Ask Ubuntu General Room

12:09 AM

system.burn( askubuntu.com/questions/279047/… , reason='spam')

SELECT sideEffects FROM spam;
-------------------------
+ sideEffects          +
-------------------------
+ deletion             +
+ account deletion     +
+ ip ban               +
-------------------------

The Lord of Time

SELECT sideEffects FROM spam WHERE sideEffectSeverity = "low";
-------------------------
+ sideEffects          +
-------------------------
+ deletion             +
-------------------------

mateo_salta

12:43 AM

More spam

mateo_salta

12:53 AM

And another reason to blacklist goo.gl links...

All fourteen of you who clicked that link, You are The reason they keep spamming!

32? Really people? Stop clicking on spam links.

Eliah Kagan

More similar spam.

@mateo_salta Are you talking about the number of people who viewed the spam post on AU? (That doesn't matter.) Or are you talking about the number of people who clicked the actual obuscated links they contain, based on the statistics offered by the link-shortening services? The same link spam that gets posted here on AU also often gets posted all over the Internet...

(Or are you talking about the number of people who clicked the link where we were the referrer? Some services offer that information. 32 for that would be bad, and suggests spammers are finding substantial value in spamming AU.)

mateo_salta

Oh ad if you get the chance report the link to google as spam here is the stats goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/Xoxby/all_time

Eliah Kagan

1:09 AM

@mateo_salta Thx. I've now done so.

mateo_salta

its 47 now...

Eliah Kagan

@mateo_salta From Ask Ubuntu?

Call me V

on the up-side one of them could be locating the target to feed to shortened link crawling engines to blacklist domains

mateo_salta

Yep.

Eliah Kagan

More spam by the same user.

(There was a third one, too, but when I flagged it, that was enough to delete it.)

mateo_salta

1:13 AM

@EliahKagan if you highlight the slices of the pie chart askubuntu.com is in there

Eliah Kagan

@mateo_salta Thx.

Call me V

@mateo_salta do you think maybe some of it is browser pre-cache-ing?

mateo_salta

So, your saying that askubuntu may be auto folowing links? Or wondering how google gets the data, and if google can do that, what use is no follow?

Eliah Kagan

@mateo_salta rel=nofollow is for search engines; as far as I know it has nothing to do with browser pre-caching (when a browser downloads content from a page not yet loaded, in anticipation that it may be loaded, so that if it is loaded it will load faster).

mateo_salta

Hm.... that sounds like a bad idea security wise.

Eliah Kagan

1:21 AM

More spam.

Call me V

@mateo_salta It doesn't render, it just pre-fetches html body. Not rendering JS or plug-in objects solves most issues

mateo_salta

If that is the case, is there a way to flag a question without opening it?

Eliah Kagan

@mateo_salta Probably not a security problem. It's extremely rare for a browser to have a security bug where specially crafted data causes arbitrary code execution (or anything) while the data are being downloaded. Most security threats, including cross-site scripting, happen when the data are displayed to the user or allow to perform dynamic client-side actions (like accessing cookies).

@mateo_salta You should only flag a post if you've seen its contents and know the flag you're raising is correct.

mateo_salta

But it seems like it is providing view counts to spammers which gets them money...

Eliah Kagan

@mateo_salta 6 spam flags deletes the post. 6 is small compared to the numbers you cited, and the amount of extra money for 6 viewers who flag has got to be very, very small.

Also, I'm not sure if it's good or bad when one bad guy gets money from another bad guy for something that never actually helped the other bad guy.

Call me V

1:29 AM

@mateo_salta Google ad-bars are off-site includes, so they don't get pre-fetched for example. It's related to pre-fetch not mattering for well designed ad impressions. Believe me, pay by impression folks are fighting that fight harder than you can.

mateo_salta

hm, interesting

Looks like the tally is now 56, accounting for %1 of their clicks...

Luis Alvarado

1:52 AM

ok destroying the spam users is not helping

just did like 10 spams right now, going to ban them 24/7 for a couple of days... like 365

Mochan

2:20 AM

Whoa @FEichinger creepy anime yandere ftw?

Ask Ubuntu Meta

0

Q: Does destroying the spam account actually protects us?

Today I deleted I don't know how many accounts, but noticed that there was one that kept appearing with the same IP. In all cases I did a clean and brutal destroy of the account (Bloody mess actually, account parts everywhere). But then I thought, if there is a way to protect the site (Ban the ac...