Most folks on Meetup are totally real, super awesome people. But every now and again, a spammer sneaks into the mix. Which is what happened this weekend.

Eek! What happened?

In the early morning hours, a big bad spammer calling herself 'Marcia' created a ton of Meetup accounts with throw-away email addresses. Then the spam Marcias joined a whole bunch of Meetup Groups and sent some spammy messages through the Meetup Groups' mailing lists. Maybe you got one.

What didn't happen:

The spammers didn't hack into our databases, or anything like that. "Marcia" just sent a whole lot of email.

What's Meetup doing about it?

Meetup has blocked all of the offending 'Marcia' spam accounts, and we've blocked any further registrations from the throw-away email provider's domain.

We're currently sussing out the source of the spam. As of right this minute, we think we've got almost all of it contained. If you catch any more, let us know. We want to make sure we get this totally taken care of.

We're also in the process of rolling out real-time checks against public spam databases for common member to member communication channels, along with heuristic detection to spot spammers at the point of registration. (Woo hoo! That's fancy tech speak for 'We're on it.')

Spam is totally annoying, and we hate it. That's why we've got checks and limits on the communications tools Meetup members use to contact each other. And we'll keep doing everything we can to keep spammers off of the Meetup site and out of your inboxes.

So in the meantime, what can Meetup members and Organizers do?

There's no sure-fire 100% fail-proof way to make sure a spammer never sneaks into a Meetup Group, but here are a couple of things that you can do to deter these sorts of auto-spammers:

Organizers: require some sort of approval before a member can join your Meetup.

You can require new members to tell you more about themselves before they can join your Meetup Group, or you can set it so that all members have to be approved before they can join.

Set your mailing-list messages so that they need Organizer approval to go through, or turn the mailing list off.

Organizers, you can do this under 'Optional Features' in 'Group Settings'.

Adjust your Membership and Communications settings.

Anyone can choose to accept greetings and email contact only from Organizers or just from people who are in the same Meetup Groups you are.

Just log in, go to 'Account', and click on 'Membership and Communications."

If you get anything suspicious or have any questions, let us know at abuse@meetup.com.

We'll be happy to check it out, and take out any big bad spammers you come across.