But we have to be fair. The way GOG is handling problems usually is breaking everything. So I am really glad that they did not block chat for everyone to prevent further unwanted spam (uh...spam...what do I do? Help ... OMG). GOG decisions lately really would be funny if they weren't so sad ...

Didn't you notice? They already have. Lately tried to contact Judas?

That's why we should rather say: Please don't do anything!

I for one think the new settings work great.

"Anyone" was the default setting with the chat since the chat existed (even back in the PM days from what I recall). So, if I have the setting to "Anyone", did I set it that way or am I using the default? And do you change the users that are using the default setting or not?

Obviously and unfortunately they cannot. Otherwise they would have ... a long time ago.

At least it wasn't a website change that 'fixed' one thing and broke three others.

Personally, I was getting spam so rarely that I consider it a non-issue. Maybe others are getting hit with it daily but my own settings have been set to receive everything anyone tries to send and this last round of one or two spam messages was the first time in a very long time. I think it took as much time to change my setting back to "anyone" as it did to delete the spam.

------

After plowing through old conversations I see that about 2/3 of the currently active members I have spoken with in the past, now I can't contact them via chat. Not that we have long-term ongoing conversations, mind you, but there was the occasional "How's it going?"

Oh well. Hopefully people will see this thread and be reminded to take a look at the setting.

Just add a flag the first time the setting is changed (meaning "not default setting anmore") and you are done.
Anyway - the "solution" is a joke. You have spam? You delete it - simple as that. Who cares?

Of course. But did the current settings already have such a flag or not? If it did, then they would have probably used it. If it didn't, then they (obviously) couldn't have used it.

Maybe next step will be to block support contact as well ... if they aren't willing to be your friend ;) But since support basically is useless and lying to you this would not hurt me much tbh.

No... the receiver still has the "cost" of noticing and having to delete the message, which after a small threshhold renders the PM function unuseable.
The correct way is: increase the cost for the spammer.

Cost can be various ressources like: money, time, computer ressources, human interaction etc.

Also true but correct me if I am wrong: afaik GOG is restructuring nearly everything atm here on GOG. Why don't they just take a little step and add such a flag (it's not much work to do so) and while they're on it they could as well see if they can actually fix the security problem in general. This "block" is nothing more than a patch orr a workaround but not a real solution - it only shows that the security here on GOG is virtually non existant as we all know. Multiple accounts are created everyday and people are scamming an spamming (interesting that GOG only takes interest in the latter) and GOG knows this for quite a while. But if this all should be too much work and would be too time consuming there would be a simple solution. Send ot a mail BEFORE doing such things - like they did with the two step login so this way at least I would have KNOWN that GOG has changed my privacy settings.

The funny shit is.
What
does
prevent
a
spammer
sending
a
friend
request
first?

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

That's actually a very good point I can't believe no one thought of this already!
Now we're going to be spammed with friend requests instead...

Y'know, I didn't think of that. I remember back when Kleetus was doing this and would spam peoples' notifications (back when they actually worked) by sending them a request and re-sending it every time the request was denied. He eventually stopped doing it because either they fixed it so that he couldn't re-send after being blocked or he got temp-banned for it, no clue which, but if the spammers put some minimal effort into this, well...