I received this new PM today from Dori54js titled "hi, what's up!":

Hey,

I waz browsin' 'round for people like me, & I stumbled on your profile. U give me the impression that you're a reasonably cool person, but I'm rather inexperienced at how things work here, & don't know my way around here. Can't they have a chat here?? I hate writing messages 2 ppl, and sometimes not getting an answer. Well, if you feel like talkin' with me, u can catch me over at http://www.datecentrale.net/?id=3592&mypics , my name there is cutefox.

So, ya, hope to see you there. always lookin' to meet more people.
Sally Ward

I hadn't been sure at first, but after googling a part of the PM, a GS user's (bmarrow) blog on his receiving a similar PM was one of the top hits. It was thanks to the GS user's blog that I had become convinced the PM was spam. Other things that were suspect include that external link, the message author's profile was created only days ago, and other GS users have received nearly exact PMs only with a couple differences like names. Surely distributing messages en masse containing an off-site link violates the ToS and those accounts responsible will be banned, but how will this garbage be prevented in the future?

So I'm posting this blog entry to notify others in our community about this scam since it seems to be new. I also wonder how many of you were chosen to be targets or if every user account received the spam PM?