This might have been better in "general chat" but it was a chance to take one of the fake passport messages off the front page.
I feel we do need to look at safety issues on this website. Firstly the fake passport scammers are back. They seem to do the rounds alphabetically, as today the other sites scammed (including Nintendo Forum) are around the N part of the aphabet.
But as this is a site that caters for people who may be vulnerable we need guidelines in place.
Maybe I'm being over-cautious but someone might be tempted to follow up on a passport or a driving licence. These people are looking for false identities - your details and photo help them fake passports for terrorists and might also give them access to your bank account. These are international criminals - selling you a fake passport is not their objective, they're the same low life scum that email people that their bank account will close if they don't send details, or the jokers telling you you've been chosen to transfer a million pounds with a big tip.
Another thing I've seen today, riding on the back of the scammers, is someone in Kurdistan offering a British female a job looking after a child with autism. Maybe there is a real child, but there are proper channels they should go through. There are real issues however with slave trafficking, not to mention a war zone, and anyone responding to an advert like this could be in very grave danger. Therefore synical as I might seem, I suspect this is a scam to lure someone here desperate to find work to part with personal details.
There are some really bad people out there. It wouldn't be easy to put anti-spam software on this site because people's usenames and some content could set it off and really complicate things.
But we do need to look at making this site safer. After all there's been no intervention from NAS - presumably the moderators don't clock on again until Monday morning. That's why these scammers use weekends. They know they will get at least 24 hours visibility for their evil work.
