I think spammers also "stockpile" accounts, and that brings me to a question to OP: can you make an overview of the time it took for all accounts to create their first post after registration? (I realize this means scraping a couple of hundred thousand pages)

How do you handle them? Check their post history, see if it deserves a ban, and if so, report one of the posts? Does this result in the account being banned (see modlog?

Thanks for this. I was under the assumption that I added the entire 120 days worth of new data to my total data, which would mean last week's changes would be included.
But it turns out I did the opposite: adding only one week of data to my total. I'll fix it.

@Ikonik: can you fix your quote? It's now plagiarism, but I assume it's a mistake. While you're at it, can you shorten it? Unnecessary long quotes aren't appreciated on most forums.

Are you bugging other golf players while you play tournaments? Cause that's what spamming on this forum does to other users.

The problem lies with people who can't make 30 decent posts, but make 30 posts anyway. Going back to your golf tournament: now imagine 600 people with golf clubs running after your golf ball and hitting it when they can. Would you still think it's okay, just because they can't play on their own?

Lol. I think you're missing the point.

I would like to see something similar to patrol, but for all account levels. That would make it much easier to detect all accounts involved in the spam.

Also, I wouldn't mind a "cleanup" of all unused accounts (with 0 posts): ban them all once they're a month old without posts. I suspect many spammers have been stockpiling accounts, as they often use older accounts for their spam runs.

And signatures aren't the cause of spambots bumping ICO threads either, so none of these solutions will work.

>>> Jr. Member Fayelyn21 banned! has collected 0 Merit points from 503 posts. He just committed plagiarism on the wrong board, please ban him.

Copy (archived):

Original: https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/07/26/bitcoin-btc-price-watch-make-or-break-area-of-interest/

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Follow the Merit: it came from WhiteShum, who also merited other posts with similar amounts. I can't prove plagiarsm om all merited accounts, but it yielded 2 copy/pasters.
Please ban these accounts for plagiarism:

>>> Jr. Member SkillOfToper
Copy (even though I can't read it, I can find a source):
(quote shortened)

Original: https://lifehacker.ru/sitting-too-much/

>>> Member catterpillar07
Copy
(quote shortened)

Original: http://www.myjulia.ru/article/276573/

No we don't.

I report PM-beggars to Admin, hoping they get banned. PM beggars also risk getting added to the ignore list, or receiving red trust. It doesn't happen much anyway, beggars must be extremely dumb to risk their account for a few Merit points.

83

But where do you draw the line? If a Newbie asks for a loan, he's almost guaranteed to receive red trust (example). But if a Newbie wants to trade up to billions of dollars in Bitcoin or sell Bitcoins at half price (example), he doesn't get red trust, while it's even more obvious he's trying to scam someone.
It's the same In Service Announcements (example of a proven scam; example of a scam waiting to happen).

Playing positivity guru, I could argue this means Bitcoin is growing up and nothing new is happening anymore.
(I know, I know, wishful thinking)

One of the reasons account sales aren't banned, is because it will just push it further underground. As long as passwords can be changed, accounts can be sold.
Wouldn't it be better to keep account sales in the open, so at least we know which accounts have been sold? Some accounts (example) were bought in the past and are now valuable forum members.

Google ads require compromising your real life identity, right?

When I first read this, I thought it was related to the software you use on the server. On second reading (and after some sleep), I'm starting to think you're going to publish your own privacy focused wallet. As far as I know, no mixer has done that before.

I've had a hard time understanding his messages, because of the abreviations and slang. This is probably easier to understand for native English speakers.
My guess would be typing is much more "lazy" when he uses a phone than when he uses a computer with full size keyboard.

Out of 5 individuals, some may remove it, some won't. But that doesn't matter now, as aTriz has to solve things first.

Campaign management doesn't necessarily mean the campaign manager is in charge of any funds.

I tend to believe the story that someone temporarily used the account. Judging by the latest posts, that person is gone, and aTriz is doing some campaigns again.

I think it's too early for this. I doubt theymos is going to introduce a badge for which only he qualifies (>2000), with only satoshi reaching the badge for 1000+.

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Note the difference (image from Amazon):


If you go to the Altcoin board, you can find thousands of posts worth deleting with no effort at all. It's very boring, and feels completely useless to do, but makes it very easy to quickly get thousands of good reports.

Agreed, that would be better. However, I've suggested this before in other threads, and it didn't get implemented. That's why I tried the second best option: a "banned badge".

It's useless work for the user too, and would safe all parties time if it can be prevented. If that time can be used to report others, the banned tag can actually help cleaning the forum.

I wouldn't mind if this would be set as an Avatar for all banned accounts (if it's possible to add an Avatar to banned Newbies). Seeing accounts get banned could scare other users into following the rules (I hope).

Does the forum keep track of the reason why users have been banned in the past?
I'm not sure about the color coding, I can imagine many banned users would fit several categories.

I would like that, but I prefer to be able to see the banned status without being logged in (so I can scrape it).

Temp bans don't show up in modlog, and I wouldn't want to see temp bans in profiles. It's only useful to know which users won't ever come back.

Most spambots above Newbie only get banned, their spam stays on the forum forever. I care much more about getting a spambot banned than just having a post deleted.

I've received a PM from OP, asking if I can help get his account back. I'll respond here: I'm not an Admin, so I can't do anything.

I can however check my own records: The account Quite was registered on Feb 5, 2014, and I can confirm it only had 15 posts on Oct 18, 2016. The profile didn't show an addy at that time.
Looking into the post history, there are no posts between Feb 25, 2014 and May 5, 2017. The posts, however, changed from long posts in a language that I can't read, to spammy oneliners that look like its only meant to rank up the account. The 3 year posting gap makes me wonder if you are the original account owner. A staked address should be old, and I doubt Admins will accept a quite recent archived address as proof of ownership.

With a decent password, the database hack isn't a problem. Only the easy passwords can be brute forced.

Exactly. It's highly unusual for Newbies to post on this board, let alone so many of them.

From OP's site: I'm starting to wonder if he even knows what mixing is. Exchanges keep track of everything!

@OP: You claim to offer mixing up to 50 BTC. Can you sign a message from an address holding 50 BTC? My gut feeling tells me you can't.

That's highly unpractical: to do this, you'll need to install a wallet for each different coin, and know the exchange rate t. With thousands of coins and new ones added all the time, you won't be able to keep up.

You may want to look into using payment processor that accepts many different coins.

I'd like to see a badge for banned accounts (maybe the mushroom cloud can work there?). It would help when reporting posts.

No, I didn't say that. But you can't expect to rank up if you're not willing to learn and just keep posting generic useless posts.

You've spammed your way into becoming Jr. Member in Spam Megathreads on the Off-topic and Politics & Society boards. Example:

You're right on one thing: this is something I see a lot, just not how you imagined it. Whenever a user with zero Merit complains about it, I check their post history. I checked yours yesterday, and saw nothing worth meriting.
You're not the first one to pull the "you're at the top so you don't care"-card, and all it does is prove you didn't check my post history.
I care a lot about new users who make decent posts, and I have given 566 merit 532 times, to 291 profiles.
But I've gotten thousands of posts deleted and accounts banned too. I don't merit you because I care about the forum, not the other way around.

There's your problem, you're here only to make money. That's why you spammed your way into being a Jr. Member.

That sounds like a phone, not a real computer

Did you import the private key (starting with L14) and did Electrum show you a balance?

I'm not sure what you did exactly. Electrum should do this on it's own when you send a transaction.
If you've saved a raw transaction, you can broadcast it through https://www.blockchain.com/btc/pushtx , but that's not how Electrum is supposed to be used.

You're talking to hilariousandco's alt account, a Global Moderator.
I've read about tracking Mod payments before, probably just through the blockchain. You can find some of the addresses used by the forum, then simply follow the money.

^ what this guy said ^