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Every now and then some spam gets through the filters on the forum. Toby and I can remove it from public view (it stays in the database so if it turns out that it wasn't spam it can easily be deleted). Also, I can set the user account which was used to "banned" to prevent it being used again. Other useful information, such as IPs and email addresses, is also logged. But to keep the place clean, we need to be aware of the spam occurring. I, in particular, don't read every post made here on the forum. So if you spot some spam, please alert someone. Use this discussion if you like.
Andrew wrote in part:
it stays in the database so if it turns out that it wasn't spam it can easily be deleted
I suppose that the last word should be ‘undeleted’. So far, I've only deleted/hidden something while also explaining what it was, to prevent any nasty surprises.
The two recent comments on homotopy colimits on this forum is spam. I do not have access to delete it, so can someone who has such do so.
Done.
Forum spam at thread Stanford Enc, of Philosphy; quantum mechanics.
And at Schur functors
Deleted. (And I deleted your comment as well since it was no longer relevant and potentially confusing.)
I’m starting to wonder if allowing anonymous comments is worth it. We haven’t had any genuine anonymous comments for some time, and since the reCaptcha broke there’s no obvious barrier to spammers. It doesn’t do them any good, though, since guest comments are fully escaped so there are no backlinks created (which is what they want, I believe).
Forum spam at entry ’N=4 D=4 super Yang-Mills theory’.
Forum spam at Goodwillie Calculus
I’m tempted to disable the anonymous posting facility.
… and at (http://nforum.mathforge.org/discussion/840/microlocal-analysis-dmodules-crystals/#Item_9)
Looks similar.
And some more at the thread “Stanford Enc, of Philosphy; quantum mechanics”
I’ve deleted those (and the posts saying “Please delete the above spam”). I’ve also turned off the anonymous commenting stuff for the time being. I’ll turn it back on if I can think of an unobtrusive spam splatter.
It looks as if the forum has been spammed by ericafinger!
Splat that spam!
Forum Spam ahoy! Look at Schur functors and also Goodwillie calculusThe first has clear spam from obd2work and that same source has made a strange comment in the second of those.
… and Happy New Year everyone.
Deleted and banned.
(I also deleted a comment by Zoran that was pointing out the spam on the Schur functors discussion. I do this when the following comment refers back to the spam comment since when I delete the spam comment then it appears to refer to a different comment, so long as the following comment contains nothing of significance. Zoran did ask a question there: in answer, all that’s needed to get an account here is to have an active email address. Thus far, we haven’t needed anything more stringent than that.)
Andrew: look at the forum entry at Goodwillie calculus #34. It looks as if mister clever-clever has tried again!
Thanks Tim.
There is new activity from obd2life. Look at children’s drawing and sheafification. (in the forum)
Thought I’d banned that little whatsit. Anyway, banned now.
Little whatsit is at it again.
More spam on the forum here.
Dealt with.
Thank you, Andrew!
Tim: greetings from your neighborhood, from Swansea (leaving in a couple of days).
There’s spam on the Forum from Tina168.
At torsion theory, quotient category. Is there any other place with similar Spam?
(Later: Yes: at Wirthmüller context, Grothendieck context and at Homotopy Type Theory – Univalent Foundations of Mathematics .)
It looks not to be there (now). It was also a Tina168 spam with similar content. (I do not understand where it could have gone!)
Some nForum spam. It seems not on the nLab.
Can delete later, and block the user. At least the spam is not visible unless one is signed in.
[ wrong thread, sorry ]
I have deleted the spam now, from the database as well (I kept the recent discussions on this in mind, but here it is clearly uncontroversial). Have also deleted the user (blocking would be trivial to circumvent). I could block the IP address, but this is easy to circumnavigate as well, so I think we can just see how it goes, it might just have been a one off.
For future record, the UserID was 1756.
Someone using a name Aly Chiman has put a spam message on both the Forum and the Lab. In both cases the name of the thread / page has also been changed. The page was called contact manifold or similar as that is the subject matter. This has effectvely deleted the content. I will roll back and rename, but this ’contributor’ needs blocking. (I think he has spammed before.) Later: this is proving harder than I expected and my efforts may need ‘cleaning up’ by Richard!
A quick search found a page on the web listing forum spam attacks, with the foillowing:
alychidesigns.com appears in our database 147 times
Thanks Tim! I have now cleared up this and the other attack a couple of days later that Urs tidied up.
You are correct that we had an attack by ’Aly Chiman’ in March. More generally, we have had a series of attacks following the same pattern. Unfortunately, these spammers seem somewhat sophisticated. They vary their IP address, so I cannot block them. I did add something to the spam filter previously to try to prevent future attacks, but, worryingly, it seems that they figured out how to get around it; if that is not a coincidence, I can only assume that they checked the codebase, in which case even the spam filter will not help. But I have added a few more things to the spam filter now to try to help.
In the long run, I think that either some machine learning algorithm or some log-in/signing mechanism, or both, is the only robust way to tighten things up.
I suspect that some of the recent activity by Rita Slade on the Forum may in fact be spam.
Thanks! Am on holiday and cannot delete just now, will try to remember to do so next week.
Yes, Rita Slade here.
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