Bots n' stuff

thermalben's picture
thermalben started the topic in Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 2:53pm

Wow, this is fascinating.

We've got some intellingent bots creating all kinds of problems in the forums. But, they're not easy to spot.

Check out old mate "NiganDong" in this forum thread: Possible move to Sydney - where would ya live?

Very convincing. Sounds like it was written by a surfer; in actual fact it was: dandandan wrote the original post (same title and contents) last year. It was lifted word for word.

We've seen a few of these in recent weeks. A bot copies a forum thread title and content, and then posts it under their username. That way they sound like they're part of the community. And by rehashing an old topic, it usually slips under the radar. It certainly fooled me - I knew we had had several "moving to Sydney" topics before, but I didn't bother to search for this one.. it appeared to be a new user, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

In the case of NiganDong, he then went on and created a bunch of generic spam threads. And, he actually edited (just today) the contents of the "Possible move to Sydney" topic, and inserted spam links all through it. We've removed the link (but kept the thread, as there were some valuable comments), and blocked old mate, but will need to do a bit of coding work to try and stamp 'em out as they come through the front door.

Who the bloody hell is buying cialis from a surfing website, anyway?

Pops's picture
Pops's picture
Pops Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 3:00pm

I thought that topic was familiar!
Should be easy enough to block any future word-for-word re-posts?

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 3:02pm

Remember when a certain silly old contributor tried to convince everyone that I was a Russian bot for a little while there ?

No , seriously.....they did.

Cromwell's picture
Cromwell's picture
Cromwell Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 5:05pm

Congratulations Blowin, I think that is an entirely new insult but you know I was glad when you turned out to be human. Bots are so logical.

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 5:37pm

Hah i thought that thread seemed really familiar.

There was another Indo related one the other day that had been copied from an old post about getting boards in Padang.

Crazy that they bother when the things they are trying to spam are just so irrelevant.

velocityjohnno's picture
velocityjohnno's picture
velocityjohnno Monday, 27 Apr 2020 at 6:06pm

So that's what cialis is.... no wonder they signed 'nigan dong'

Surely there are enough drugs being used out there

I like it when the Korean spammer hits, have no idea what they are spamming but try to reply in korean before it gets pulled down