We're always refining the process used to identify spam and illegitimate inquiries (inquiries that violate Wyzant terms of use or academic honesty policies) more efficiently. Part of improving how Wyzant prevents spam from reaching tutors is by asking that any message that might not be a valid request be marked as spam.
We've included the list below to help empower users of the site to better recognize common traits in spam/illegitimate requests:
A message might be illegitimate if it...
- includes encoded or spelled-out contact information.
- Examples:
- "Plea3e 1 ca2ll th64e numb6er 6I'm3 inclu6ding5 here"
- "Please call three 1 two, 6 four six 63 sixfive"
- "My email is Support at Wyzant dot com"
- Examples:
- includes an attachment with contact information.
- includes a request for "total cost of tutoring for 1 month."
- mentions that a tutor arranges lessons with a "caregiver."
- does not include a specific, tutoring-relevant request.
- asks tutors accept payment outside of Wyzant.
- asks tutors to wire money or send a check back to the "student" or a third party.
- requests a tutor to send identifying information outside of Wyzant.
- advertises "work from home" jobs, or asks tutors to take part in surveys, quizzes, or lotteries.
- contains no information relevant to tutoring.
- contains misspellings or poor punctuation, followed by a link the tutor is asked to click.
In any case that a tutor is concerned they have received a spam message:
- Do NOT click any links within the message
- Do NOT provide identifying information
- Do NOT reply to the message
Instead, users should flag the message by clicking the Mark as Spam button at the bottom of the new message thread. If the possible spam message is in a thread a tutor in which has previously replied to, they should contact Customer Support (as the Mark as Spam button is only available for initial messages with no replies).
It is important to note that when a tutor reports a message as possible spam, their response time is NOT affected.
When a message is reported as spam to Wyzant, the related account(s) are investigated by our team. Steps may be taken to temporarily block the account's correspondence with other users until the issue can be resolved. DO NOT REPLY TO A MESSAGE IF YOU BELIEVE IT IS ILLEGITIMATE.
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