Several times in the last few weeks, a person has joined Ancestry and on the same day sent out dozens or even hundreds of messages to surname boards regarding family history books for sale with a CD. The wording of the message is the same for every family book advertised. Today the person is StellaS77 who has sent 415 advertising messages so far.

I contacted Ancestry several times about this. I don't know what they are doing to stop it.

I urge anyone who sees these messages NOT to click on the link for the company being advertised -- and NOT to purchase anything from them.

The point is Ancestry can't stop it as long as they have free public message boards.

If such postings were to mailing lists directly then Ancestry could simply block the domain. Message boards are different.

The staff has a global removal tool they can use. I've read you can report it via the "Report Abuse" link at the bottom of the message and put something in the subject about it being cross-posted to many boards and needing the attention of staff, like Attn Staff, cross posted spam or Attn Staff, spam posted on hundreds of boards, or something similar.

I mark one abuse and I just put:
"ATTN: Staff- AncestralBooks-again"

:)

The only problem with this is if the board admin deletes the single post you stuck the objection on before checking their objections staff will never know--unless, of course, you mark a board YOU admin and then you know not to delete it but rather to leave it for staff.

Joan

Joan, I agree.

When I report these messages to Ancestry, I click on the sender's name in the message -- which takes me to the person's profile. Then I "report abuse" from there. That way the "abuse report" is for the message sender -- not just one message. In my message to the Ancestry staff I reported that this person sent 415 messages in one day -- all the same wording except for the actual family surname for the book. In the subject of my message I put the words ABUSE and SPAM. I don't think Ancestry could misunderstand the problem. And they have deleted the messages -- at least the ones I checked.

This has happened several times in the past. I know Ancestry is probably busy right now, but it seems to me that it is time for them to take it to "ancestral books" directly. Just deleting the messages doesn't seem to be working.


Sharon