How to define ‘spam’? Oh, yeah, I know: Bloody annoying.

It’s also several other things: Spam is unnecessary, provocative, and it’s everywhere. Recently, there’s been a huge influx of it on deviantART – notes are being sent to a large percentage of active deviants on an almost daily basis. Notes linking to scams (mainly fake competitions such as Poetry.com), advertisements, and every other annoying kind of place you can think of. Thankfully, this influx of spam is due to lessen because of some great work by the dA IT monkeys. However, some people will continue to spam. We as a community need to help minimise the impact of whatever spam there is… this article will tell you how to cope in the now-unlikelier instance of someone spamming.

People that receive spam get bloody annoyed – quite rightly so. They think someone’s sent them a kind note, or left them a kind comment, and it turns out to be somebody trying to take advantage of them. It turns out to be a fraudster, a liar, a cheat, or somebody that just wants more attention. What should they do with this annoyance? The best way to expel it definitely isn’t to write whiney comments on the spammer’s page – that won’t achieve anything (The spammer is doing it of their own accord: of course they know that it’ll annoy people, but they’re probably doing it for some kind of personal gain, so whining won’t do anything).

The Problem

Just to put this whole article into proportion, here’s a list of the spammers that I know of, from the past month or so:

!laurythompson
!YouShouldWin
!futureartcritic
!jessicahammilton
!misselliot
!maryhalden
!christinelawrer
!tinatylert
!alicebergen
!michellepfeffer
!elisajunberg
!patriciakhoeler
!norahuntelar
!britneyrogers
!christinakoller
!laurenthegirl
!isabellathomas
!prettykitty99
!suzieq69
!suzieq22
!JaneDoe12345
!christinabendis
!carolineweissenborn
!juliana69
!annabelles
!kittie69z
!gina6969
!annmarie777
!calistathomas
!michelledawson
!michelleyoshido
!juliemcdover
!celeste1982
!tifanny22
!cindyluvsu
!philip22
!claire872

… That’s 37 spammers. Just think… if each one of those spammers spams 1200 or so people, probably a fair average judging by the amount of pageviews some of them have received, then that’s at least 44, 400 individual pieces of spam generated. Most of those spammers spam because they are spamming scams, or advertisements that bring in money. If each account successfully scams, or makes money out of, 50 of the 1200 people that they spam – and the amount of money they make per person spammed is about $25 (a fair average between scams and advertisements) – then overall $46, 250 is made in what probably totals about one week of spamming (if the time that each account spends spamming is about 3 and a half hours – which it is).

That means that $46, 250 is made by people that don’t deserve a single dollar. According to my estimates, that also means that each account generates about $1250.

Now is it just me, or is that one hell of a lot of money for 3-4 hours work?

Exactly.

Thankfully, as already mention, new systems have recently been put in place in order to minimise the amount of spam deviantART will receive. However, that doesn’t mean that all of the spam will suddenly stop – you can get spammed in many situations, even by well-established members.

Here’s how you should deal with any spam that you receive in a way that minimises the amount of disruption that it causes:

The Answer

The best way to deal with the spam is to take it in your stride. Relax. They’re spamming you, but you’re better than them – you can deal with this sensibly.

First thing to do? Check whether the spammer is banned or not. This is fairly easy to do: If they have an exclamation mark by their name, they are banned. If they don’t, they’re unbanned and still able to spam more people.

Second thing to do? Report the user.

How to report users

A lot of deviants ask me how to report people. Well, for all of the people that don’t know how… here’s how!

First of all, go to the deviantART Help Desk, and click on ‘submit help request’. You’ll see the request submission form. In the pull-down menu, select ‘report harassment’. In the text entry box, enter the username of the spammer, and give your reason for reporting the user – in the case of spam, it’s because the user is spamming.

Click on the ‘submit help request button’, and you’re done!


Now: Does the spammer in question seem to be a major spammer, or just someone that is spamming one or two people? If they seem to be a long-time, or large-scale spammer then you’ve got to move onto the…

Third thing to do? Warn people.

Write warnings.

Where there are large-scale spammers, there are always going to be people that don’t realise they’ve been spammed. These people sometimes watch the spammers, believing that the spam they received from them was simply a nice message… and possibly follow any links that they’ve been spammed. These people need to be warned, because they’re the most likely people to fall for any scams etc.

To warn them, simply go to their pages, and warn them that the person they’re watching (include the username) is spamming up deviantART. If possible, give them a link to something that has more information about why – perhaps this article. I tend to link to another article I’ve written - [link] .This linkage will lend what you’ve said a lot more credibility.

Now that you’ve warned any watchers away from the spammer, write a warning on the spammer’s page, similar to what you wrote on all of the watcher’s pages.

_{Note: By ‘warning’, I don’t mean vent your anger at being spammed, I mean ‘warning’.}

If the spammer is spamming a specific scam, or anything of that kind, it may also make sense to write a warning journal about the scam, and – if possible – follow the suggestions I make in this article.



…And that’s it. Spammer dealt with. In dealing with the spammer in this way, you can help get spammers banned more quickly and efficiently, meaning they’re less likely to spam as many people. You’ve also warned people away from the spammer, helped raise awareness of the problem, and thus helped to keep the disruption caused by the spammer to a minimum.

Thank you for reading!

Please fav the article to help more people realise what should be done, and if you get spammed in the future, I would much appreciate it if you could note me the username of the user that has spammed you so that I can add their username to the list in my journal.



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<sub>Two other, small things:

-Apologies for the potential miscat, but there are no obviously appropriate categories for this article.
-More information about the systems put in place to prevent spam can be read about here (click).</sub>