New "Potential Spammer" Alert

Dalpocha is like a weed that keeps re-appearing but we have plenty of weed killer

M5Rick wrote

Dalpocha is like a weed that keeps re-appearing but we have plenty of weed killer

Next time I'm gonna merge one of their spam posts with either this 2009 thread or this 2011 thread.

Artemis wrote

Next time I'm gonna merge one of their spam posts with either this 2009 thread or this 2011 thread.

That'll make his day

M5Rick wrote

That'll make his day

Let's talk about Zombies [#155]

Artemis wrote

Let's talk about Zombies [#155]

They try, but can't even string a poster name together instead jumbling up the letters, no A-Level English there

M5Rick wrote

They try, but can't even string a poster name together instead jumbling up the letters, no A-Level English there

Those account names are auto-generated: spam bots - only limited human intervention.

Poor chaps, each time they check back the Sports Lounge their previous eggs are gone as a result of a few mouse-clicks.

Artemis wrote

Those account names are auto-generated: spam bots - only limited human intervention.

Poor chaps, each time they check back the Sports Lounge their previous eggs are gone as a result of a few mouse-clicks.

Sick chaps

It's a real pain in the ass that you have to wait 30 seconds between spam reports. Just saying.....

It was quiet in the Sports Forum for a while. They're rapid fire again around the 4:00 am eastern time.

I usually get several of the Korean spammers most nights starting around 6pm my time. I’m happy to do my part to help to eliminate them from our beloved Bimmerpost.

cmyx6go wrote

It's a real pain in the ass that you have to wait 30 seconds between spam reports. Just saying.....

The forced delay is annoying indeed. Yet, they might care you stay(notice the shooter's articulation: he's covering his opponents with words no less than with shells).

This is the second one today using an existing account to push the Tesla referral:
Tesla Referral Link (paying $500)

Existing member hasn't posted since 1/1/22 and then the spam one. There was another one earlier today but it looks like it was already taken down.

Esteban wrote

I usually get several of the Korean spammers most nights starting around 6pm my time. I’m happy to do my part to help to eliminate them from our beloved Bimmerpost.

Looks like they gave up a couple of days ago. I expect them to return someday.

All waves of bot posts were systematically merged, all contents subsequently removed. It only took a couple of mouse-clicks to regularly sanitize. Without these operations the targeted sections would have become disrupted by many nonsense threads.

All those bot efforts were to no avail. Only footprint remaining: hundreds of banned accounts and logged IPs.

Artemis wrote

Looks like they gave up a couple of days ago. I expect them to return someday.

If they do, you have us to help corral them.

I think this has been a great tool allowing us to help the fight against spam, but I have seen 3 long time members posts/threads erroneously marked as spam in the past week. I'm honestly not sure if these were mistakes or someone screwing around. In one case, the subject line of the thread easily could have been misinterpreted as spam but I have no idea why the others were flagged.

Please look at the members post count and join date before flagging as spam.

Thank you.

cmyx6go wrote

I think this has been a great tool allowing us to help the fight against spam, but I have seen 3 long time members posts/threads erroneously marked as spam in the past week. I'm honestly not sure if these were mistakes or someone screwing around. In one case, the subject line of the thread easily could have been misinterpreted as spam but I have no idea why the others were flagged.

Please look at the members post count and join date before flagging as spam.

And what about this? Shouldn't spams be identified by the message content (subject line included)? Also, reporting should be a way to attract a moderator's attention only and voting is your chance to disagree (and save a spammer you fail to recognize ). I recall Artemis threatened to punish for false reporting somewhere around here.

By the way, you have a spammer in OT: https://f20.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2098055. A spam link is pending there and it will return explicitly "patterned" for your ultimate convenience: easy to recognize at a glance!

cmyx6go wrote

Please look at the members post count and join date before flagging as spam.

Bad idea, because as you pointed out there are long-silent members with lots of legitimate posts that have had their old accounts hijacked and used by spammers.

The crowd-sourced voting system seems to be the best compromise.

My suggestion that all of the Universal Forums (high value for SEO spam because of all the different web URLs for the same message content) require a user to login would stop a lot of the SEO spam, since the posts would not be visible to search engines.....

vreihen16 wrote

My suggestion that all of the Universal Forums (high value for SEO spam because of all the different web URLs for the same message content) require a user to login would stop a lot of the SEO spam, since the posts would not be visible to search engines.....

And me!

vreihen16 wrote

Bad idea, because as you pointed out there are long-silent members with lots of legitimate posts that have had their old accounts hijacked and used by spammers.

The crowd-sourced voting system seems to be the best compromise.

My suggestion that all of the Universal Forums (high value for SEO spam because of all the different web URLs for the same message content) require a user to login would stop a lot of the SEO spam, since the posts would not be visible to search engines.....

I'm not saying that the join date and post counts should be the only thing you look at, it should be taken into consideration. The majority of spam I see are the new users with no posts. With the exception of Nazali's thread that had the title in Klingon, I have no idea why the recent threads were marked as spam, the message content was fine. Like I said, not sure if it was a mistake or someone screwing around.

vreihen16 wrote

Bad idea, because as you pointed out there are long-silent members with lots of legitimate posts that have had their old accounts hijacked and used by spammers.

The crowd-sourced voting system seems to be the best compromise.

My suggestion that all of the Universal Forums (high value for SEO spam because of all the different web URLs for the same message content) require a user to login would stop a lot of the SEO spam, since the posts would not be visible to search engines.....

cmyx6go wrote

I'm not saying that the join date and post counts should be the only thing you look at, it should be taken into consideration. The majority of spam I see are the new users with no posts. With the exception of Nazali's thread that had the title in Klingon, I have no idea why the recent threads were marked as spam, the message content was fine. Like I said, not sure if it was a mistake or someone screwing around.

This was one of the threads marked as spam.

Miami Grand Prix parking

No one wrote

you have a spammer in OT: https://f20.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2098055.

It's the report time. The last who votes is a fool!

Lately Bimmerpost encounters spam traffic from spam bots 'nesting' spam URLs with this technique:

• a spam bot creates a dummy post featuring a bot-generated banal ChatGPT comment (related to the topic in order to fake relevance);
• a spam URL is hidden inside the post (only physically discernible when you click the QUOTE button, or also the EDIT button for moderators and admins).

If you spot a hidden spam URL when replying to a spam bot comment (or simply by clicking QUOTE to check a suspiciously banal comment), please report the spam bot by clicking the warning triangle on the left (marking the comment as "spam").

Below: banal comment starting with "hii", hiding a "storysaver" spam URL, from a recent Bimmerpost account with a low post-count.

Tip to other mods and admins: perform a search on the spam URL (in this case for example "storysaver") and anomalies (such as "hii" as search string (cleared in the meantime)), to track down similar spam comments. Call up, merge and subsequently hard-delete all comments posted by the spam bot.





Example: "hii" + banal bot-generated comments (featuring hidden spam URLs) in different threads posted within a brief period of time + from a recent Bimmerpost account with a low post-count.

Saw him in the LOL Pic thread, thought it looked suspicious. Noticed someone gave him a rep point. lol

Good looking out, Artemis.