Who spams here?

[newosdeveloper2021]

like what are the spam links like? why do they even do it? very weird thing to do in 2021..

[bzt]

Who spams here?

Most notably robots, script-kiddies, sometimes clicking-farms.

like what are the spam links like? why do they even do it? very weird thing to do in 2021..

When you'll see a bunch of posts suddenly appearing about selling you cheap vaccine or hacked netflix accounts, you'll know how a spam looks like. Thankfully the moderators are purging those pretty quickly, that's why you can see any right now.

Cheers,
bzt

[thepowersgang]

(I'll move this topic to "About this site" where it should be)

We also have auto-moderation for new user posts/topics, so non-moderators don't see most of the spam (sometimes there's accounts that post a reasonable initial post, then spam - or were created before the moderation requirement was added).

[Abramoluna1]

I still do no understand why anyone would choose to spend their valuable time spamming rather than doing work that matters and initiate growth. They are just pathetic.

[eekee]

I still do no understand why anyone would choose to spend their valuable time spamming rather than doing work that matters and initiate growth. They are just pathetic.

For money. Sometimes, in some parts of the world, it's the only job they can get. :/

[chase]

We even had what seemed like a small DDOS attack this week where a bunch of ip address were hitting the front page of the wiki as fast as possible.

[rnd0]

On a related note, I think my account was axed because of anti-spam measures. I'm assuming because I'm a (former) lurker?

Good thing I was able to get my acct name and email back!

[nexos]

On a related note, I think my account was axed because of anti-spam measures. I'm assuming because I'm a (former) lurker?

I don't think so, as the site typically doesn't ban lurkers AFAIK. There was a whole thread about that a while back.

[klange]

On a related note, I think my account was axed because of anti-spam measures. I'm assuming because I'm a (former) lurker?

I don't think so, as the site typically doesn't ban lurkers AFAIK. There was a whole thread about that a while back.

chase deleted all accounts with zero posts a few weeks ago.

[rnd0]

On a related note, I think my account was axed because of anti-spam measures. I'm assuming because I'm a (former) lurker?

I don't think so, as the site typically doesn't ban lurkers AFAIK. There was a whole thread about that a while back.

chase deleted all accounts with zero posts a few weeks ago.

I assumed it was something like that, no worries.

[BigBuda]

chase deleted all accounts with zero posts a few weeks ago.

I confess I don't really know by heart the whole site policy in that regard, but I don't think that zero post accounts are what we should be worried about. I have a feeling most people who create accounts here and don't post anything either didn't yet felt the need to do so, or just want to browse the forums and be able to follow which posts are new and which aren't since their last visit.
However, I have noticed a great deal of spam accounts, which can easily be spotted by their signatures. Now that's sad. But spammers will usually immediately try to post something (and since this site only allows free posting after the first approved post, it ends up being a non-problem as spammers can be identified and dealt with easily that way).

[chase]

You'd think the zero post accounts weren't ones to worry about but I changed the captcha questions and it stopped (for now) new spam accounts but apparently spammers do create a bunch of accounts proactively and just sit on them for a long time until they want to spam something. Regular users weren't seeing it because we don't auto-approve based on account age but the few mods were having to deal with pages and pages of user 1st posts (since all user 1st posts require approval) and 99% of them were spam.

I looked for ways to detect the lurkers vs the future spammers and it just wasn't possible to do reliably. I figure lurkers can recreate accounts since I didn't ban emails/names/ips, just deleted.

If you're a lurker, sorry about that.

[BigBuda]

You'd think the zero post accounts weren't ones to worry about but I changed the captcha questions and it stopped (for now) new spam accounts but apparently spammers do create a bunch of accounts proactively and just sit on them for a long time until they want to spam something. Regular users weren't seeing it because we don't auto-approve based on account age but the few mods were having to deal with pages and pages of user 1st posts (since all user 1st posts require approval) and 99% of them were spam.

I looked for ways to detect the lurkers vs the future spammers and it just wasn't possible to do reliably. I figure lurkers can recreate accounts since I didn't ban emails/names/ips, just deleted.

If you're a lurker, sorry about that.

Isn't there a way to tell them apart by using the visit logs, for example? Or last login?

[chase]

No, last-login wasn't always a reliable predictor. Maybe if there was a time spent on site metric I could have used that but then again if there was then spammers would probably learned to drive up that stat.