Not sure what this is about. Maybe OP thinks this is a movie sharing forum?

It is to get you to click on the link so they can infect your computer with a virus. Just flag. DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. The spammers have been using several names. It is not just this name.

I'm up early and flag them as well. I also just flagged one that was advertising art totally unrelated to the thread. Until or unless House wants to police these types of things, I think it's up to the early risers to get rid of them.

Emily responded a week or so ago, when all new people were "Houzz User" that they were working on a better way. So now it's HU and a number. What happened to people giving themselves real (or made up) user names?

That is different from this. This is a phishing operation. They do use names sometimes. It is probably from somewhere overseas, since they show up in the very early morning central time.

This is from Emily on June 22nd.

For the spam users mentioned above - THANK YOU FOR REPORTING. They are removed as soon as we can find them and we do have other tricks up their sleeves to keep them away. Unfortunately, so do they. :) We will win this battle in the long run, however.

I too see them every morning, and flag the posts.

Glad I'm on the west coast and so am not here until 6am(west coast). You guys have already done the cleaning for me. Thanks. :)

As long as they're real people, I'm happy to welcome them ;) I'm marking them spam if it's all about a movie and only has a link

No words, just a link + no comments + no other posts + no pictures saved = spammer.

What does it mean, please, to "flag" a post? Thank you.

Click on the little flag icon at the top right of a post or comment. You can "flag" it as spam, inappropriate, or I just don't like it. The moderators will take a look at the first two and it has been said the the don't like it, just removes it from your view. I haven't used that one. I flag the spam posts.

Unfortunately, I did not sleep well last night. At 4:30 a.m. there were five of them, all about some movie things. Most of the posts used one name. I flagged them all and they quickly went bye-bye. It is irritating that we have to pay big bucks to be here and then stuff like that happens!!!!!!!!

Jim ????? What big bucks????? The site is free.

I'm guessing Houzz let's Jim_1 stay here in exchange for all the biggest deer he can put on ice and send to the Houzz offices. Me, I just send in my little thoughts.

Smiling at you, Jim.

Oh I sure hope I did not get a virus! I clicked on it one day last week or the week before and then thought that it might be a virus and quickly shut my computer down and unplugged the whole thing. Gosh, don't people have better things to do than to reek havoc on other people? What a miserable person that has got to be!

Run your virus scan to be sure, but it's probably just a spam link...no harm done.

@Thistledew

I didn't look too deeply but it appears what they do may go something like this:

1. Entice you with a free recent movie.
2. Make it look like it's right there in front of you on your screen, all ready to play but first...
3. You need to create a "free" account.
4. Because you need to verify you don't live in a country where the movie is prohibited to be shown (or sometimes your age). To do that, all they need is your credit card info... don't worry, you won't be charged.
5. You get charged! Month after month you get charged until you put a stop to it.

If I'm right, you're probably fine as long as you didn't give them credit info.

The virus scan is a good idea though. Just in case.

Thank you so much for advice Chuggerguy! I will run virus scan.

Some times I can't sleep but I've yet to run into them. Just the luck of the draw I suppose. Will keep eyes out, and yep, that would be the one thing I'd flag.

Getting hits on a site earns you money with advertisers. There are other such movie sites. Yes, recent movies are available to watch for free. As I understand it, someone pays for a ticket to go into a movie theatre and video tapes the movie, then up loads it to the movie site.

Ever been to Hawaii? There's a guy on every street corner selling $1 movies and Cd's....new releases.

I appreciate all the effort your putting into flagging these people. Good job!

Hey Emily...here's and EASY one for you.

You can't join the discussion (post) without creating a user name/account.

EVERY site works that way!

Who is running this site anyway...you guys are a bunch of...

And this is the only site I've joined where you don't need a real email address to join.

I understand Georges irritation about this.

Hi George - these usernames with the HU-#### are actual accounts. They are registered users. I also understand the frustration about this. This is a new change due to GDPR, so look for some other product adaptations as time goes on. It can sometimes take some time to make adjustments around changes like this.

Emily...i still don't buy it.

Simply FORCE every account to CREATE user name and DO NOT create automatic random numberd HU accounts.

Those HU accounts LOOK like spammers. They don't want to take the time to create an (named) account. So we can't take them seriously.

And why do you expect us to adapt to all these ridiculous changes? Thy don't make any sense.

Houzz is incredibly unstable. You can join with multiple accounts. There's a HT poster who's on #14 (that we know of). He could easily have more.

Yeah, but they get to count all the spammers as Houzz members in their totals..........

I just signed my husband up on a site he wanted to be on and I HAD to create a unique user name for him. That was Monday.

There's a regular poster at the KT who has had two different names for a long while even prior to all the changes.

There is another ongoing thread for people to document how many of the movie posts we flag. I usually get a couple when I'm up early (East Coast), but this morning I flagged 27 movie posts! Some were HU - with the same long number and others had "names" instead. Many of the movies were repeats. Others caught posts before and after I did. It sure isn't getting any better yet.

I just can't believe that Emily told us to welcome them and that there are real people behind some of these accounts. I think that really makes us look stupid and that we aren't smart enough to know if it is spam or not. I agree all it is is about getting more advertisers because it shows more accounts for Houzz