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Sophisticated SPAM
SPAM
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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
1
July 2, 2024 - 3:59 pm

We have been getting some SPAM that is hard to tell if it is or not.  Some of you have been really helpful in discerning this. Thank you for your efforts. I'm pretty good at growing fruit but I don't really know a lot about computers. Some of you are adding specific details that makes it clear that they are SPAM.  I don't know how to do that, but if you explain it to me, I can get rid of it.   Awesome work!

John S
PDX OR

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JeanW
54 Posts
(Offline)
2
July 3, 2024 - 1:41 am

John,

The two posts from “mariahcarey” are more than likely spam.  I know on the surface they sound almost legit, but I doubt it.  In the July 1 “Thinning 2024” post at 11:40 pm, the poster stated they were in SE Georgia.  In the July 1 “When to open your grafts?” post at 11:49 pm, they stated they were in northern Idaho.  Kind of hard to be in two places at once, right?  Also, if you highlight the “Thinning” post, there is another word at the end-- “wordle”.  If you highlight the “When to open” post, the word “mapquest” appears at the end.  Suspicious.  The sentence construction of the two posts from “amorapotter” that just popped up while I was writing this is odd.  Again, there are hidden words at the ends of the posts that appear if you highlight the posts.

JeanW

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jafar
834 Posts
(Offline)
3
July 3, 2024 - 10:17 am

John, thanks for addressing these directly.  

If I'm only 80% sure a new poster is fake, I'll delete to post but not bad the user.  Perhaps we should edit the post with a blanket message like, "post deleted" author please follow up with clearly human generated relevant posts.

Sometimes I wonder if we're just helping train the spam AI to get smarter.

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
4
July 3, 2024 - 10:42 am

Good eye, JeanW.

This "hidden word" technique is created via hacking of the HTML code, that is beyond just AI text generation.

First, the background color of the text must be mined, then the text color is made equal to the background color.

In this case:  "<span style="color: #f5f5f5">wordle</span>"

#f5... being light gray.

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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
5
July 7, 2024 - 6:21 pm

Thanks for your help.

John S

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
6
July 8, 2024 - 11:13 am

All dubious posts should be text-highlighted via mouseover-select to reveal a random and otherwise invisible keyword.

This is an old trick to associate the keyword with a website and improve its ranking by search engines.

So it doesn't even matter if no one sees and clicks on the keyword, there is still a benefit to the spammer.

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jafar
834 Posts
(Offline)
7
July 8, 2024 - 12:21 pm

Larry, thanks for explaining this.  I'll start screening for that.  I'd wondered what the point of posts without a url link.  

I've also read that sometimes they come back and edit their post to include such links, after its been accepted by moderators.

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
8
July 8, 2024 - 2:58 pm

This hidden link trick is so old-hat that it makes me wonder if there is something else more modern at play;

I thought that search engine SEO algorithms had long ago ignored or penalized this ploy.

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
9
July 8, 2024 - 3:30 pm

These hidden link posts should be deleted as soon as practical as the Google (and other search engines) algorithm can easily detect them and penalize the HOS website.

https://loganix.com/hidden-links/

^ all the hidden link basics, a wordy article several minutes to browse, but it is relatively recent.

Apparently hidden links are still a thing.

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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
10
July 17, 2024 - 2:34 pm

Thanks for the help, people.  I deleted the two from Mariah Carey. Thanks for the tip, @JeanW.  She didn't respond to my question. You'd think with a voice like that, she'd be able to speak up.  If you don't respond to a simple question, you're probably going to get deleted if it's suspicious, or suss as the kids would say these days.

John S
PDX OR

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
11
July 24, 2024 - 11:19 am

Both recent untidybalk posts are spam (February blossoms, Olive tree...).

Note that the hidden link text is now being placed near the right margin or some blank lines down, requiring a mouseover

of the entire webpage area to reveal the spam link text.

Such crude efforts will remain easy to detect and remove regardless of improvements in AI text portion.

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jafar
834 Posts
(Offline)
12
July 24, 2024 - 11:22 am

Thanks Larry.  If you flag the post we'll get an email with a direct link for easy banning and deletion.

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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
13
September 20, 2024 - 9:05 am

A spammer threw in 5 SPAM messages last night in a row, capped off by a message in this forum, pretending to complain about SPAM.

John S
PDX OR

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Chris M
Philomath, OR
180 Posts
(Offline)
14
September 20, 2024 - 1:14 pm

I have found if you hit quote it will show anything hidden. You can then cancel and report.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
833 Posts
(Offline)
15
September 20, 2024 - 10:05 pm

I have not seen these latest. Actors posts usually contain outbound links to gaming sites and if using a PC the easiest way to see them (for me at least) is using the (a) mouse and invoking the posters image/icon of a slanted 8 (the servers permalink). Then all links in the users post hidden or not get found by invoking the (b) keyboard tab key. 

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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
16
September 21, 2024 - 9:48 am

At the risk of being insulted, I'm going to ask what this means, because I don't understand:

invoking the posters image/icon of a slanted 8 (the servers permalink).

 

If I can understand it, I might be able to prevent more SPAM.

John S
PDX OR

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
833 Posts
(Offline)
17
September 21, 2024 - 6:36 pm

I found out you would not have never understood my way that I use to see the links in actors posts that I described to you previously unless you're logged out. Sorry about that John. If your logged out many of the markups for jumping around that are there when logged in go away when logged out. So log out and you can go to Larry's post #9 for a practice, and mouse click the figure 8 icon next to his numeral 9 and start pressing the keyboards tab key. If it takes you twice to get to an object in the next post (ie. #10) then it's because an object is in there via Larry's post #9 that contains a hyperlink from the object. Then practice comparing any of the other trusted sources such as yourself as long as you know you never published a link the way Larry did and count again. So compared to his you while playing on yours should have one tab key less, and that's how you might best know how to quickly spot hidden objects (that are advertised hyperlinks) from new registered members.

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Chris M
Philomath, OR
180 Posts
(Offline)
18
September 21, 2024 - 7:06 pm

I don't understand what Rooney is describing either. I still think just hitting quote to see links is easier.

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Larry_G
204 Posts
(Offline)
19
September 22, 2024 - 12:34 pm

The Rooney method described above does use the least number of keystrokes and mouse actions to locate links, hidden or not.

Plus not having to be logged in. But perhaps a moderator then has to log in to take action.

The tab key in this context will also pause on any posted images, and it also pauses on the "Visit my website" link below a member's profile area to the left of the main post.

So far I don't think any spams have included on-topic images, so this should not confuse the tab process.

The tab pause sequence on a forum page can be reversed using Shift+Tab, so you can work starting at the newest (last) post.

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John S
PDX OR
2941 Posts
(Offline)
20
September 22, 2024 - 2:58 pm

Thanks Rooney,

That makes more sense now. I will try to do that sometime.

John S
PDX OR

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