www.ryankuder.com

I run a social network for the Willow Glen neighborhood in San Jose.  We’ve got just under 500 neighbors who post blogs and events and discuss local issues.  It’s run on the Ning platform with very little customization.  And it’s just one of a bazillion Ning networks.

This morning, I woke up to check in on the network and the entire activity stream was chewed up by some spammer named “VideoAds” who had joined the network overnight and posted a comment on every single members page about some file sharing something or other.  When this happens, each member of my network gets an email notifying them that someone has left them a message.

I was able to ban the member and delete the content, but I’ve still got 500 emails out there advertising this guy’s spam and it’s all coming from my network.  There’s no way this could have been done by hand.  Does this mark the beginning of the Ning bot attacks?  Has anyone else seen anything like this on your network?  And what is Ning’s response?