SPAM survey by Steven Johnson - Do not answer

[masimon]

It has come to our attention that a Steven Johnson, allegedly a doctoral student, has been spamming members of this forum with a "questionnaire" asking for specific information about your forum practices.

DO NOT RESPOND!

My. Johnson has not contacted us about this and is in violation of forum rules.There may be risks responding such as phishing, IP hunting, etc. Nevertheless we were not notified by Mr. Johnson.

We apologized if you have been spammed and this person has been banned from this forum.

Using this forum to solicit users of this site to surveys,contests, advertisements, leading members to other forums, etc with out our consent is considered spamming and is a violation of our rules and any offender will be permanently banned and locked.

Thanks to those members who brought this to our attention.

[rwayland]

Thanks for this post. I was thinking about calling it to your attention, but did not because I thought I might just be acting like a paranoid old fogey.

Richard

[Pingu]

Already gave it a miss. The idea that a docotoral student can afford to pay several dozen subjects on several forums, is just ridiculous.

[AlanPerkins]

I answered it before I saw this.

I haven't received a $10 voucher.

I will let you know if I actually get one :p

[rwayland]

I answered it before I saw this.

I haven't received a $10 voucher.

I will let you know if I actually get one :p

Well, let us also if you get anything you did not want!

Richard

[Raymond62]

Oh, I missed this. A pity.....

Thank you for warning.

Raymond

[masimon]

I was a little leery of this at first however and hope it doesn't become common practice. It will get in the way of the flow of the forum.
Exactly the point don't encourage people to spam here. There is also the question of your ip address being collected so that you can can collect numerous spam emails from multiple companies with out asking.;) The most dangerous is phishing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing) All they need is your ip address. This can be acquired from you simply surfing to their site and its over your in box will never be the same again.

Be very cautious when you are asked to do surveys via email. It's no different than timeshare telemarketing on your phone. ;)

If you are unaware of spam issues via emails and forums here are some links. Spam is not good don't encourage it anywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam

[Garritan]

If this was above-board, I wonder why Mr. Johnson did not get the consent of the admins first but chose to spam the members surreptitiously by private message (which violates forum rules).

masimon is right about being very cautious when you are asked to do surveys. Hardly a day goes by when our inboxes are assaulted by phishing scams (especially those Nigerian or paypal ones.

The survey site was serving as "survey host" and is not the sender or originator of any survey. So anyone can use it to collect info and there is no way to know if a survey is legit.

Those who answered, please let us know if you receive any follow up from the "survey" or strange offers or alien abductions. %-

Best,

Gary

[Michael_uk]

I adopt a blanket policy to any unsolicited PM or email. I don't even open it; it goes straight in the bin. I wouldn't have any hesitation in reporting such abuse and have done so in the past.

[rolifer]

There is a Steven Johnson at the U of MD that works where this guy says he works. The E-mail address that this guy had on his spam, is the same that is on the UMD site.

That doesn't mean though, that this guy was the real Deal.

I did check him out because I will work on my Masters at UMD.

Ron

[Little Red King]

I answered before I saw the warning posts. I googled for the guy first and I saw these two pages:



and I figured that this was above board (and low risk) and so I gave it a try. For the record, I have received a 10 USD Amazon.com gift certificate. It came in an e-mail from Steven_Johnson at rhsmith dot umd dot edu. I have not yet tried to use it so I can't report if it is a real gift certificate number or not.

Still, the forum rules are the forum rules and apparently Mr. Johnson did not read them carefully. I apologize if I helped encourage his behavior by responding. If Mr. Johnson really is on the up and up, perhaps sending him a little e-mail might help to clear the air?

[masimon]

I do not doubt that this person exists. The problem is he has spammed the forum PM area. It's actually illegal to do this in the U.S.

The correct thing is to check with the forum admins first but even that is still inexcusable because the pm's were to solicit members of northernsounds for a survey.
It's no different than someone sending out a mass email to all our members with out the members or our consent. This is called spam and would become a problem to all forums if left unchecked most forums will 100% not allow this.

I don't think the company he used for this condones it either. We have contacted them.

If Steve did not know the rules he should have read the rules here and at almost all forums on the web.
This is the #1 violation issue at forum boards ....spamming or soliciting it's members.

It's no different than the issue of email spam. 90% of the worlds email is spam it's a big problem. Check your email in box or spam folder on any given day. 16 years ago Spam was something you eat. :D

The last place I'd want to see that happen is on any forum.

[AlanPerkins]

FWIW, I did receive the $10 voucher.

Now I await the viagra, nubile women, degree offers, nigerian fortunes etc... (only joking).

[DPDAN]

when I got my PM from him I thought gee wiz, now I am getting spammed with a PM. I did not respond, I thought it was very rude of him.
Thanks masimon

Dan

[tfishbein82]

when I got my PM from him I thought gee wiz, now I am getting spammed with a PM. I did not respond, I thought it was very rude of him.
Thanks masimon

Dan
Just so you know. I wasn't spamming you in PM. I really would like the midi from your Chopin demo if you'd be willing to share. :)

[klassical]

I'm running a survey to find out how many people were spammed by this guy.

Please include your name, address, social security, and credit card numbers.

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