I seem to receive allot of spam from my hi5 account but I was very shocked to learned that one spammer had been sending message on all my friend's list and pretending to be me . The content of the messages had pictures of girls and linking to some adult dating site. I only found out recently, and was surprised as I have not used hi5 for over a year

Alot of the people on my list are friends, families and also children and it really makes me look really bad even though I did nothing. I am sure if I was running hi5 I also would not want families seeing such content and would pass these complaints to the technical team to remove the comments asap.

Despite hi5 admitting there is a current technical problem with thier site that allows spammers to do such a thing, they still refuse to remove this content. I find this bad customer service and also awful browsing experience for families.

here is the cconversationI have had with them:

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From: help@hi5.com
To: jas
Subject: RE: hi5 Help
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:02:22 -0400

Please accept our sincere apologies for the problems you have experienced. It is very important to us to provide our members with a safe and secure online experience.
Thanks to your report and reports received from other hi5 members, we are aware of the problem with "hacked" profile comments being sent from member accounts. Our technical staff is working to remove this spam and block the spammers from using hi5.

hi5 prohibits spam, unauthorized links to commercial websites, junk mail, "phishing" attempts, or related kinds of unauthorized activities. Please be assured we will investigate this situation and take appropriate action.

Since these comments were not sent with your authorization, we recommend that you send a message to your friends and ask them to delete the comments from their profile. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way for you to remove the comments once your friend accepts them and the comments appear on their profile.

We also recommend that members turn the "auto approve" feature off for profile comments to avoid comments automatically appearing on their profile. You and your friends can check your settings for profile comments on the "Privacy" page link at the top of any hi5 page.

To help protect the security of your hi5 account, we strongly recommend changing your password. To change your password, log in to hi5.com and then click the Account link at the top right of your hi5 page. Scroll to the section "Changing your password" and then enter your old password and choose a new password. Be sure to click "Save" at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

Sincerely,

hi5 Support

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From: jas
To: help@hi5.com
Subject: RE: hi5 Help
Date: Sat, 12 April 2008 20:01:29

Hi hi5,

Thanks for your reply,

I'm sure you have access to everything from the database and server. Can't you just go through all the friends on my list and remove the comments. Alot of people on my list don't use hi5 and may not respond if I ask them to remove the comments. At the same time, family members, friends will see rude comments from me which I did not post.

This is spam as you can clearly tell (especially when you click these links and it takes you to porn sites).

* Isn't it part of your tasks to remove obvious spam.
* It must also be your responsibility to remove popornographicinks/images. There are allot of families and young children that use the site

I know there is not automatic way to remove this from my side, but all it will take is just 5 minutes of your time to go through my friend list and remove the 'dating' link spam messages on the profiles.

I hope you can see the bad effect this will have on me and you, as hi5 site is showing that I am posting rude comments on peoples profile which I really did not.

Jas

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From: hi5 Support (help@hi5.com)
To: jas
Subject: hi5 Help
Date: 13 April 2008 00:45:03

Dear Jas,

Thank you for contacting us at hi5.

Since these comments were not sent with your authorization, we recommend that you send a message to your friends and ask them to delete the comments from their profile. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way for you to remove the comments once your friend accepts them and the comments appear on their profile.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Saul
hi5 Support