Scammers and Spammers

The Spam Control Team deals with members who violate Freecycle’s Terms of Service in ways that cannot be managed by local moderators.

Spammers massively post or respond to posts with content that is unrelated to Freecycle. Spammers usually operate across geographies, rather than in one locale. Spammers attack Freecycle groups in the following ways:

• Posting spam to the group
• Spoofing another member
• Harvesting member addresses
• Posting seemingly innocuous messages that require going to a third-party website
  

Scammers seek to use Freecycle’s website to defraud members, usually by asking payment upfront for delivery/courier fees or postage, and then not providing the promised item.

Here are some examples of the type of posts that are most often associated with scammers:

• An Offer with several of the same item for collection
• Small personal gaming/computer devices, like PS3, PSP, tablets, laptops
• Unusual use of punctuation and spacing in the subject line. (example: i p a d s.'-. or ..PSP' ')
• High-value items offered to multiple groups (click here to see how to search posts on other groups)

What to do if you find a suspicious post:

• Put the post into moderation by editing the post and unclicking Approve
• Temporarily put the member on moderation
• Report the post to Spamcontrol@freecycle.org. In your report, include:

1. Member’s username
2. Member’s email
3. Post ID number
4. Your group ID (name and number, please), which is found on your group's Info and Options page.
5. any screen captured images that you have (optional)

If you receive reports from members that you have NOT yet reported, please:

1. Ask the member to forward the entire email exchange between them and the suspected scammer to you and include it in your report to spamcontrol@freecycle.org
2. Reassure the members that Spam Control are investigating and may contact them for additional information.

Important: Please avoid stating, accusing, or implying that the reported person is a scammer. Use terms and phrases such as "this is a suspected violation of our Terms of Service” or "this post may be in violation of our Terms of Service."

If Spam Control determines that a post violate the Terms of Service, a notification email is sent to the members who have had contact with the poster, warning them that they may have had contact with a user that might be trying to solicit payment from them. For privacy reasons, Spam Control team members will not confirm or discuss if a suspicious user was removed, but they will let you know if something is NOT Spam or a Scam and can be placed back into active status.

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Spam is the Internet equivalent of junk mail ‐ email you didn't ask for, and probably don't want. It's sent by spammers, usually using automated tools. Freecycle members will often have their own spam filters to detect and remove ‐ that's up to them. This answer just talks about what you can do as a moderator to reduce the chance of your Freecycle group being used for spam.

Spammers attack Freecycle groups in the following ways:

• Sending spam to the group, from their own account
• Spoofing another member.
• Harvesting member addresses.
• Posting seemingly innocuous messages that require going to a third-party website
  

Freecycle's Spam Control team (spamcontrol@freecycle.org) does a great job of catching most spammers before they can do much harm, and you can help by reporting any spam attempts that you catch on your group.

When reporting a Spammer send an email (with as much detail as possible) to spamcontrol@freecycle.org and add these five things:

1. The spammer's MyF User Name
2. The spammer's MyF email address
3. The reason (e.g. iPod scammer)
4. The post ID.
5. Your group ID (name and number, please), which is found on your group's Info and Options page.