MySpace Spam - What MySpace is Doing About the Spam Problem

MySpace, despite the complaints of the horrible design of the layout, is one of the most popular sites on the internet these days. It can be a great place to find old friends or hang out and chat with people, but as of the past year or two it has become a spammer's paradise. It took a while for MySpace to catch on and to start to do something about the spam, so the spammers pretty much did whatever they want, turning your bulletin, inbox and friend request sections into their spam playground. But, MySpace, has decided to step up their defense system against such spammers. Here are some of the ways MySpace is working to combat spam:

Flag a Message as Spam
Although this tool has been around for a while, it is one of the ways you can use to combat spam. When someone has sent you a MySpace message that is trying to sell something or to just advertise a website, all you have to do is click the "Flag as Spam" option in the same line as the date and time, and MySpace will look into the spammer. This feature works really well because sometimes I have been a little late in checking a message, and one that I would have marked as spam, MySpace had already deleted the profile.

Reporting Abuse
Next to the "Flag as Spam" link, you can also click the "Report Abuse" button to, you guessed it, report any abuses of the MySpace system. Options to choose from when reporting abuse are as follows: Cyberbullying, Imposter Profile, Underage User, Inappropriate Content, Phishing / Fake Login Pages, Spammers and Scams. This will be sent to the MySpace customer service area and they will look into it.

Mark Friend Requests as Spam
After the MySpace message spam reporting button had been activated, it did send some spammers looking into other avenues and setting up spam pages, then sending friend requests to people so they'll check out the profile full of spam. For the longest time, all you could do was "deny" their friend request. Recently, MySpace added a feature allowing you to mark a friend request as spam by clicking the "Mark as Spam" button next to the other friend request options.

Converting All Profile Links
MySpace has now created a system where all of the links on MySpace are replaced with a forwarding link from the MySpace servers. This allows MySpace to disable any link on their site, especially ones on a user's profile, if that link is used for anything that would be against their TOS, including spam.

Although MySpace isn't free of spam, they have come a long way in trying to combat the spam that was beginning to ruin the time that people spend on the site. People no longer have to worry about spam, because even if someone does spam, reporting them is just a click away, and they won't be able to spam MySpace anymore.