Thank you to everyone who notified us about the spam you received through the private messages. We take spam seriously and worked to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, so you should no longer receive messages from this user.

We do want to make sure that everyone understands how the private messages feature works, as there does seem to be some confusion on the process.

This feature was recently enabled to provide users with a way to message each other privately without having to post private messages in the public communities, or without having to share private information publicly (for example, email addresses). You can find this feature through Your Stuff then Private Messages. When you take a look at it, you'll see it looks very similar to email with an inbox, ability to create messages and new folders, and manage contacts.

Here is how the email notification process works.

When you create a private message and send it to another registered user on the LLS Community that person receives an email notification at their real email address. That person can then log into their LLS Community account to access and reply to that private message. You can only send and receive messages if you are a registered user, and at no point is a person's email address used in the exchange except that the LLS Community sends an automatic email notification of the received messages.

Let me know if you have any questions and again - thank you for your patience if you received the spam message.