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PS Messages spam - what's it all about

T

Teggy

Member
Suddenly in last 2 weeks I've been getting spam messages to my PSN account about free codes. Generally someone creates a group, sends a message, then leaves the group. It's happened a few times.

Any clue as to why this started happening now? Are there any protections against it?
 
Delete the person from your friends list. Block them. Report them.

It's quite common to be mass spammed in PSN. I hate it, and instantly delete that person from friends list or block them.
 
Would a spammer have access to the user list for a large community like neogaf's? I've been wondering if that might have something to do with it. I don't play a lot of multiplayer games with strangers and these don't appear to be coming from people on my friends list.
 
They are annoying and strange. I recall getting them on my 360 back in the day too. Not sure who the people are who are falling for this stuff. Kids I guess.
 
My gf gets spam messages on her account, despite not belonging to any groups and never really playing games. She just uses the console for watching YouTube and Netflix.
 
Friend of mine had 100s of spam messages because he killed some guy in GTA V Online wich got mad and kept spamming him till he set messages to friends.

This was like a few days ago it's absurd some people waste time on spamming people for dumb reasons like fake free stuff or because you owned them in a game.
 
Same here, from the UK if that helps. I've had two but blocked the main sender and reported so hopefully it should be fine from now on. The reply to my report did say that nothing was done about my report but if they can't message me again that's all that matters.
 
I got one of them, kinda scared me at first but I turned off the ability for strangers to send me messages/add me in a group.
 
Got one like an hour ago, third one in a week. It's always a new account, they send it to 60+ people, then leave the group. I report and block the account, then leave the chat myself.
 
13ruce said:
Friend of mine had 100s of spam messages because he killed some guy in GTA V Online wich got mad and kept spamming him till he set messages to friends.

This was like a few days ago it's absurd some people waste time on spamming people for dumb reasons like fake free stuff or because you owned them in a game.
Click to expand...

Same thing to me but on Rainbow Six. There's a site called spampsn where you can put in someone's psn name and then spam 25 messages at a time with your own personal message.

Needless to say I quickly set my message settings to friends only and ended that quickly.
 
I've not had a message (I set it to only receive messages from friends), but I did once get an invite to a "FREE PSN CODES" Community once from some random PSN account I don't think I had ever encountered before. Not sure if they were working off the "players met" list, or were trying PSN accounts at random.
 
Same for me, over the past 2 weeks or so I keep getting the code messages. Funny thing is prior to that I never once received anything like them before. Kinda annoying since I don't want to set my messages to friends only since that's how I've met a bunch of the people I play with regularly.
 
Yeah, I've been getting a lot of that recently too. The spam bot creates a group of ~50 people, posts the message, then leaves the group. In the PS messages app I only saw a report option on the users profile to report their username I think, which isn't what was wrong, and got a message for the spam review not to frivilously report spam (is that just the default reply back for reporting spam?)


Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew said:
Delete the person from your friends list. Block them. Report them.
.
Click to expand...


It's not anyone in my friends list, it's a new account each time.
 
Report them (i think you do it on the message itself, I'm at work right now and cant check the options). I had one that looked like it linked to a phishing site, put that in the details of the report, and within 30 mins i had 2 notification messages - one saying Sony's team that handles that stuff would look into it, and the other saying appropriate action has been taken. Seems like they might be quick to take care of that kind of crap.

If it's someone not on your friends list or a friend of friends, you might be able to cut them out via privacy settings so they cant message you in the first place.
 
yup i turned on my privacy settings so people who aren't on my friends lists can't send me messages or find me via search

i've actually received crap from people who apparently try and troll other neogaf members. you also hear a lot of horror stories where people will try and send you spoilers as friend requests or messages
 
Syysch said:
Report them (i think you do it on the message itself, I'm at work right now and cant check the options). I had one that looked like it linked to a phishing site, put that in the details of the report, and within 30 mins i had 2 notification messages - one saying Sony's team that handles that stuff would look into it, and the other saying appropriate action has been taken. Seems like they might be quick to take care of that kind of crap.

If it's someone not on your friends list or a friend of friends, you might be able to cut them out via privacy settings so they cant message you in the first place.
Click to expand...

I just want to say I did this. I reported because it seems to be every week now for free psn cards and some dodgy website. So I reported the case and just got told that it didn't breach their code of conduct. It than went on to tell me about abusing the report button and could lead to action against the abuser and to use carefully.

I'm sorry Sony but what the fuck is this shit. I swear what did they look at?
 
This happened to my mom and I only set her up an account for her to use Vue. She doesn't even touch it outside of that and she somehow got targeted by like 10 of these things in a month lol.
 
When I signed into my Japanese account to buy Nier I had like 500 messages or something.

I have 0 friends on that account, and haven't joined any groups.
 
I get spam daily and the filters don't do jack shit. So I live with spam , don't ever read any messages no matter who they're from and well, I hate their messaging system and broken ass filters. They don't work. Not for me, anyway.
 
Squishy3 said:
When I signed into my Japanese account to buy Nier I had like 500 messages or something.

I have 0 friends on that account, and haven't joined any groups.
Click to expand...

I had three spam messages myself on my account I created a few months ago when I signed in last night. I've never used the name anywhere else. Took me by surprise.
 
The n00b Avenger said:
This happened to my mom and I only set her up an account for her to use Vue. She doesn't even touch it outside of that and she somehow got targeted by like 10 of these things in a month lol.
Click to expand...
You should disable her getting messages from anyone not on her friends list.
 
I'm always getting these even though I haven't played multi in ages. They probably get PSN IDs from communities.

Baroquemantic said:
I've received two messages from people not on my friend list in the last week or so. I just reported it as spam and blocked them.
Click to expand...

I did the same with a 'free code' message and eventually got a reply from PlayStation saying it wasn't in breach and false reporting can lead to ban. Just block them now.
 
Aspiring said:
I just want to say I did this. I reported because it seems to be every week now for free psn cards and some dodgy website. So I reported the case and just got told that it didn't breach their code of conduct. It than went on to tell me about abusing the report button and could lead to action against the abuser and to use carefully.

I'm sorry Sony but what the fuck is this shit. I swear what did they look at?
Click to expand...

Weird, I've reported several spam messages like this now and always got the update messages that it was being looked into and then appropriate action has been taken. All of the spam I've received have had links in them though, and i reported as spam and in the details i put that it was a possible phishing site, because i expect dumb "free codes" link shit to be for taking advantage of people willing to click them.

It does always tell me the stuff about abusing the report function as an auto message when filling them out though, do you mean the moderation team messaged you about that too?
 
Syysch said:
Weird, I've reported several spam messages like this now and always got the update messages that it was being looked into and then appropriate action has been taken. All of the spam I've received have had links in them though, and i reported as spam and in the details i put that it was a possible phishing site, because i expect dumb "free codes" link shit to be for taking advantage of people willing to click them.

It does always tell me the stuff about abusing the report function as an auto message when filling them out though, do you mean the moderation team messaged you about that too?
Click to expand...


It's in the one message from playstation. It says exactly what I wrote above and says that they processed it and found nothing wrong. I mean i dont care but for them to tell me about abusing the report button is pathetic. No idea why but whatever. It was also the first ever thing I have reported on psn.

Anyway I blocked everyone but friends from sending me messagea so hopefully that fixes the issue. Is getting really annoying every week dealing with this crap.

Paddy M said:
I'm always getting these even though I haven't played multi in ages. They probably get PSN IDs from communities.



I did the same with a 'free code' message and eventually got a reply from PlayStation saying it wasn't in breach and false reporting can lead to ban. Just block them now.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. Sony can't be serious. Its obviously some form of phishing yet it's not in breach?
 
I got these all the time before I set my privacy settings to only allow messages from friends. Haven't had a problem since I did that.

Syysch said:
It does always tell me the stuff about abusing the report function as an auto message when filling them out though, do you mean the moderation team messaged you about that too?
Click to expand...

Good to know. I got that message too when I reported a spam message so it's good to know it was just an automated response.
 
I've had these a lot recently, reported one and got any email saying it wasn't reportable and a reminder not to abuse the report function.
 
Aspiring said:
I just want to say I did this. I reported because it seems to be every week now for free psn cards and some dodgy website. So I reported the case and just got told that it didn't breach their code of conduct. It than went on to tell me about abusing the report button and could lead to action against the abuser and to use carefully.

I'm sorry Sony but what the fuck is this shit. I swear what did they look at?
Click to expand...

1rst time I did that and got the same thing.
Considering that I barely play anything online ever I wonder where they manage to find me.
I'm never paying for their service if that means I have to deal with that BS and I could get my account suspended because I try to report some trolls.
 
I get 2-3 per week and is SUPER irritating because of how cumbersome it is to leave, block and then "mark all messages as read."
 
I always get messages from people playing FIFA (never played these games) to trade players or thanking me for the game, I think someone must have a similar username to mine.

- Easy fix is to change in the settings to only receive messages from friends/and maybe friends of friends if you want.
 
Mael said:
1rst time I did that and got the same thing.
Considering that I barely play anything online ever I wonder where they manage to find me.
I'm never paying for their service if that means I have to deal with that BS and I could get my account suspended because I try to report some trolls.
Click to expand...

Same for me as well. I was pretty disgusted. I report spam and get told I'm abusing the report system? Fuck off. I've now changed privacy so only friends can message, but it's pretty gross that I need to adjust my profile because Sony don't see a problem with randoms trying to compromise my account.
 
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