TW: Predators, grooming

We recently found a possible predator operating on this website. This was someone who had been a member for years, but had recently started sending inappropriate messages.

We have now taken all of the necessary action against this person, including banning him and removing his comments and messages from the site.

I still need to figure out a way to send messages to all of you who had contact with him, but in the meantime, please check your inbox. All of his messages have been replaced with “Removed Message,” and his username starts with K (for legal reasons I won’t list his full username right now). If you have any messages like that in your inbox, that means you had contact with him. Please cut off communication with him.

I have started to implement some new security measures, including message reporting and monitoring. Please report anything which makes you uncomfortable or upsets you in any way.

I want to describe how this particular person operated, to help you identify possible groomers/predators.

First, he sent the same message to hundreds of people, just saying “Hi, I like your kandi/profile/profile photos”Then he tried to strike up a conversation about shared interests, with the goal of developing a “friendship“ and earning their trustAt this point, he often would ask for contact details for other platforms, to obtain real-time access (rather than use this site’s slow messaging system)As the “friendship” progressed, he started sending lots of compliments, calling people pretty/cute etc, and acting like he was dating peopleFinally, he started to ask more personal questions, talk about inappropriate topics, and tried to pressure people into sending photos of themselves

This is just one example of how a predator can operate. In general, you should trust your instincts and block and report if anyone makes you uncomfortable.

If you want more tips on how to avoid predators online, please visit this help page I wrote: How to stay safe online

I would like to thank the members who helped bring this to my attention. Although I was already aware of this user, I didn't see anything questionable in his messages the last time I checked.

I might end up deleting this in favor of individual messages, but I felt like I needed to put this warning out there somehow. I would have written this as a post, but I've already got one active post displayed about the pattern maker.

--Disabling comments to ensure nothing inappropriate is posted while I can't monitor them as often--