Mass creation of fake users in TI forum

[ralphb]

In the TI 99/4A development forum (I haven't checked others), there a dozens of users "XXpeddal", who seem to like random posts.

 

I have no idea what they're up to, but it does kind of irritate and spoil the forum.

Ralph

 

[Albert]

Spammers, let me figure out a way to stop this, and once I nuke those accounts, their likes will disappear. Thanks for the heads up.

 

..Al

[ralphb]

Great, thanks!

[Albert]

I've removed all of those users, they were created months ago before I enabled a somewhat ruthless spam service that seems to be blocking 99.9% of these accounts from registering. The "Likes" they left are now removed, although the Like count displayed in the post is not currently accurate. I think these are updated periodically in batches, I'll need to check back later to verify that's happened.

 

If you see anything else like this, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

..Al

[ralphb]

Thanks!

 

I still see them here, though. Does this need some time?

[Albert]

Yes, those accounts are gone, but the information about Likes is cached elsewhere in the database for efficiency's sake. I may need to look to see if there is a task I can run that rebuilds this data. There are nearly 4,000,000 posts in the database, so such a task to rebuild this data will take a while to complete if it's something that isn't handled automatically.

 

..Al

[ralphb]

Alright, sorry for my impatience.

[Albert]

It's alright, I thought I had gotten all these accounts before, but didn't realize there was another batch using that "peddal" username pattern. I'll get it squared away one way or another!

 

..Al

[BillyHW]

What do these spammers hope to accomplish here? I doubt there's any money to be made. What's their angle?

[Albert]

I'm not really sure.

[CPUWIZ]

[carlsson]

I believe they're hoping to post links to casinos and other random sites, ideally in their signature for maximum exposure. For many years now, Google and others have used search algorithms where a high ranked site like AtariAge is considered more credible in which other sites it links to, and thus those other 3rd party sites will be upranked by the search engine. This leads to one kind of SEO which is injecting links into those sites, either by asking the site admin to place an advertisment for some small imbursement, or like in this forum, get bots that will spread the links. Of course the ranking algorithms are more complex and weigh in multiple factors so eventually Google might be able to distinguish spambot links from links honestly posted by real human beings.