OK, what's with the idiot spammer(s)?

by **BLANDCorporatio** » Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:06 pm

Gosh that was a long set-up.

Nah, I kid. Anyway, it's Oct. 13th, and we have

Congratulations to: Indeladax (40), kamakadazio (28), grercelet (26), 10electrogenev (26), NULAACAWS (26), Htphcvzu (26), opporgegluromum (25), Semssheerne (24), coatcegappy (24), Acaceexensamn (22), RedRhync (22), Vabsheestyeresy (22)

(Further samples will be appended to this message)

EDIT: October 15th

Congratulations to: Tefeattark (44), 06KHpaulene (44), Runnime (42), Osciscapy (26), twetlydibetease (26), Peerralia (26), Inwaggiva (26), Fnvfhqsu (25), Orerlyfew (25), piellaNup (24), opporgegluromum (23), Memobibrabe (23), grercelet (22), WeadaMigFoede (22), 5groupelectror (22)

Skipped a day because off-line. Well whatever. So, I have some data, and I'll sometime later try and see what names crop up on HBLs more than once. Obviously Clagopep and opporgegluromum do, but my guess is that was just a bit of joking on their part or something. Nothing nefarious about their accounts that I can detect.

Nothing nefarious about changing the Birthday data in the profile either, at that. Just curious as to whether that thing happens.

by **drachefly** » Fri Oct 14, 2011 4:46 pm

3 spam posts in a row in the topic about idiot spammers. Is that ironic? I feel like it ought to be, but I think it's just stupid.

by **BLANDCorporatio** » Sun Oct 16, 2011 6:15 am

Ok, having collected what I'll deem enough data, here's a list of people who have had their birthdays in the period that I was recording the HBList from the forum.

(Bold names are people who have had more than one birthday; one day was sampled twice and I was careful to remove duplicates resulting from that)

Spoiler: show

So what does this prove? Well, making allowance for some fun had by Clagopep and opporgegluromum, it appears that yes some people do change the birthday in their profile, and my hunch seems correct.

That in itself is not nefarious. For example, Clagopep has 0 posts and nothing in their profile that can be construed as spam. OTOH, Avespam and HeineeBradia have turned out to be spammers, and they don't appear as having several birthdays.

That said, let's look at the profiles of the bolded names.

Spoiler: show

by **Balerion** » Sun Nov 27, 2011 2:40 pm

I think they need to do a clean sweep of all the sleeper accounts. Just make another captcha for any user logging in that has not been re-verified. For all the legit accounts, they just have to deal with a captcha one more time, and that's it, they just log in as usual after that. All the spam accounts will 1)not be ready to deal with that page in their bot script and 2) be unable to finish their login, keeping them from posting spam again. Cause I think its not a problem of new accounts signing up at this point, but old ones not being cleared out (correct me if I am wrong on that).

by **BLANDCorporatio** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 5:24 pm

Balerion wrote:all the sleeper accounts

The majority of registered users that are not Tools, and have not also been kicked out as spammers, have 0 posts to their name. To my paranoid nature, this is highly suspicious. You don't just register on a forum because it's there, you register because on the spur of the moment you have something urgent to say, and registration is a necessary condition to say it. Or, you register for nefarious goals.

That said, I wouldn't like a rules system based on paranoia, and until actually caught spamming, any account that I might view as "suspicious" are completely legit.

by **Balerion** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 7:44 pm

oh, certainly. I guess sleeper account could get misinterpreted

. But all i meant was go into the database and add a new column for a boolean "is_verified", defaulting them all to false. Then, any account that hasn't been verified yet has to go through the captcha next time they log on. After that, they are verified, and can log in as normal forever more. it doesn't interfere with the legit accounts at all, but will prevent the spam bots from being able to activate (both by adding a step they don't have in their script, and by giving them a captcha they (hopefully) can't crack).

by **drachefly** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 12:09 am

I remember once signing up for a forum because I wanted to say something brilliant, and by the time I'd registered, someone else had said it. Another time, I thought again just before posting (Q: How do we know Sirlin isn't an astronomer? A: He didn't balance Street Fighter by scaling all of the characters' attacks so they were statistically tied in fights with Vega)

by **WaterMonkey314** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:06 am

I've signed up for forums before just so they'd save which threads I'd read, so there are reasons why a legitimate user would have 0 posts.

If it's not too hard to implement this, though, it might do some good.

by **Thunder** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 2:15 pm

tuche spammers touche

by **Ptharien's Flame** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 5:52 am

The above post at time of writing is a case in point.

by **BLANDCorporatio** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 5:11 pm

At the moment there is a post over in the "Your Art" urging us to go to ***********.com and once there subscribe so as to receive postage (greeting cards and such) from Russia, Ukraine or Belarus.

I can't say I studied their website in detail; didn't load it, because I don't want even MORE malware on my machine and I'm not that el33t to surf with impunity in all corners of the web. Searched "around it" as it were, it's not a famous malware distribution center. But, my paranoid nature struck again, and for some reason, I suspect there's something not quite on the up and up with this.

Though to be honest, I can't say now what makes me think this or why.

So yeah, the purpose of this post is to describe a very peculiar kind of scam (it has NOTHING to do with ********.com which I AM NOT accusing of anything) and urge you to do the same. I trust the subject of surreal scams is interesting enough.

And the scam that I'm about to relate is so famous in my part of the world, that to fall to it now is synonymous with needing to win a Darwin award.

"We look to buy old german, Singer sewing machines. 40000EURO. We request seriousness" the announcement would go. Now, it's not unlikely actually that a Singer sewing machine may be lying in my attic somewhere. Though old- about pre-WW2 or so-, and not manufactured anymore (I think), they are not that rare yet. And certainly not worth 40000EUR. This is alarm bell one.

So the mark gives the call, wishing to sell the Singer. Excellent says the fella on the other side, can you check whether there's a serial number in such and such location? The mark checks and there is (these are industrial made machines, all alike). So what's the serial number the con asks, and whatever the mark responds, it's a-ok and worth buying. So the con says excellent, I'll be able to reach you in a week or so.

After a day or two, the con calls the mark again. Apparently there's some other person, who the con claims not to be able to contact directly for some reason, who also has a Singer machine. So could you check the serial number on that machine, and if it's so and so buy that as well for whatever that person asks- it won't be much; don't tell them the real value of the piece- and when I'll get to you I'll buy them both for 80000EUR?

The mark is supposed to say sure! And they contact this other person who's old or isolated or whatever might look like a plausible reason for not having a phone. And they are willing of course to part with the sewing machine, but for no less than say, ooh, 3000EUR (or whatever sum the mark is likely to be able to part with). Sure thing the mark would say! After all in a few days the fella on the phone will buy that machine for 40000EUR, which gives 36000EUR profit!

Do you think the fella on the phone shows up when the week is up?

Spoiler: show

Beats Nigerian princes for aesthetics, don't you think?

by **drachefly** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:02 am

Spamming the 'Xin's mom' thread? Not classy, bidsiofe.

by **drachefly** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 12:42 pm

Spaminators, please?

Is it really so hard to assign additional moderators and instruct them to do NOTHING except delete obvious spam? I would trust any of the regulars on this.

by **Kaed** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:33 pm

Username:
twetlydibetease
Location:
Middle East
Age:
27
Occupation:
perfect skin capsules
Interests:
At rare moments in history, by a series of payday loans no credit check accidents never to be repeated, arise flower societies in which the cult of happiness is paramount, hedonistic, mindless, intent upon the glorious physical instant.

Jesus Christ, there is no way people like this are not bots.

I agree, we need spaminators, and not just that, but some people to go through the members and clear out the glaringly obvious bots. Yes, there are a lot of them. In fact, over 9000 (!!) members exist on this forum, and maybe... a hundred or so actually do stuff.

CLEAN UP.

by **SteveMB** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:24 pm

Kaed wrote:I agree, we need spaminators, and not just that, but some people to go through the members and clear out the glaringly obvious bots. Yes, there are a lot of them. In fact, over 9000 (!!) members exist on this forum, and maybe... a hundred or so actually do stuff.

CLEAN UP.

A large number of the "members" are banned spambots -- a mod-level banning doesn't actually remove the account.

I've been cleaning up the accumulation of spam as I find time, but I haven't been able to make a real dent in the amount that built up last weekend (while I was off the Net) with mod-level tools (i.e. finding each spam message, opening it, and individually deleting it) while trying to stem the ongoing flood.

by **drachefly** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:39 pm

Would having ten eager assistants help?

by **Kaed** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:11 pm

drachefly wrote:Would having ten eager assistants help?

Seconded! My dwarf fortress thread just got spammed D:

by **SteveMB** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 2:03 pm

drachefly wrote:Spaminators, please?

Is it really so hard to assign additional moderators and instruct them to do NOTHING except delete obvious spam?

The frustrating thing is the 99.9% of it is the type of obvious spam that would be blocked by the most rudimentary level of filtering (e.g. auto-reject any user's first post if it contains a hyperlink, an image, or a non-Roman-alphabet character). Since we have no filtering here, and the site has been up long enough to be spotted as an easy high-traffic target, the situation is only going to get worse until this is corrected.

by **drachefly** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:18 pm

I'd amend that to off-site links. If someone wants to cite Erfworld, I say we let them...

by **SteveMB** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:35 pm

drachefly wrote:I'd amend that to off-site links. If someone wants to cite Erfworld, I say we let them...

I don't know offhand if making that distinction would make the filter more complicated; if so, it's probably not worth the trouble.

(We had another wave of spambots, each dropping bigger loads than ever. I've banned them and PMed the admin to delete the accounts -- cleaning up the mess one post at a time with mod-level access is more than I have time for at the moment.

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