October 25 marked the grand opening of Española’s new food cooperative, but a public forum of the co-op’s online market hit a snag as spam flooded its bulletin board over the past two weeks.
The Española Community Market was developed to be an online source of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables where people can buy items like organic honey, gluten-free quinoa flour and mung beans. And the organization’s online forum was meant to be a place for discussion for users, but spam began popping up Oct. 29.
Some of the posts include advertisements for kitchen cabinets written in broken English or loans for people with no credit. Others include invitations from Russian and other adult or pornographic sites like “free mature personals tennessee” and “amateur sex chat rooms free.”
“That is not the way to attract customers,” Market Vice President Nancy Sharp said.
She said Monday she was unaware of the postings.
“This is certainly a concern to us,” she said.
Sharp said it is definitely an issue that she would like the Board to bring up during Tuesday’s meeting, and that the organization may have to take down the website until something can be done about it.
The organization uses software called phpBB, which is a free, open-source bulletin board to host its online forum, Market President Melissa Salazar said.
Sharp said the organization may have to switch to a proprietary program to ensure security of the forum.
Salazar said she and her volunteer web designer had been going in and trying to take down the spam messages one by one, but the task became overwhelming.
“We made a mistake,” Salazar said. “The online market has been our main focus.”
She said the volunteer-based organization used a the free software to allow everyone to post comments or questions; otherwise, the forum would have to be password-protected, which she said may discourage some users.
Salazar said they’ll take down the forum for the time being, and it was removed from the site as of Tuesday. The organization’s online market, which is password-protected, will not be affected, she said.
“The spam had nothing to with us,” she said. “We’re not promoting it.”
Salazar did not return a subsequent call for comment on the security of the market’s online purchases considering the forum had been infiltrated by spam postings.
The Market is currently located at the old Española Valley Chamber of Commerce building, which is on land owned by the city located at 710 Paseo de Oñate. Organizers are in the process of renovating the building into a full-fledged market to complement the online market.
The Chamber is renting the property to the Market for $4,500 for the year, the City Council-approved lease agreement states.