fatpigeon

Happy International Women's Day to my female supporters!
           May your style and talents shine more brightly than Wattpad's blindingly white new look, although hopefully not looking like it's half finished like this clusterf*ck!

@Thin-Tin-Missy So sorry for my very late reply! Yes you are right, I've noticed the messages in my email spam from WP but when I visit the site, the post has been removed. This is probably WP's own bots cleaning up the evidence. Of course, the scammers themselves don't care about that. They are using WP's notification system to send out their payload actually into our PERSONAL EMAIL INBOX. 
          
          It's especially important therefore to NOT click the scammers' link (it redirects to a porn site). I NEVER click any hotlink in an email. It is so simple to make a fake email and make it appear to come from WP or a bank.
          
          Legally, getting into email accounts counts as a personal breach of privacy, and WP staff who follow me should consider reporting it to the Canadian privacy commission, if they haven't done it already. Otherwise, the fines are pretty big.
          
          https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-breaches/respond-to-a-privacy-breach-at-your-business/gd_pb_201810/
          
          For we humble users, apart from clicking random links, we need to stop releasing personal data online. Check out this sim swap scam doing the rounds on social media.
          
          https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-breaches/respond-to-a-privacy-breach-at-your-business/gd_pb_201810/
          
          Continue to try to report scammers -- stay safe.

@geek342 @suvachana
          
          That's okay. Just don't click the link. Ideally, don't even open the email. Most email clients or email accounts have a VIEW SOURCE facility, which we can click, or right-click to view the email contents without opening it. I cannot explain how to do this as there are dozens of different platforms and email interfaces but search your settings or help file to find it.
          
          It's a clever scam because it puts the message in someone's story comment box but also tags another WP user.
          For example, on one of my chapters (ironically about international hackers)
          
          Premium-4cvCqxh left the following comment on PUP #9 ~ HACKERS pt 2 - how do they do that crap?:
          
          @emma_denatale
          
          Congratulations!
          You have won WattPad™ Premium Access...
          
          This way they get to send the scam to me and 
          @emma_denatale
          
          I've received about 15 of these in my inbox but for others it was 75 or more.
          
          The last one I got changed the link address to 
          www.wattpad.online. This is an official WP domain but it has some HTTPS flaws and some third-party embeds don't look right to me.

Okay, SCAM ALERT!
          Thousands of WP stories have been attacked by a spam bot that is 
          pretending to be WP admin. It posts on our story chapters in the comments section. It announces 'Congratulations!
          You have won WattPad™ Premium Access' and encloses a link to a malware download. WP is deleting them where it can but they will still end up in our email inboxes because the WP email system is automatic. When I checked the message source it's being sent by legitimate wattpad email servers. We should never click hotlinks in an email anyway but especially not this one.

Happy new year to my supporters. Keep on writing.

Happy holidays to my supporters and online  buddies . Here some links that point out good browsers and the ones with spyware and other apps we can't trust.
          
          Spyware browsers
          https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/browsers.html
          
          https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/
          Search Engines
          Video Games
          Media Players
           & others with spyware. Have fun and stay safe. Hope to see ya next year.

WP are to scrap our private chapters. Another useful writer's tool gone. We could publish exclusively to our followers before and get vital feedback before we published --  but that probably restricts Ad coverage (and revenue) so it's just gone. 
          They also seem to want to publish our emails to every Tom Dick and Hacker too:
          
          Hey Wattpadders!
          
          Are you getting broadcast notifications in your Notifications feed? This is a result of recent change to resolve a technical issue.
          
          Due to the very high volume of email we generate for broadcast email notifications, we are having technical issues with several major providers. This volume has also reduced our ability to solve delays on all email notifications.
          
          As a means of correcting this problem our team is redirecting broadcast notifications from email to your notifications feed. Delivering those messages via the notifications tab instead of by email means many more of your followers will see these messages.
          
          We aim to give you the best reading and writing experience possible so if you do experience any issues on the app please let us know as your help and cooperation are always greatly appreciated!
          
          Thank you,
          
          The Wattpad Team
           
          This is probably avoided if you don't use proprietary email providers like hotmail or Gmail. Try Mailfence or tutanota.

So the clubs will be destroyed on September 1, replaced by the new system previously used on the PokemonGo forums. This will make users safer buy being able to track and digitally fingerprint the device of every Wattpadder who uses the system, thereby knowing exactly who the bad guys are. Great for security, bad for privacy. But then isn't it always the way? A big thanks for the pleasure we all got from the old clubs.

Not sure if WP is playing a joke on me but I have been on 199 followers for about a year. 
          
          OK, you guys know I don't care about numbers -- it's just a trick to engage us to waste more time and view more ads -- but when I get a new follower and think I've hit 200, one seems to drop out. It's happened about a dozen times. 
          
          Sometimes when I contact them they say they didn't unfollow me and refollow me again. Maybe this is just coincidence. 
          
          This isn't a rant about not having followers -- it would take too much of my life to manage thousands and I'm perfectly happy with the quality followers I have and don't want quantity. Still, is 200 some kind of magic number? Is it part of the WP algorithm? Who knows?
          
          Let's see. If someone (maybe one of your writer friends) wants to follow me and that follow (or another) isn't deleted I'll follow them back. But they MUST have some work. Readers are fine but I want a writer for my 200th and I'll crit their first chapter. Of course that may put them off but you know it'll be a true crit. :~)

Have published a chapter on fixing our FACEBOOK privacy settings here:
          https://www.wattpad.com/553909621-my-new-status-bar-fix-your-facebook-privacy
          
          It wasn't displaying earlier so if you can't see it there's a cut down version on the  Cafe's safety online thread
          https://www.wattpad.com/forums/discussion/901578/1300/25/Staying+Safe+Online