Thanks
We should stop thinking about a person whose name or account has something in common with any real existing 'Laura Ralph". If there is existing any gmail account according this name, nobody can say if this account has not been hacked this time.
Has this person been reported to Google as well, given that he or she is using a Gmail account too?
WalkingMan:So what measures have been put in place to stop Laura Ralph and her like setting up a new account and sending more malicious PM's ?
I would hope they won't tell any of us out here in public -- last thing spammers need is help in what to break or work around.
But let's wait and see now that they have blocked the spammer's account.
So what measures have been put in place to stop Laura Ralph and her like setting up a new account and sending more malicious PM's ?
@SoulAsylum: "Please also remember we are on a weekend... " This s is exactly why this happens today and what this Laura Ralph is remembering. Dear Laura Ralph or whatever you are, please do not spam us on weekends anymore.
All: The user account was disabled and they are banned. I created a post in the Guru area and it never saved. Just went to the forums home page and was never created. I now see it in the open forums, of course not where it belongs and cannot open it since I get "access denied". So several hours ago the attempt was made to notify an admin on my part. 
Cheers
All: The user account was disabled and they are banned.
Cheers
All: The user account was disabled and they are banned.
Cheers
Please - lose the "Auto Saved" popover showing up every 7 seconds!
and every time the mouse is clicked over a typo, every time there IS a typo, and every time the Enter key is hit.
Another example of Norton's professionalism!
It isn't "spam" in private email that I get, I get the one from a pretend-a-be cop needing my information - that, for the newbie Norton techs, is what professionals referred to as 'phishing' - unless Norton has changed phish to spam this week. Doesn't say much for Norton's keen interest in protecting it's customers - even in a private Norton Forum email.
Norton should consider being pro-active, not post-reactive.
Hi tanaka59:
Thanks for the warning.
There's a discussion about this private message in bxcrwiily's thread Possible Phishing/Spam Email over in the Forum Feedback board. I just checked LauraRalph's account at https://community.norton.com/en/users/lauraralph and they've just been banned from the forum and had their account inactivated.
See Phishing/Spam Email here.
Initial action to ban sender ahs been taken
There's been a flood of GURU activity here and beind the scenes and you can see the initial result.
I am pretty shocked your private message inbox does not have any options to report an inappropriate message. You have delete and block, which does nothing beyond an individual's inbox. A security company like Norton should have stronger ability to report an inappropriate sender, whether spam, phishing or worse. You are responsible for the content and safety of your website with participants who own your security software.
If the problem is this widespread then someone from Norton needs to deal with this ASAP. I see LauraRalph's account at https://community.norton.com/en/users/lauraralph is still active and they're logged in right now spreading more mischief.
Have any of the Gurus following this thread posted in the private board they share with the Forum Mods or sent an @mention to a Norton employee just in case they're monitoring their e-mail this weekend?
EDIT:
I spoke too soon. LauraRalph was just banned from the forum and their account is now inactive.
You make an excellent point about Notify a Moderator for PMs and I'm sure that this facility will be mainly tightened up.
Unfortunately often in every situation we learn most when things go wrong! That was a lesson I learned some 55 years ago when joining a startup company as number 2 (that's all we were then!) and the Manager sat me down and said "If you don't tell me right away when things go wrong you won't last long here! If I don't know about the bad news how can we put things right!
Me, too! I opened the following thread in the forum Norton Internet Security, and asked that Norton have a "notify a moderator" in the inbox like in the forum to report this phishing scam problem.
https://community.norton.com/en/forums/violation-private-message
Ditto.
SoulAsylum - I appreciate the points you made but there are some tell-tale signs that something is going on with this rogue user account. Firstly, a quick check on the profile reveals the account was created less than 24 hrs before the personal messages were sent, and there is no history of the user contributing to or creating any posts. The PM was not linked to any forum threads, so one has to wonder if that is 'normal'. There must also be some way of monitoring how many people were sent a PM from this user in a short space of time time, so if this number was greater than might normally be expected, putting all this together should have sounded some alarm bells. Perhaps there are some lessons to be learned regarding analysis of suspicious behaviour so as to block such activity until a moderator can perform some additional checks. It would be similar to your bank spotting suspicious activity on your account or credit card and is surely not beyond the capabilities of Symantec.
I know hindsight is a great thing, but there is also something called pre-emptive actions.