Getting spammed by Tarot Tea&Me?

[Chariot]

Just woke up this morning (28 February, 2023) to 46 pieces of spam in my personal email in-box, purportedly from Tarot Tea & Me, all of which have the title of a particular set of tarot cards and are from a 'no reply' site.  I have opened none of them and reported them all as spam to my email provider and blocked the domain.  However, when I came onto this site, I found 46 notifications in my on-site notification box as well.  It all seems to have happened 12-15 hours ago?  I'm on UK time.  I have opened none of them, but I'm concerned that somehow my email address, which you have on record for me, has been hacked by spammers.   Not happy, but can you do something about it?  Has this happened to anybody else?

 

[stephanelli]

4 hours ago, Chariot said:

Just woke up this morning (28 February, 2023) to 46 pieces of spam in my personal email in-box, purportedly from Tarot Tea & Me, all of which have the title of a particular set of tarot cards and are from a 'no reply' site.  I have opened none of them and reported them all as spam to my email provider and blocked the domain.  However, when I came onto this site, I found 46 notifications in my on-site notification box as well.  It all seems to have happened 12-15 hours ago?  I'm on UK time.  I have opened none of them, but I'm concerned that somehow my email address, which you have on record for me, has been hacked by spammers.   Not happy, but can you do something about it?  Has this happened to anybody else?

 

Hi Chariot,

This is very unusual and I've not heard of it before.

 

The email address you should get notifications from is no-reply@thetarotforum.com - it's this the same for those emails do you remember?

 

Can you tell me more about the notifications on site or take a screenshot of them?

Are they PMs from someone or a notification on a thread you follow?

 

It's certainly unusual.  Thank you for letting us know in good time.

I will have a careful look into the backend to see if i can find anything.

 

[stephanelli]

I did just have another thought that you might somehow be subscribed to the deck library - can you remember the name of any of the decks you got emailed about?  I spent a lot of time catching up on adding decks from the members uploads folder into the deck library.  I don't know if there were 46 but there was certainly a lot of them...

[DanielJUK]

@Chariot so sorry you have this. Chariot kindly pmed me earlier with screenshots of her inbox. I think it is the deck library.

Yesterday @stephanelli worked through and processed a lot of decks stuck in a queue for the deck library. I remember seeing you had uploaded some decks to it ages ago.

 

The question is where did you get subscribed to all decks added to it, gonna see if I can find out. But don't worry, this is from the forum and not anything sinister 🙂

[DanielJUK]

I will reply to your PM as well

 

I think you are subscribed to when new decks are added to the library. Nothing sinister has gone on and it's just notifications from the forum of the new decks.

 

I can see you are following this members upload page - https://www.thetarotforum.com/gallery/category/6-member-uploads/

 

Stephanelli has a queue of all the decks to be processed. She has to check each one and that it meets the system for the library and then the decks go public. It's possible that member's uploads notifies you as each are published.

 

This page has all the things you are following and will get emails for - https://www.thetarotforum.com/followed/?type=gallery_image&

 

Have a look through the Deck Library 3 sections and then look through Forum and those 2 sections. Look where the threads notifying you are. You can then unfollow and change them to not email you. There are options. So you can turn this off. Let us know what is notifying you so we know for the future. 🙂

[Chariot]

Ah, if all the decks were uploaded to the deck library yesterday, then that probably explains why they all came in at once ...and WHEW!  That was scary.  I don't remember subscribing to the updates, but if that is what is happening that's fine.  I don't mind getting updated, actually.  But hopefully not 46 of them at once!  🙂  That will explain why members' names were attached to the ones that appeared in the Notifications folder as well.

I will unblock the ones I marked as SPAM, and take the block off the domain.  And go take a pill....

Thanks, Jan

[DanielJUK]

I've sent you a PM now explaining everything to calm your fears 🙂

 

@stephanelli and I have tried to recreate the issue this morning or work it through and think if you unfollow members uploads -https://www.thetarotforum.com/gallery/category/6-member-uploads/

you will be now left in notifications peace from this.

[stephanelli]

12 minutes ago, Chariot said:

Ah, if all the decks were uploaded to the deck library yesterday, then that probably explains why they all came in at once ...and WHEW!  That was scary.  I don't remember subscribing to the updates, but if that is what is happening that's fine.  I don't mind getting updated, actually.  But hopefully not 46 of them at once!

Yeah...that would be my fault, I basically sat down with the intention of clearing out the uploads folder and sorting them out.  I didn't realise I did 46 of them yesterday!

Hopefully it won't be that bad again...sorry!  (To be fair, I very rarely get the opportunity to do a whole day of admin on the forum!)

 

ETA: but I did entirely clear out the folder so that's a win?

[Chariot]

Hi

@stephanelli - thanks to you and @DanielJUK for the quick response.  This is better than I expected.  Not only is it NOT SPAM (yay!) but there is now information about 46 new decks to get acquainted with.  Yay!

I have decided to say subscribed to those kinds of notifications, as I would like to be notified when new ones appear.  Now that I know what that email is all about, I won't lose the plot next time it happens.

Glad that events allowed you a full day to devote to the forum.  Well done.

Okay, I'm going away to play now!  Learning about the new decks! 🙂

Cheers, Jan

[DanielJUK]

You can reduce them if you need and make it more manageable 🙂

 

I just followed the section to try it out. Go to here - https://www.thetarotforum.com/followed/?type=gallery_category&change_section=1

There is a notification called Members Uploads and you can adjust their frequency. Hit the change preference button on it and the options are - a notification when new content is posted (this is immediately), one email per day with all new posted content, one email per week and do not send me any notifications. If you pick do not send, you get a forum notification but no email! Anyway you can set it to not be quite so annoying 😆

 

Glad we worked this issue out. I think this is a classic case of hitting a button and then 6 months later getting an avalanche of notifications and being bewildered where they came from