Thanks for taking my prompt of letting the CLs know what is going on. It's a pity that the only way I was alerted to what DS was doing was by one of the members on the DS members board saying accounts were going - after I had assured people that DS would not close legit accounts. That's why I messaged you - were you intending to inform the CLs seeing as we are having to field members queries and give them assurances that their accounts won't be closed if they get hijacked.

I hope you will also post in the DS community Board as I suggested and be prepared to answer their questions.

Re the action you are taking - are you being proactive and e-mailing the owners of the hacked accounts or simply leaving them in the dark as to why they cannot get back into their accounts?

Many of our members aren't very technical and may be distressed when they are trying to come back to DS and if they cannot get into their account they will not be aware that accounts are being deactivated due to spam hijacks. Many will probably simply give up - as hundreds did when we had the DS changeover. Many probably aren't aware that they need to use a different e-mail address to create a new account.

As to "While we can't go into specifics, rest assured that the issue is not on the DS end of things" As you can't give us any info we are left to assume that it was on the DS end of things - DS is responsible for site security, yes? I've been on many other forums and this doesn't happen.

I do hope that you post something in community.... something to assure them,,, some sort of explanation. we've all been waiting for a week now and this apparently is the best you can do or are going to do. the silence and evasive post speaks volumes

shame on you

Thankyou sfleschute!

Let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

I agree that the members who's accounts have been hacked should receive an email explaining what's happened and that they'll need a new email address

There are some members on the site who are really unwell and they can be really effected by this if they don't understand what's happened

I think the email could be brief and could just let them know how to reopen their account

And I'm unable to submit a request.

Thanks, sfleschute, members of the DS PTSD group have been notified to be careful about accepting friend requests right now. As SunCloud says, some of the members in our group are in a fragile state right now in their trauma recovery. It would be helpful and supportive then, for them to receive a brief reassuring DS email inviting them to reopen their account.

Just a question: as I tried to post this reply today, I got that "Error 503 Backend fetch failed" message that's become common in working on DS lately. What is that and is there a fix in the works for that, too? Thanks.

I'm wondering if these 2 things are linked...… Sometimes I can't get onto the site now and quite often I can't add a comment...

I have to try several times??

2nd attempt to reply.

hi, I've said several times but no one appears to be listening.

503 usually occur when either - someone is working on a site doing maintenance or if the server is overwhelmed.

Seeing as 503s and difficulty in logging in started BEFORE we were reporting these hijacked accounts I suspect it's that the server is too busy processing the hackers activity to allow members on.

It would be nice if DS would confirm but it's always "we can't share with you".

Seeing as the hacking / hijacking is still going on I don't see this ending well.

Thank you for your explanation, I agree, I do not see this ending well.

I would really like an answer to my question - are DS contacting the people whose accounts are being closed.

It would also be nice to be assured that DS are working on fixing the the root cause of the hijacking because I don't think you will catch up with a bots rate of converting accounts.

And perhaps someone could post on the DS Members' board?

I'm seeing accounts which posted in July 2018 now being taken over so it's not just the really old ones.

I hope you get an answer to your question too.. Sadly, I either don't think you'll get one or it will be awhile before you do. lack of communication and standardized responses lead me to think the former rather than the latter.