[Guide]How to detect rule-breakers.Techniques and tips.

[TheBeardedBaby]

Hi iasenko,
Thanks for your explanation.
The fact is no one have such huge free time to find, then wait for identifying bumpers and report them like this.
It is my opinion, and it might be better if there are other methods to catch those bumpers (if available).

Think about it, if 10% of the users here use 5 mins every day to check the patrol or random check some ANNs there will be huge impact to the forum and to the silent war with the spammers. Only 5 mins can make a difference for sure.

OP is very helpful as well, and I'd probably give him iasenko a merit as well if I had one and if he hadn't already gotten a whole bunch.  Good job, my man.

Don't worry man, I got enough merit. Not everything is measured with merit. I'm happy that I found dome good friends and people, so it's worth it to be here. This is what the other don't understand as they are only after the cash here, so sad ...

[bitart]

...
When I come across a post that seems familiar or otherwise likely to be plagiarism I pick a distinctive phrase out of the post and do a google search like this:

"<distinctive phrase>" site:bitcointalk.org

And if there is more than one result then I report the post and in the comment field I mention the number of hits returned by a google site search of the key phrase. This is less cumbersome than trying to put a link in the comment field to an identical post, especially when there might be *hundreds* of identical posts to choose from.
...

This works only for the users who copypaste from the forum, but there are a lot of spammers here who just copy a website or article (usually a fresh article about bitcoin from a decent news site) and opens a new topic, paste the article and "forget" to mention the source...
They are hunting for merit, because they think that if the other users see these long posts and the posts are good quality (because they were copied form a bitcoin news website) they will get merits.
If you just copy a few sentences from the middle of the suspicious post and try to search for it like this:
"<example text>"
and without the /site:bitcointalk.org, it will list you the original article.
You can find a lot of examples in the dedicated copypaste topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0

[wwzsocki]

...
When I come across a post that seems familiar or otherwise likely to be plagiarism I pick a distinctive phrase out of the post and do a google search like this:

"<distinctive phrase>" site:bitcointalk.org

And if there is more than one result then I report the post and in the comment field I mention the number of hits returned by a google site search of the key phrase. This is less cumbersome than trying to put a link in the comment field to an identical post, especially when there might be *hundreds* of identical posts to choose from.
...

This works only for the users who copypaste from the forum, but there are a lot of spammers here who just copy a website or article (usually a fresh article about bitcoin from a decent news site) and opens a new topic, paste the article and "forget" to mention the source...
They are hunting for merit because they think that if the other users see these long posts and the posts are good quality (because they were copied from a bitcoin news website) they will get merits.
If you just copy a few sentences from the middle of the suspicious post and try to search for it like this:
"<example text>"
and without the /site:bitcointalk.org, it will list you the original article.
You can find a lot of examples in the dedicated copypaste topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0

These two pieces of information are a great help for me because I was lately struggling to report plagiarism because there was no exact match when I was using just a simple google search. Of course, if the plagiated text matches every word in the post, then there is no doubt but when few words are different I start to think about my safety when reporting such a member post.
I don't want to hurt anybody.

These two simple commands are really powerful. I just used them to check my old saved links I have reported for plagiarism and I found a lot more proofs that I was right.
Lately, I was looking for help with reporting and even started my own topic. Thank you, OP that you provided me the link to this thread.
Is really helpful, exact summary and guide to reporting I was looking for.

[TheBeardedBaby]

A little updated. Finally fixed the format, but still struggling with the lists.
If anyone finds the mistake with the last 3 closing list tags I'll be very happy.
Just a bump. This is a initiative to help the new members to learn the way to report spam and keep the forum clean and tidy.

[TMAN]

nice effort OP, great to see you have written this. learnt some things there myself.

[bitart]

How to spot Rule-Breakers Guide.

Intro : I think it's time for such guide. "Report to moderator" is an option which everyone should use on a daily basis so we can all together reduce the spam and the bot activity in the forum. It will be useful for the newbies too to know what they have to avoid doing in order to stay out of trouble.

I'm not the most skilled and efficient "reporter" that's why I need your help here so I can improve too and everyone can benefit out of it. Hope we can get some Mods on board too.
No more bull#, lets start the serious work.

How to detect rule breakers.

Note > All your conclusions have to be based on the RULES, except for the last point. What to write in your reports you can find in the  [Guide] Reporting effectively written by Welsh, its a MUST READ FOR EVERYONE.


Detecting one-line spammers
      

• Simple Techniques :
              
  • Using Patrol link - this is one of the best tools you can find, gives you view of the last newbie posts from the whole forum. Here is a link to it > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol It is easy to have it listed above your "Watchlist". Just go to your profile page, click on the "Forum Profile Information" and put a tick on "Show patrol link:", btw there you will find another useful option not enabled by default "Show post count by posts:" which I recommend to enable.  Searching through the patrol every now and then is easy to spot one line spammers, most of the time it leads you to our next point.
  • Browsing trough Ann threads - this is really easy, you go to the ANN SECTION you open one ANN page and you check for spam comments. How you determine if a comment is spam I will list in examples sometime soon, for now you can see the next point as reference. When you report you get an accuracy rating.

• Advanced Techniques :
            
  • Using the search engine for specific phrases like "good project", "good projekt", "nice project", etc. when you spend some time browsing through the ANN threads you will see a pattern in the spam posts, using all the time the same words and phrases. Those phrases you can use as a keywords in the search engine.

Detecting posts in other languages outside of the Local section
      

• This is usually done when you search for homograph cheaters, in the search results often comes multiple messages in Russian or other languages. It is important to exclude the Local sections from the search.

Detecting copy/pasting, plagiarism
      

• This is a bit more difficult, if you have the feeling that the guy has copied part of or all in his post then you can easily check the text in google, sometimes you get a 100% copy/paster sometimes, some words a changed but it's still a plagiarism. There should be a source mentioned in the post or the text should be quoted.      

Detecting homograph attacks
      

• Replacing some letters with the corresponding Cyrillic (or other alphabet) as they are lookalike, know also as homographs is not so difficult to detect as the forum search engine has the feature to search based on a single character. Great, what you do is to enter for example this >
  Here is the result with one simple word "the", where "e" is Cyrillic, but you can see it. Try searching for it in the whole forum I you are lucky you may get a result like this
  
  Resources > Cyrillic alphabet, just copy the letters not the codes. http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/europe/cyrillic/cyrillicchart/
  Checking for homographs, copy the suspicious text here : https://www.textmagic.com/free-tools/unicode-detector
  

Detecting ICO pumping/bumping services

• Those services are trying to keep specific ANN thread on the first page by posting in different forms every single day. I have reported quite some of those rule-breakers but most of the time those a bot accounts. There are different patterns to look for, most of the time are some "conversations" between different users quoting each other but posting only once per day. Usually those are accounts with 30-40 posts and it's really easy to be spotted by checking the post history. They have posts in the same thread every day, sometimes they are pumping more then 2-3 ICO simultaneously.

*See an video example ¹


Detecting activity which is not against the rules but is punishable by DT tagging.

• Reporting account selling Since it's not handled by the mod's and selling accounts it is not against the rules, no need to user "Report to mods" button for it. Buying an account has high risk of getting yourself scammed, also a lot of scammers trying to hide their identity behind an established account with positive trust score. So such (potential) trades are handled by the DTs. Reporting is done here... link
• Reporting Merit abuse As merit system came, almost everyone is hunting for it. So came the abusers too. If you do not understand the system yet check this link It is not moderated by the forum staff, and again the TD's are taking care of shady merit behavior, like exchange of merit between accounts, meriting low quality posts, trading merit. etc. Reporting is done here Suspected users that are abusing merit 3.0 using a special format
  *Report form see in Examples ²
  
• Reporting Alt accounts Having an Alt accounts is not against the rules as well, but you have to make it public, like leave a comment in your trust page that you own the accounts, and they are all related. There are specific rules in the most bounty/sig campaigns that you cannot joint with multiple accounts, only one account allowed so if those rules are broken you can report or there is a connection between accounts and its not officially announced you can report it here. Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List Mk III (2018 Q3)
  *Report form see in Examples ³
  

Additional Resources and tips
Many examples for the above mentioned descriptions can be found in my List of Rule-Breakers. You can use it as a reference until I finish the guide.

• ModLog. Moderation Activity log
• SecLog Users change passwords activity log
• Report History. History of your reports. Note> not everyone has access only those with 300 or more good reports.

This guide is under construction. I just posted in the raw format so I can edit it from everywhere I login
Hope it will be helpful.

Links for personal reference >
List of Rule-Breakers.. | Comprehensive guide to Bitcointalk. | One (1) Merit point to Rank-up Service | BitcoinTalk Public Information Project (BPIP)

Hi iasenko,
sorry for the long quote, I'm hunting for the last lists

If I won't manage to solve it, I'll remove the post.

EDIT:
I think I've found it.
Please let me know if this is OK for you.
Below you can find the code:

Code:

[center][size=12pt][b]How to spot Rule-Breakers Guide.[size=12pt][b][/center]
Intro : [size=8pt]I think it's time for such guide. "Report to moderator" is an option which everyone should use on a daily basis so we can all together reduce the spam and the bot activity in the forum. It will be useful for the newbies too to know what they have to avoid doing in order to stay out of trouble.

I'm not the most skilled and efficient "reporter" that's why I need your help here so I can improve too and everyone can benefit out of it. Hope we can get some Mods on board too.
No more bull#, lets start the serious work. [/size]

[hr]
[size=12pt][b]How to detect rule breakers.[/b] [/size]

[size=12pt]Note > All your conclusions have to be based on the [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0]RULES[/url], except for the last point. What to write in your reports you can find in the  [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4519248.0][Guide] Reporting effectively [/url] written by [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=84521]Welsh[/url], its a MUST READ FOR EVERYONE.[/size]


[b][size=12pt]Detecting one-line spammers[/size] [/b]
      [list][li] [b]Simple Techniques [/b]:
            [list][li] [i]Using Patrol link[/i] - this is one of the best tools you can find, gives you view of the last newbie posts from the whole forum. Here is a link to it > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol It is easy to have it listed above your "Watchlist". Just go to your profile page, click on the "Forum Profile Information" and put a tick on "Show patrol link:", btw there you will find another useful option not enabled by default "Show post count by posts:" which I recommend to enable.  Searching through the patrol every now and then is easy to spot one line spammers, most of the time it leads you to our next point.[/li] 

            [li][i]Browsing trough Ann threads[/i] - this is really easy, you go to the ANN SECTION you open one ANN page and you check for spam comments. How you determine if a comment is spam I will list in examples sometime soon, for now you can see the next point as reference. When you report you get an accuracy rating. [/li][/list][/list]


[list][li][b] Advanced Techniques :[/b] 
           [list][li][i]Using the search engine for specific phrases like "good project", "good projekt", "nice project", etc. [/i] when you spend some time browsing through the ANN threads you will see a pattern in the spam posts, using all the time the same words and phrases. Those phrases you can use as a keywords in the search engine.[/li][/list][/list]

[size=12pt][b] Detecting posts in other languages outside of the Local section[/b][/size]
       [list][li] This is usually done when you search for homograph cheaters, in the search results often comes multiple messages in Russian or other languages. It is important to exclude the Local sections from the search.[/li][/list]

[size=12pt][b]Detecting copy/pasting, plagiarism [/b][/size]
       [list][li] This is a bit more difficult, if you have the feeling that the guy has copied part of or all in his post then you can easily check the text in google, sometimes you get a 100% copy/paster sometimes, some words a changed but it's still a plagiarism. There should be a source mentioned in the post or the text should be quoted.      [/li][/list]

[size=12pt][b]Detecting homograph attacks[/b][/size]
      [list][li] Replacing some letters with the corresponding Cyrillic (or other alphabet) as they are lookalike, know also as homographs is not so difficult to detect as the forum search engine has the feature to search based on a single character. Great, what you do is to enter for example this > 
Here is the result with one simple word "the", where "e" is Cyrillic, but you can see it. Try searching for it in the whole forum I you are lucky you may get a result like [url=https://imgur.com/ItwkJ8R]this[/url] 

[b]Resources [/b]> Cyrillic alphabet, just copy the letters not the codes. http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/europe/cyrillic/cyrillicchart/
Checking for homographs, copy the suspicious text here : https://www.textmagic.com/free-tools/unicode-detector
[/li][/list]

[size=12pt][b]Detecting ICO pumping/bumping services[/b][/size]
[list][li]Those services are trying to keep specific ANN thread on the first page by posting in different forms every single day. I have reported quite some of those rule-breakers but most of the time those a bot accounts. There are different patterns to look for, most of the time are some "conversations" between different users quoting each other but posting only once per day. Usually those are accounts with 30-40 posts and it's really easy to be spotted by checking the post history. They have posts in the same thread every day, sometimes they are pumping more then 2-3 ICO simultaneously. [/li][/list]
*See an video [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3831432.msg37354009#msg37354009]example [/url][b][sup]1[/sup][/b]


[size=12pt][b]Detecting activity which is not against the rules but is punishable by DT tagging[/b][/size].[list]
[li][b]Reporting account selling[/b] Since it's not handled by the mod's and selling accounts it is not against the rules, no need to user "Report to mods" button for it. Buying an account has high risk of getting yourself scammed, also a lot of scammers trying to hide their identity behind an established account with positive trust score. So such (potential) trades are handled by the DTs. Reporting is done here... link [/li]
[li][b]Reporting Merit abuse [/b] As merit system came, almost everyone is hunting for it. So came the abusers too. If you do not understand the system yet check this[url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2534500.0#post_guide_merit] link[/url] It is not moderated by the forum staff, and again the TD's are taking care of shady merit behavior, like exchange of merit between accounts, meriting low quality posts, trading merit. etc. Reporting is done here [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2896910.0]Suspected users that are abusing merit 3.0[/url] using a special format
*Report form see in [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3831432.msg37354009#msg37354009]Examples [/url][b][sup]2[/sup][/b]
[/li]
[li][b]Reporting Alt accounts [/b] Having an Alt accounts is not against the rules as well, but you have to make it public, like leave a comment in your trust page that you own the accounts, and they are all related. There are specific rules in the most bounty/sig campaigns that you cannot joint with multiple accounts, only one account allowed so if those rules are broken you can report or there is a connection between accounts and its not officially announced you can report it here. [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.0]Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List Mk III (2018 Q3)[/url] 
*Report form see in [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3831432.msg37354009#msg37354009]Examples [/url][b][sup]3[/sup][/b]
[/li]
[/list]

[size=12pt][b]Additional Resources and tips[/b][/size]
Many examples for the above mentioned descriptions can be found in my [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2977866.0] List of Rule-Breakers[/url]. You can use it as a reference until I finish the guide.
[list]
[li] [url=https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php]ModLog[/url]. Moderation Activity log [/li]
[li] [url=https://bitcointalk.org/seclog.php]SecLog[/url] Users change passwords activity log [/li]
[li] [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=reportlist;mine]Report History[/url]. History of your reports. Note> not everyone has access only those with 300 or more good reports.[/li]
[/list]
[hr]
This guide is under construction. I just posted in the raw format so I can edit it from everywhere I login :)
Hope it will be helpful.

[hr]
Links for personal reference >
[url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2977866.0] List of Rule-Breakers..[/url] | [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2534500.0] Comprehensive guide to Bitcointalk.[/url] | [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3108981.0]One (1) Merit point to Rank-up Service[/url] | [url=http://dev.martinlawrence.ca/]BitcoinTalk Public Information Project (BPIP)[/url]

[TheBeardedBaby]

~

Thank you man, just tested it and updated the OP.
Finally got rid of those closing List tags, it took me quite some time to research even I use a Notepad++  to be sure there were no open tags but gave up at the end. They are somehow auto-generated if you have an open list tag somewhere, idk just crazy
Thanks for the help again.

[xtraelv]

A trick to search for plagiarism:

While searching for the whole text with google often does the trick. I also use:

https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker

https://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker

A really good (paid) plagiarism checker is: https://www.quetext.com

I often look for key phrases on google rather than the whole text - especially if it contains unusual spelling mistakes, poor grammar or an unusual phrase.

If you use hyphens "with your text" it will look for that specific phrase in that order.

The forum specific search work well using that method.
https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=016660200577587308545%3Aesf40ml9aag&ie=UTF-8&q=&sa=Google+search#gsc.tab=0

A good example of this is:

Searching:
"Your plans are clear and very transparent."

Would get all these results:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4765022.0

A trick to search for alts is to use:

Their Bitcoin or Ethereum address for a search on the forum

https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=016660200577587308545%3Aesf40ml9aag&ie=UTF-8&q=&sa=Google+search#gsc.tab=0

Keep in mind that very recent posts may not be indexed yet till later.

Also using their social media accounts to search. Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.
Spammers often use the same social media accounts in bounties because they have 5000 verified "friends".
So by searching for their social media account on bitcointalk you will often find their alts.

A good example of that method is here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4885385.msg44008042#msg44008042

Then use "ctrl" F and your search query to find it quickly on that page.
Often heavily spammed threads have a lot of deletions. So if you don't find it on that page - go back one or two pages with your search because posts may have been deleted since google indexed the pages.

If one of the alts has plagiarized it can result in all the alts getting banned if the alts are known.

A good way to detect spam groups:

Sometimes spammers use a cascade to "have a conversation". It is also a really good way to detect who their fellow spammers are.

A great technique is then to look for plagiarism among those spammers and get their accounts banned.

An example of this is here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4793054.0

Archive:

Archive important findings. Scammers often delete posts - if it is archived it is much harder to deny it later.

https://archive.org/web/

https://archive.fo/

[TheBeardedBaby]

Bump with a reminder to update the OP when I have the time.
I just added info on how to filter patrol to show posts only from a chosen board.
I need to make some more updates soon.

[White Christmas]

Just to inform you guys that there is a Filipino version of this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154578.msg51476197#msg51476197

Thank you @iasenko for allowing me to spread this helpful guide to my local board.

[TheBeardedBaby]

Just a bump

[Lafu]

To spot possible Malware links behind Wallet download links use the quote function !

For example its possible it looks like that :

Code:

Windows
[url=https://github.com/projects-mynt/mynt/releases/download/6.1.2/mynt-6.1.2-win64.zip]https://github.com/project-mynt/mynt/releases/download/6.1.2/mynt-6.1.2-win64.zip[/url]

What you can read is the normal real Github download Link .

With the quote function you can see that the real github link is replaced with an fake github link with malware.

Read it exactly and you can see that there is a difference , the Fake one " /projects-mynt/ "  and here the right one " /project-mynt/ " !

If you find something like this , its to 99% Malware or Trojan software what you download !

Hope this Helps also to Spot this things .

[TheBeardedBaby]

To spot possible Malware links behind Wallet download links use the quote function !

~

That's great tip buddy. I'll definitely add it the guide in the near future. I was wondering how the hell you detect so many scammers all the time, now I know your secret

[Sohyun Park]

Also, if we find any account which is doing copy paste work we can report to this thread where moderators take care of the report:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0

Hope this is useful.