An update regarding the spam in your e... - Weight Loss Support

Weight Loss Support

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An update regarding the spam in your emails from HealthUnlocked

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HealthUnlockedHealthUnlocked
10 Replies

Dear NHS Weight Loss Community

We would like to thank you for bearing with us during this period. The team has been working hard to put in place a number of features that will restrict a spammer’s ability to post in the community.

We are also aware that some of you have concerns regarding emails you receive from HealthUnlocked. If you have signed up to receive notification emails each time a member posts, you will unfortunately continue receiving email about those posts, whether they are written by a spammer or genuine member. You will find, though, that as the level of spam falls the number of such emails received will also fall and return to the normal level.

Additionally, you may find that the daily or weekly emails contain posts by spammers. Going forward, we are putting in place a system to reduce the chance that such posts will be in these emails to ensure that you continue to receive relevant information from the community.

We want to reassure you that we are doing all we can to limit level of spam on the site. We are confident that with the steps taken this will reduce substantially.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us by clicking on the ‘help’ button above.

As always, thank you for being a member of HealthUnlocked and have a great day.

Hugo W.

The Communities Team

HealthUnlocked

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10 Replies
joddles profile image
joddles

Yes I've just had whole list of horrible posts on my email about astrology and black magic! Awful - will put me off this site if I get more of those - please stop this happening asap. Thank you.

Booster8joanna profile image
Booster8joanna

I'm really unhappy about all these stupid posts on here about black magic etc,hope you can manage to stop this guys x

Renka profile image
Renka

Me too - I've had enough of this rubbish.

gingernut49 profile image
gingernut49

Thank you - I'm sure it's been an absolute pain for you! Yesterday's was the worst but today only two - I've reported them - so well done!

GoogleMe profile image
GoogleMe

It is interesting to note that there are far more attempts to spam the Weight Loss forum than the C25K running forum here. Pause for thought perhaps.

OlsBean profile image
OlsBean in reply to GoogleMe

The chinese "Diet/Health Supplement" industry is estimated to worth upwards of $50 billion a year a good percentage of it is driven through internet sales a lot of which is touted unethically, hence the reason whenever there is a gathering or community of to put it in simple terms "Dieters" it's likely to attract these undesirable individuals and organisations, looking to exploit their vulnerability and desperation to lose weight.

It's always worse this time year, I wrote a post warning about it in January. healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

JaneNichols profile image
JaneNichols

Thank you! I thought it was just me receiving them and couldn't work out how it was getting into my system! I was relieved to see it wasn't just me, but like others, I was seriously looking for the 'unsubscribe' button which would be a pity as I find the site helpful.

Jellymum profile image
Jellymum

Woohoo! Today I received the daily email and there was no spam - no garcinia (whatever that is) sellers, no miracle workers, just proper weight loss forum members looking to get support and support others. Thank you for getting on top of this so quickly - I haven't felt able to recommend the site whilst there was so much spam, but can do so again now with more confidence. The site and the 12 week plan have so much potential to offer support and help people change their eating habits, and best of all, it's free. Thanks again.

And yet the spam is back again this morning. So much for updating the security or regularly policing this site. I counted three new spam posts, which I have "reported". Unfortunately, I'm rather tired of spending more of my time reporting spam then trying to connect with people to help each other lose weight. Best of luck to everyone on this forum, but I for one am unsubscribing now.

OlsBean profile image
OlsBean in reply to

That's a shame but to give credit where it is deserved, I personally feel the Healthunlocked team responded reasonably quickly to the issue, working fast to implement interim changes. There is no silver bullet for this kind of problem, all online communities I have been involved in over many years suffer from this kind of problem to one degree or another. It's hard because if you lock things down too tight then you risk making the forum unusable or at the best very "user unfriendly" which in turn leads to upsetting members and forcing them elsewhere.

There has been a definite reduction in the amount of Spam I am seeing myself. It's only been a few days since the team were made aware of how bad the issue had got, lets give them a chance to get their changes in place. :)

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