out a suspicious number of emails.

Thanks all...... this kind of spam is concerning as we all have information that could be collected and then used, things like mother's maiden names, where one went to school, where you work, as well as other information. It is sad that we need to worry about this on this site.

However, if we don't talk about this, we can't protect our information. We are all working to hard on our "Family Tree" to have some joker come on here and steal our lives from us. Identity theft is a real problem, so we need to address these concerns when this kind of thing happens.
But, thank you all, and thanks Bjørn P. Brox , as you are always so insightful and helpful.
: )

Wow this makes me want to cancel my trial membership even more now!

Mike, don't do that....there are a lot of great people here. We can't let creeps, ruin all the hard we so many have done.

Michael Patterson Private User

We do let anyone sign up for a basic membership and some of those people do choose to send spam. But , they do not have access to go through your tree and get your information unless you make your profile public and allow them that access. You can go to your account setting and look over your permissions and privacy settings and then post any specific question that you might have. One of the Curators or Geni Staff will be able to answer them for you.

OK so if I change these settings to private to keep the riffp-raff out of my info, how do the people on here I don't yet know, who are serious researchers, see my tree to connect and add/merge trees.information?

mike we still get matches, and can message you to request that you merge the private profiles

And be aware, Mike - if you go back to Basic - a Basic Member does not have the ability to accept merge requests, a Pro member does. If you think you might want to accept merges, and there are a lot of reasons why you might, then you may want to keep the Pro Membership.

Also - little numbers on Profile Box indicating Geni has found that many suggested matches for that Profile (which you may not have added enough to see pop up yet - no idea) - Pro can click on the circle and see the suggested match - Basic just gets an ad to upgrade.

Ever consider making the public forum spamming ability into one of those non-basic membership features that at least requires credit card details to be present?

Coupled with some highly desired functionality comebacks in the otherwise prehistoric Geni Basic membership scheme—and you guys will have a promising campaign kickstarter for Governor of California. Well ok, maybe not, but at least more old people would smile at you during the next RootsTech.

The messages seem to be coming to my email, though profiles that I "follow"... any suggestions about that? I can hide all I want my info, but this person, is going though profiles, seeing who "follows" those profiles and then sends out these messages. Some of the older members here are more prone to reply as they are a bit more trusting then many of us! I know my older cousins got hacked and had to change email info.
I did get two more notes from this person last night- early this morning... we need to do something as it would seem that his "tree- profile" is only here to spam-scam us.
Like I said, any thoughts on this.