MemberAdvocate's Blog

Many of our members have really cool personal pages that are designed using HTML and CSS which are a series of commands to tell the computer what your page should look like.

The commands are in the form of a link and the code contained in the link tells the computer where to go to get an image or a background. So for example- a link might tell the site to go to another website to pull a twinkling rose and place it on your personal page.

The spammers found a way to put a link into some of our member's personal pages which caused the pages to redirect to the ad for the BMW ad.

Dan, one of our lead software developers, figured this out and was able to remove this bad code from all infected pages. Thank you, Dan!

This spammer activity is illegal and we are not taking this lying down!!!

We hate spam as much as you do because we can't stand any activity that prevents our members from having a positive site experience.

Our lawyers are in the process of gathering information about these spammers are we are taking action to prevent this from occurring again.

Are you annoyed by the BMW ad that keeps popping up? So are we! You should know this is a spam ad that we did not put on the site. Our technology team is feverishly working to stop it so you can get back to enjoying the site without these annoying pop ups. Keep checking this Site Alert message. We will provide updates throughout the day.

Thanks for your patience.

If you see weird bulletin board posts that you did not make your account may have been hacked into. This is called "phishing" meaning someone wrote a script to create a fake page that looked like a BlackPlanet page and asked you to enter your username and password.

After you enter your username and password, the spammer is now able to log into your account and post bulletins promoting their products.

If this happened to you -you should immediately change your password.

Click on the My Account link at the top of the site and then click on the change password link.

You may also see some requests to enter your username and password as you scroll through the site!

Do not enter your username and password unless you are on a legitimate blackplanet page.

How can you tell? Look at the URL and make sure it only says blackplanet!

This activity by the spammers is illegal and we are taking aggressive steps to stop spammers from using our site for their own personal gain.

Great News!

Welcome to the Member Advocate page on BlackPlanet.com! Since you are reading this you know we recently launched blogs! Hooray for us! We are very excited to give you yet another tool to meet people and express yourself.

Many members have told us that we don't do a great job of communicating site changes to our members. We hope to change this with the addition of this blog which we will update on a regular basis. We hope this interactive tool will help us help you maximize your site experience.

While the addition of blogs is very exciting to us it is not all that we have done! Our product development team has been busy at work creating new products and enhancing existing ones based on your feedback.

Did you know we also launched videos? After you upload a video you can email it to others and you can also comment on member videos. If you find one you like you can save it as one of your favorites. To add a video click on the video tab at the top of your personal page and follow the instructions. Once you upload a video it will appear as a widget on your personal page.

Thanks for reading this blog post. Check back often for site updates, instructions on how to use new tools, company updates and highlights from a day in the life of member services.