Scratch

That's why I made it...

So that everyone will click it.

And so spam-bots will too, and comment with that.

Then the mods will do whatever they do to projects with spam.

Which probably means detecting the bot's IP, and banning it.

I flagged two more today

stevetheipad wrote:

cheddargirl wrote:

NeilWest wrote:

There's been a new type of spam hitting Scratch that's really annoying me, users with randomly generated names sending comments about bank transactions. I've had to flag loads on my London project, and it seems that there is no stop. Have any famous Scratchers (they seem to be the main targets) been spammed with this?

Main site SEO spammers have a tendency to comment on the popular projects hitting the front page in hopes that someone will click the link. Tis a shame that spammers don't have much respect for EDU websites. 

The Scratch Team has been working on something to help stop it, but for some reason, the code has been bugging out on the main site. So it's taking some work to get it fixed.

Yeah, it be nice if they'd at least have the heart to not do it on .edu websites. 

When a site is linked to on a .edu domain it increases search engine results more than linking on a .com domain, for example, would, so they actually spam more on .edu domains than any other.

I haven't got any on my projects or seen any, but the latter's probably because I don't really go on the main site at all. It's kinda odd how I've never experienced it though.

Last edited by RedRocker227 (2012-08-15 16:30:13)

Keep the love-its going on my project...

Love it on test accounts, do something.

Mokat wrote:

coolhogs wrote:

Keep the love-its going on my project...

Love it on test accounts, do something.

why?

coolhogs needs his/her project to get front paged so that spam bots will spam on it. From there, the Scratch Team can block the spam bot's IP address. This way, they fall into a trap. I think that it was very clever of coolhogs to have thought of this, but does the Scratch Team know about this plan?

Last edited by ErnieParke (2012-08-15 20:15:38)

Wes64 wrote:

ErnieParke wrote:

Mokat wrote:

why?

coolhogs needs his/her project to get front paged so that spam bots will spam on it. From there, the Scratch Team can block the spam bot's IP address. This way, they fall into a trap. I think that it was very clever of coolhogs to have thought of this, but does the Scratch Team know about this plan?

why cant they just get the IP address from any other project?

I don't see what's stopping them. Also, I was trying to write my comment from coolhog's point of view because this was coolhog's plot, though I added my opinion at the end. I was also wondering about why the Scratch Team couldn't just do it from any other project, but I never put that in my comment.

Last edited by ErnieParke (2012-08-15 21:25:07)

humhumgames wrote:

No, seriously. Does the Scratch Team know about this?

Yup.

stevetheipad wrote:

humhumgames wrote:

No, seriously. Does the Scratch Team know about this?

Yup.

I still have a few questions. How did they learn about it and do they support it?

Edit: I just saw Cheddargirl's post, so I don't have any more questions. I would like to quickly thank Cheddargirl for clearing up a few things. Thanks!

Last edited by ErnieParke (2012-08-15 21:45:17)

coolhogs wrote:

I know that it is MORE than one spammer.

It's called "spammer detection" and "banning the IPs" of multiple spammers.

If you want me to delete the project, send a private notification, mods.

It's also helpIng you mods find out who're the spammers, instead of the spammers' being all spread out.

The IP keeps changing each time. Blocking the IP of one spammer won't stop the rest, the Scratch Team already tried that. A honey pot project won't stop the problem, the best way to help is to just flag the spam instead (which is a lot more effective).

That's why the Scratch Team is hard at work trying to debug the code they designed to stop the spammers (does no one read previous posts of threads? I mentioned it earlier!  )

Ah, ok, so do you want me to delete that project?

Wes64 wrote:

cheddargirl wrote:

coolhogs wrote:

I know that it is MORE than one spammer.

It's called "spammer detection" and "banning the IPs" of multiple spammers.

If you want me to delete the project, send a private notification, mods.

It's also helpIng you mods find out who're the spammers, instead of the spammers' being all spread out.

The IP keeps changing each time. Blocking the IP of one spammer won't stop the rest, the Scratch Team already tried that. A honey pot project won't stop the problem, the best way to help is to just flag the spam instead (which is a lot more effective).

That's why the Scratch Team is hard at work trying to debug the code they designed to stop the spammers (does no one read previous posts of threads? I mentioned it earlier!  )

Im just curious but what exactly is this "code" going to do? How exactly do you plan to stop them?

To sum it up in a nutshell: it's an elaborate spam filter. How the code works is something I won't go into - obviously no automatic system is 100% foolproof, so the less commercial spammers know how it works, the harder it will be for them to find away around it.

The buggy thing is that it worked on a test site, but not here for some reason.   

humhumgames wrote:

This could stop it, if only for a bit.

Here's my post on it.

The Scratch Team has been thinking about alternative Captcha methods; but such methods would more likely appear during the 2.0 era rather than anytime soon.

Lol i hope it happens to me!

humhumgames wrote:

Why? It doesn't mean you're famous, you know. It happens to projects front-paged (including newest), and any others. It can happen to anyone.

Because it usually happens to famous people! :p