I've received a response from the Goodreads team regarding the ransom scam today. Since my post about the scam has been getting a lot of traction, I believe that it will be fair to share this update.
If you don't know what this is about, you'd better check out the original post, but in short, scammers attack authors with fake 1-star ratings and reviews on Goodreads (a website about books / book-centered social network) and demand ransom to 'fix' those later.
Actually, there is one more update that is worth mentioning. Two authors said on this thread that after the fake reviews and accounts were deleted by Goodreads support, they received threats from the scammers.
But let's return to the subject of Goodreads response. Originally, most of the authors including me didn't get a response when we contacted support, even though they dealt with the fake reviews. However, I got an email from them on 14 January. They apologized for not getting back to me sooner, assured me they deleted the fake accounts and said: "If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let us know."
I took the opportunity to share my concerns and asked them if anything was done to prevent this from happening (nicely, because there are human beings on the receiving end). Honestly, I didn't expect a reply. But today, I got it. They said that they were working with their 'engineering teams to investigate possible solutions to prevent this from happening in the future.'
I really hope this is true! I also hope it will make everyone who has been attacked by scammers feel better and safer. Maybe our experience will help protect others from similar attacks and make Goodreads a bit better. Of course, I don't know if anything will actually change, but I feel it's important to share this update, since I was speaking about the Goodreads staff indifference in my first blogpost, and it seems that I was wrong. We'll see what the future will bring, but hopefully, it will be harder for the scammers and brighter for everyone else.