Regarding Private Message Spam

[twoplustwoisten]

On January 27, 2021, between 4:30 PM and 7:30 PM Pacific Time, a large number of our users received private messages titled "Hi," "Hello," or variants that contained suspicious links. Once brought to our attention, we identified unique characteristics of these messages and their senders and quickly addressed the issue by deleting all private messages containing embedded links sent by users registered during the specified hours.

If one of those messages was sent to your account, you may have received an email notification about it. Since the messages have been deleted, you should not be able to locate them; however, if any outstanding messages with suspicious contents remain in your inbox, please bring them to the attention of our staff by using the built-in report tool (the exclamation mark icon at the upper right when the private message is opened).

To prevent similar events in the future, we have turned off the ability for "Newly registered users" to send private messages to individual users or multiple users. In general, it is also good practice not to open links in unexpected messages or from unknown senders.

Thank you to the users of Scioly.org who brought these messages to our attention and reported the messages they received to help with our investigation.