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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Idyllwild
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