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+--- Thread: Spam accounts on the forum (/showthread.php?tid=1412)
Spam accounts on the forum - fbarbe - 12-23-2022
Hi,
I was looking at the forum today and noticed a spam post on the announcement.
The "report post" button does not seem to work.
I was curious to see how many spam accounts there are on the forum, so I wrote a small python scraper that looks at the latest accounts and looks for the word "escort".
For the last 500 accounts, I found 51 (!!!) profiles with that word in their bio.
Are you aware that around 10% of new profiles seem to be spam?
I can keep running my small scraper, but I suspect that: 1. it goes against the rules of this website, 2. it's not the most effective way to do it.
Below you'll find the list of these 51 spam profiles.
Quote:https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2737
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2736
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2734
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2719
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2688
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2683
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2682
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2678
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2658
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2620
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2618
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2603
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2542
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2504
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2503
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2502
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2501
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2500
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2481
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2475
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2467
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2435
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2386
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2376
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2368
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2365
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2329
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2311
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2310
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2307
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2306
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2293
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2285
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2256
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2226
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2222
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2219
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2193
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2188
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2187
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2183
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2176
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2160
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2114
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2108
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2100
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2076
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2072
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2049
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2045
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2043
Let me know if you'd like me to share the script. The reports.php endpoint doesn't seem to work.
Happy holidays :),
Fabio
There seem to be a lot more than just "escort" accounts (really hope my account won't get banned by a future strict filtering because I wrote this word ;)).
A lot of profiles seem to be promoting their business: https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2599 (note also that account info and image do not match).
There's models trained to detect such spam text, I'm really tempted to run one of those. I'm just currently afraid to get my IP blacklisted for too many requests
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - Eric Piette - 12-23-2022
Hi,
Yes, I am aware that we have a lot of spammers or bots.
I am removing most of their spam posts every day.
However, I do not remove the fake account which are inactive.
Unfortunately, because of the UM policy rules, we can not avoid these accounts to be created.
If you have any idea in mind which could help, feel free to share them with Cameron, this would improve the forum :)
Happy holidays to you too :)
Eric
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - fbarbe - 12-23-2022
Hi Eric,
Thank you for your response.
The easier way would definitely be to have some sort of Captcha when creating an account, but if that's not an option, it should be fairly easy to identify fake accounts based on the description.
Here's a list of 436 spam more than one hundred account ids. (edit: remove duplicate)
Quote:2688
1936
1772
2682
2658
1080
2310
2719
2678
1130
1591
2475
2542
1654
790
1966
1521
1157
1557
886
1180
2285
2500
1077
839
1164
1888
2100
555
1667
2043
1436
1634
1222
1874
2386
2114
2504
1636
1570
1740
2737
1707
1248
1494
1917
2076
2222
1194
1674
1587
2329
2188
1517
2193
1632
1563
2311
1830
1681
2618
1619
2603
1548
552
2307
1530
2049
1663
1892
2503
1699
1818
1229
1606
2306
2045
1592
1569
664
1741
2683
2481
1768
1793
1646
1943
2620
1929
1134
2219
1135
2108
2293
1621
1981
2072
1665
642
2734
2226
1773
2368
2256
1605
2467
2187
1635
1651
1617
1962
1664
1516
2501
2435
1462
2376
2736
1706
2176
1026
1658
1827
2160
528
1541
1550
2183
2365
2502
@Cameron if you're reading this, I'd love to help identifying these accounts. You can send me an email or I'll come by your office after the holidays :).
btw, I know I didn't use the word "spam" correctly, as these accounts don't actually spam forum posts. But I am guessing they are still undesired accounts.
Best,
Fabio
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - fbarbe - 12-23-2022
Update: an easy way to identify unwanted accounts are accounted that have a Time Spent Online: None Registered. I believe this is because their account creation is automated with a bot, and no new user would have that value set to zero if they signed up properly (to check).
Hope it helps
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - Eric Piette - 12-23-2022
Hi,
Thanks for this.
Matthew managed all the aspects of the forum before to leave the project and as far as I know, yes a captcha was not an option because of the UM security policy.
However, we have an admin option to purge any user, so I assume that having an admin script to purge all the ids of the users you can detect, would be useful :)
Edit: I purged all the users in your list. Also, your list was fulled of duplicate ;) So that was a lot less than ~400. If you have a script to generate this list, this can also be useful ;) Thanks!
Eric
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - fbarbe - 12-23-2022
Hi Eric,
yes, sorry for all the duplicates... there was indeed a big overlap in the search. I ran my script again, this time without duplicates.
I have a list of 656 unique accounts that:
- have a link in their bio or as their homepage
- have their last visit date equal to their Registration date
Is this enough to decide whether an account is undesired? Well, I went through a lot of them and that seems to be the case. But there are a few edges cases, such as this one:
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=118 . This seems to be a legitimate user, except they only spent 1min on the forum and used it to advertise their blog.
A lot of these accounts seem to just put different linkts in there, perhaps to boost their SEO ranking?
Like this one: https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=230
I don't know if it's appropriate to paste this list here as some of these accounts might be legitimate. We can perhaps first talk about it in person after the holidays.
Best,
Fabio
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - Eric Piette - 12-24-2022
Hi,
I purged all the users which were probably bots or spammers.
If you run your script, you should have a lot less or none :)
Let me know when you can :)
Eric
RE: Spam accounts on the forum - fbarbe - 12-25-2022
Hi,
wow, I could only find a few left. Great job!
Here's a few more:
Quote:https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2760
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=2759
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=230
https://ludii.games/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=170
Best,
Fabio