"Weird ad"?
So exactly the same as good ol' babaji, I'm guessing.
Oops I accidentally flagged TOZ's post 'just wanted to try the flagging system'. Sorry about that!
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More spammers, this time seemingly offering Australian diplomas.
Just a minor note here, they can be contacted at QQ.com.
Yes. Like crying. That's what they put in their spam.
I have no words.
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More spammers, this time seemingly offering Australian diplomas.
Just a minor note here, they can be contacted at QQ.com.
Yes. Like crying. That's what they put in their spam.
I have no words.
I have words...but the content filter won't let me post them! :P
Enemy scouts sighted in General Discussion... raise Spam Attack Alert Status to YELLOW.
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So how about filtering out korean signs?
I know that for chinese signs there are several codes used, korean is probably the same. Should be easy to analyze too.
Apply some script that then filters out those posts containing such script.As i was informed, posting in languages other than english is not allowed anyway and for rpg purposes enough other languages are there.
Filtering out Korean symbols would turn off legitinate users in Korea (even if they are following the rules and posting in English), but would not stop the spammers -- after at most a hiccup in spamming, they would simply switch character sets and continue their spam -- reportedly, they hae already posted some messages with all Roman symbols, although those might have been separate limited instances of spam.
To be effective, any anti-spam measure is going to have to hit these spammerc more specifically (for instance, identifying them and passing that information onto the police that hae jurisdiction where the spammers are based, if they live in country that doesn't actually condone that kind of thing), or more generally (for instance, requiring moderation of the 1st 2 or 3 posts of all new users).
Wasn't the magic specialist speaking in English?
Has implementing captchas already been tried?
Has implementing captchas already been tried?Human spammers - captchas would barely slow them down, while inconveniencing legitimate users.
That's a fair point.
The spammers strike me as bots.
I love whatever it is you're doing...in many cases this evening they've vanished before I could flag 'em.
Got two in Off-Topic though.
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Has implementing captchas already been tried?Human spammers - captchas would barely slow them down, while inconveniencing legitimate users.That's a fair point.
The spammers strike me as bots.
They seem to be certain that we're NOT dealing with bots. Instead, it's some Korean (N or S, we're not sure) center with busy little workers making (probably) pennies a post.
The way these spammers are adapting is a big clue: some of the recent names could pass as real forumites and I've seen a few who even grabbed avatars.
Some of them even try to play us, I've seen one spammer who inserts 'lol' in his/her posts and one who used paizo@paizo(I forget the number)as a screen name. One even put a sig (a poem about Korea & the moon in English!) in the post.
Has implementing captchas already been tried?Human spammers - captchas would barely slow them down, while inconveniencing legitimate users.That's a fair point.
The spammers strike me as bots.
They seem to be certain that we're NOT dealing with bots. Instead, it's some Korean (N or S, we're not sure) center with busy little workers making (probably) pennies a post.
The way these spammers are adapting is a big clue: some of the recent names could pass as real forumites and I've seen a few who even grabbed avatars.
Some of them even try to play us, I've seen one spammer who inserts 'lol' in his/her posts and one who used paizo@paizo(I forget the number)as a screen name. One even put a sig (a poem about Korea & the moon in English!) in the post.
That makes a lot of sense. I've heard of people being hired to mass produce spam.
What is even the purpose of this? They just post the site name over and over and don't even explain what it is. Paizo is an english language site and most of us do not read Korean. I saw someone say they asked a Korean friend about the posts and apparently they do not even make sense.
I can't imagine it's a job that lasts long before everyone is laid off.
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Has implementing captchas already been tried?Human spammers - captchas would barely slow them down, while inconveniencing legitimate users.That's a fair point.
The spammers strike me as bots.
They seem to be certain that we're NOT dealing with bots. Instead, it's some Korean (N or S, we're not sure) center with busy little workers making (probably) pennies a post.
The way these spammers are adapting is a big clue: some of the recent names could pass as real forumites and I've seen a few who even grabbed avatars.
Some of them even try to play us, I've seen one spammer who inserts 'lol' in his/her posts and one who used paizo@paizo(I forget the number)as a screen name. One even put a sig (a poem about Korea & the moon in English!) in the post.
That makes a lot of sense. I've heard of people being hired to mass produce spam.
What is even the purpose of this? They just post the site name over and over and don't even explain what it is. Paizo is an english language site and most of us do not read Korean. I saw someone say they asked a Korean friend about the posts and apparently they do not even make sense.
I can't imagine it's a job that lasts long before everyone is laid off.
Maybe they're just half-assing everything. If they're getting paid by the post, it'd make sense for them to focus more on getting as much spam up as possible than to make the spam believable.
Another set of the diploma mill spam...this time US universities.
I recognized most of them...they even included Wisconsin - Madison, Pitt (twice!), Penn State and Carnegie-Mellon!
As for what they're doing? Apparently, they're trying to get hits from Google to bring the sites they're plugging to the top of Google (and possibly other search engines) searches. Even more annoyingly, they're wasting their time here, because Paizo blocks that type of search.
So all they're really accomplishing is annoying us and making much, MUCH more work for Paizo's poor IT folks.
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Honestly, as a university graduate, I find the spam for fake diplomas to be much more infuriating than any other type of spam.
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Been flagging as much as I can between real work and here.
Hey! a spam flag. Please tell me thats connected to something that does something....
"Weird ad"?
So exactly the same as good ol' babaji, I'm guessing.
Discover the secret to removing spammers with magic love spells!!!
Hey! a spam flag. Please tell me thats connected to something that does something....
Paizo IT has been somewhat cagey about their solutions so as to not tip off the spammers. But since I've started using it to flag spam messages, it seems (anecdotally) that the flagged spam post disappears more quickly and if there is a second spam post by the same user, it goes away too. Of course, that could just be diligent community members flagging and Paizo hammering away.
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We won't be revealing the measures we're putting in place (just leaves us open to more creative people trying to figure it out). And since we're really close to having new tools rolled out, explained that we're totally on it, and a more responsive set of measures in place for the time being, I'll be closing this thread for now.