I am having the same problem.  I was trying to put together a group for SM cath and whispered a few priests of the /who list to see if they would like to come, maybe like 8 or 9, and got auto banned.  I understand the need to cut down on spammers but the cutoff seems a bit extreme.  If we are not able to use the /who list to put together a group that makes finding groups much more difficult