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In clear cases of bot/spam posts such as this one, when the original posting includes what appears to be personally identifiable information (in this case, a name and postal address), is it good form to redact the supposed PII while awaiting the post being marked for deletion by a sufficiently-privileged moderator (as I, in this case have)?

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  • Editing a post invalidates existing spam flags on it, so better not.
    – muru
    Commented Jan 11, 2018 at 2:11
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    @muru I don't think that's true actually. It didn't happen in this specific case, anyway. The timeline shows 3 spam flags, then DopeGhoti's edit and then another 3 flags and the post was deleted. So the edit didn't invalidate the 1st 3 flags.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Jan 11, 2018 at 9:41
  • @terdon ah, yes. It's rolling back that affects spam flags, not editing. "Rolling back a post to a previous state will revert to the number of flags from that particular revision." meta.stackexchange.com/a/58035/270345 My bad.
    – muru
    Commented Jan 11, 2018 at 9:46

1 Answer 1

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No, as it is not personally identifying information: it is just part of the scam.

Flag it for deletion.

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  • I did indeed mark for moderator attention and it was ultimately deleted. However, while I was confident that the name and postal address was not the poster's PII, it looked reasonable to presume it might be somebody's PII, which is why I took the additional step of redacting. Are you saying that I should not have done so?
    – DopeGhoti
    Commented Jan 10, 2018 at 22:15
  • I wouldn't have bothered. It's a scam; the only victims are people stupid enough to buy it.
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Jan 10, 2018 at 22:21

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