As of a couple days, Stack Exchange is under a huge spam attack, with lots of users being created with SEO bait and a phone number in their profile.

We have been able to avoid the brunt of the attack for now.

Superuser hasn't been so lucky with 5,900 fake profile being created during a couple days

Have a peek here if you're interested in the nitty gritty: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/303746/…

On GDSE, it's incidental for now. If you come across a new user that fits the description, don't hesitate to ping a mod.

man, of all sites to pick to spam with tactics like this... SE seems like one of the worst options

why devote the time to set this up when the community is made up of a self-policing user base with people that love to hunt down and eradicate stuff like this :P

@JackJohansson is this the same computer you mentioned that you had issues with using PHPStorm??

@JohnB page ranking when sites are indexed would be my guess. I think Google indexes the member lists, if so many have that name from multiple sites it will rise to the top of a search. Maybe a username validation that detects those keywords and rejects the username is in order.

and hello

hi!

congrats on the new position. You still in the printing realm of things?

thanks! No more screen printing but still in the consumer packaged goods industry

didnt you own that screen printer?

just a small 6 color press for small runs yeah

probably going to sell it, definitely no time for that anymore

I remember that.. hows it holding up?

still in good shape! just gathering dust right now

I do miss it a little though, screen printing has its own nuances that I enjoyed and had fun doing

woah look at us ol timers

oh I missed it @JohnB you're not doing grocery bags anymore? Same company in a different role or left for a new company? I remember you said the owner was basically retired and leaving you to do everything

new company, still grocery stuff

food now! free samples!

mmmm delicious :D

heavy focus on kids stuff, but I am not above drinking from juice boxes if they are free :D

@JohnB Ooh, I managed to miss that. Congrats! 😃

I had one of these at a networking event two weeks ago - buzzboxcocktails.com/home

it was surprisingly good

ty!

Hah I've never seen those cocktail boxes but I have friends who would probably love them

@Vincent @DᴀʀᴛʜVᴀᴅᴇʀ @Ryan

found 2 accounts

search health

Less stress now @JohnB?

definitely less stress but still very busy, so many projects going on at once!

@WELZ thanks, letting other mods know too in case they havent spotted that

@WELZ Thanks. Those were both older profiles (nov '16) but i killed them anyway

@Vincent I noticed that, I think those were there to exist in search engines, If they keep a low profile, they can go unnoticed for longer

Fun projects I hope 😊

@WELZ I guess that's the entire tactic. They got thwarted by the fact that filling out your profile text yields you the 'biographer badge.

superuser.com/users

search for "insur" or "health" on Superuser and you can see we're doing much better than others

On SU, the badge ticker was completely filled with spam accounts being awarded that badge. Which alerted users to their presence.

@WELZ

@Ryan I saw that

Yeah SU has some 6,000 fake users to destroy

I was wondering if I should tell them

Trust me, they know 😅

Can I make a new room dedicated to spam accounts?

SE staff is aware of the problem

Because I'm finding some here.

i dont go in the spam room as it is

We have a spam room right?

The Spam Blot

We should have a Flag user, and we can rack up flags lol

just posted a few

@Ryan Search "hoo1" and we aren't doing such a good job

@WELZ Nice find.

Less recent, but still annoying

the hoo's i looked at were all today

Those seem to be limited to us. At least, I didn't find any hoo1 users at SuperUser

Oh the one I saw was 6 days old

I'm less deft, being on mobile and all 😒

Been doing emergency aid 1 today

@Ryan I will not take that sentence out of context 😂

learned to use a defibrilator

Ok spam hunters, I'm outta here. The bf needs attention. Catch y'all tomorrow morning CET when I will pick up the cleaning shovel again.

@Vincent After looking through recent users with Autobiographer, After opening a bunch of spam I noticed one name that came up a few times... so I checked, and sure enough. those nasty little hoos

hmm, just wondering, how long does it take to delete a user, is it complicated?

Check out my username Lol

@Cai @Wrzlprmft graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users/109434/… (brand new)

@WELZ It’s a few clicks. The problem is that there are too many of them. This is something that SE has to tackle otherwise. Still, apart from certain sites (badge list, new users), those accounts do not do much harm as of now.

@Wrzlprmft @WELZ For us it's doable. I saw only two pages of hoo1's. For SU, 6k times 3 clicks is... a lot.

@Vincent do you get to see the email on the accounts? there must be something in common... (other than Insurance/Hoo1/Health)