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#1 2017-10-23 6:38 am

Woodstock_AEB
Member
Registered: 2017-10-23
Posts: 1

Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

For the last couple of weeks, our site has been getting daily post responses with the only text being "[REDACTED BY MOD]" listed repeatedly, and the included link is to a cached page about some person in Asia who committed fraud. The IP address is in China and the response is always to the same article, so I suspect it's a bot. We approve all replies, so it has never made it onto our site.

What I don't understand is the purpose of these kind of posts. Most spam posts to our site are of the typical fake product variety, but these recent ones don't have those kind of links. Similarly, we have also received posts that have cached links to ripoff pages, and both are listed in this site's database (that's how I discovered this site). The best I can surmise is that the cache links are disguised links to show an active site, but that's only a guess.

Anyone have any ideas?

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#2 2017-10-23 11:15 am

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Hi Woodstock_AEB, welcome to SFS.

Woodstock_AEB wrote:

For the last couple of weeks, our site has been getting daily post responses with the only text being "[REDACTED BY MOD]" listed repeatedly, and the included link is to a cached page about some person in Asia who committed fraud

A few points:–

  1. That is called “spam” and it is fully legit to be reported in to the DB here at SFS as long as you provide the following items to id the spammer:
    a. username
    b. email address (qualified)
    c. ip address
    d. evidence

  2. I have redacted the name of the spammer, since this is a public-facing forum

  3. Thankfully you did NOT provide any links in your post, else you & it would have been instantly placed into our DB & the post removed (we are merciless towards spam).

  4. Beyond the items above, you are experiencing forum abuse & it is currently endemic & should be treated in the normal fashion‡

Notes:
‡ Use SFS to detect then remove forum spam + use RBL to stop access from abusive IPs

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#3 2017-10-25 11:37 am

chrishirst
Member
From: Blackpool UK
Registered: 2011-01-22
Posts: 49
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Just in case you do not know what 'redacted' is

'Redacted' is a legal descriptive term indicating "Some of the content of this document has been removed".

Mod MAY indicate 'moderator' or 'module'

So "[REDACTED BY MOD]" probably indicates that 'your' site has a module that has removed suspect content before emailing a notification to you.


Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, .... But hey! Who cares.

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#4 2017-10-25 11:50 am

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Hi Chris

In this case, it was me that redacted the info.

I appreciate that that may be confusing for others, but I needed to get it out of the Google logs asap. The OP knew that I'd changed their Title line, so there was zero confusion there.

The fact that the OP had placed a name (person/organisation/whatever) in both the Title & body of the post strongly suggests that THEY are the one attempting to promote this action but, once again, in the absence of link(s) it fails the test of being spam, so the post remains as a historic curiosity.

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#5 2017-10-25 12:09 pm

chrishirst
Member
From: Blackpool UK
Registered: 2011-01-22
Posts: 49
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Alex Kemp wrote:

Hi Woodstock_AEB
Notes:
† Wikipedia is ~20 years out of date since it does not include forum spam as one of the items within it’s list of spammy items. Damn annoying when you are one of the Mods on a site dedicated to stopping forum spam.

No, that particular Wikipedia article is solely a 'leader' article about UCE, as in email and direct messaging. Forum spamming is covered in a entirely different article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam

Last edited by chrishirst (2017-10-25 12:10 pm)


Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, .... But hey! Who cares.

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#6 2017-10-25 12:14 pm

chrishirst
Member
From: Blackpool UK
Registered: 2011-01-22
Posts: 49
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Alex Kemp wrote:

In this case, it was me that redacted the info.

Aha, it appeared from the post that the OP was talking about thread/post alerts he was receiving from a forum he was affiliated with.


Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, .... But hey! Who cares.

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#7 2017-10-26 1:39 am

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

chrishirst wrote:

Forum spamming is covered in a entirely different article.

Many thanks Chris - modified the original link accordingly.

About your own quoting: please take on the habit of reducing the quote to the essential of what you are replying to. Full-post quotes quickly clog up what may otherwise be useful threads, and are downgraded by the SEs. In the past I've seen threads with 6-layer quotes, which is stupid.

I normally summarily delete full-post quotes, without mercy, after a warning. It's not personal, but I really hate doing it. Please take a moment to edit the quote down to a pithy essential bit. Thanks.

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#8 2017-10-26 5:08 am

Maikuolan
Member
From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: 2011-08-09
Posts: 799
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Alex Kemp wrote:

In the past I've seen threads with 6-layer quotes, which is stupid.

You'd hate some of the (now defunct) forums that I frequented now more than a decade ago then, during my earliest days on the internet. One particularly lowbrow forum, we'd get one member trying to troll another member for writing something stupid, then another member would counter-troll, quote them "ironically" or to poke fun at something the originally quoted or originally trolled person wrote, then trigger a flood of counter-quoting and counter-quoting. Would sometimes end up with more than 30+ plus layers, to the point where the admins would be forced to mass-ban multiple members and end up deleting the entire sub-forums and starting again afresh out of frustration of the time required to clean everything up.

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#9 2017-10-26 12:33 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Maikuolan wrote:

to the point where the admins … starting again afresh out of frustration of the time required to clean everything up.

Yes. I've enough white hairs to recall such idiocies also, which is part of what drives my desire to keep these forums (fori?) clean. More controversially, I also suspect that the views of someone that cannot bother to spend a second trimming a quote to it's pith are probably not worth reading.

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#10 2017-10-26 12:39 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Maikuolan wrote:

end up deleting the entire sub-forums and starting again afresh

“Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

https://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q

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#11 2017-10-26 3:42 pm

chrishirst
Member
From: Blackpool UK
Registered: 2011-01-22
Posts: 49
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

Alex Kemp wrote:

About your own quoting: please take on the habit of reducing the quote to the essential of what you are replying to. Full-post quotes quickly clog up what may otherwise be useful threads, and are downgraded by the SEs. In the past I've seen threads with 6-layer quotes, which is stupid.

I normally summarily delete full-post quotes, without mercy, after a warning. It's not personal, but I really hate doing it. Please take a moment to edit the quote down to a pithy essential bit. Thanks.

It all depends where I am posting from and on what, computer / laptop not a problem, Phone / tablet real PITA  smile


Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, .... But hey! Who cares.

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#12 2017-10-26 4:43 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: Just who is "[REDACTED BY MOD]?"

chrishirst wrote:

Phone / tablet real PITA  smile

Yeah, understood. I refuse to access the Internet from my fone for that, as well as other, reasons. However, if full-post quotes do not get edited down then I end up removing the entire post & eventually (if it does not stop) every single post from that poster. It has happened once & I do not wish it to occur again. Please help.

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