Scammers and Spammers

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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.