Has anyone else been getting messages from weird, random school accounts that say something along the lines of “CHECK OUT MY EDIT I MAKE ON SCRATCH” and then link a project that's not shared? I figured out that these are probably bots, and they've contacted me twice but about an hour after they message you, their entire classroom disappears. If you have seen or contacted any of these, please tell the people at my studio ( https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/studios/36330257/ ) we are trying to figure out what's going on here, and we could use the help of the ST.

My theory is that these classrooms are being created by the same person who is controlling the bots, probably view ‘farming’ or something like that, but we need to stop whoever is doing this.

Just silently report and ignore them, this happens to everyone. Its just a person/group of people setting up spam bots ( lots of the time on inactive class accounts using RNTAS to avoid spam detection ) to course disruption and annoy people for attention ( most of the time the links don't even work ). Pls don't give any further attention to them - I would recommend taking down the studio you linked.

I have received one of those types of messages. The project linked was not shared, and when I decided to check the spammer's profile page, they're gone. Often they include a random number, referred to as Random Number to Avoid Spam, or RNTAS for short. Sometimes they include letters or symbols, which is often called Random Character to Avoid Spam, or RCTAS. (this topic is fit best on Questions about Scratch)

I'd like to figure out who's been hacking into the unused school accounts, so I think i'l let that studio grow until it gets the ST's attention

chocolate_trekkie wrote:

I'd like to figure out who's been hacking into the unused school accounts, so I think i'l let that studio grow until it gets the ST's attention

ST is already well aware that this is happening and your studio doesn't have much use as its just giving more attention to the spammers/bots

michaeljackson1365 wrote:

I have received one of those types of messages. The project linked was not shared, and when I decided to check the spammer's profile page, they're gone. Often they include a random number, referred to as Random Number to Avoid Spam, or RNTAS for short. Sometimes they include letters or symbols, which is often called Random Character to Avoid Spam, or RCTAS. (this topic is fit best on Questions about Scratch)

yeah, I saw that and the numbers were in the thousands.