Tool it may help spot abusers/alts

[Piggy]

Hi,

i had made this tool visualization of the Merit Network to find merit sources:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4584759.0

But actually found out it may be good to find abusers as well. This visualization show the merit connections happened between users and in one of these version i marked also the red trust level for each user:

In here you can see who was red trusted(red), who is not(azure) and who is trusted (green) Updated to Sunday 1st of July

Link to the tool below: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json



Now if you move along the peripheral area of this circle you see in the picture, you will notice a lot of points (users) isolated from the rest, these could be transactions happened between alts or abuse in general(some in fact were already spotted as you can see):

Example 1:

Example 2:






If anybody has the time and will to go through these would be quite convenient as you can see immediately:

• Suspicius exchanges of merits between users
• If the user was already red trusted
• If any people he had some exchange was red trusted
• Clicking on the node you get information about rank - merit sent and received in general

If you have any question ask.


More over: when you have identified some person of interest, you can use this other tool to output a list of the merit transactions with clickable links to the user profiles and message merited in the forum

Go here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

You can specify in the last line the name of the user you want to search for ( in this example theymos)

Code:

 WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit sent from the user

Code:

SELECT 
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.fromid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit received from theymos

Code:

SELECT 
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.toid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

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[mdayonliner]

I am surprised to see it on the Reputation section. Isn't it more appropriate on the meta section?

[Piggy]

I am surprised to see it on the Reputation section. Isn't it more appropriate on the meta section?

I was thinking to make it in here because it may be a place where people doing investigations read and they could make the most out of it. In any case if it makes more sense to have it in Meta let's move it in there, as long as the "Merit investigators" have a chance to know there are tools to make their work easier.

[khufuking]

Wow man this is just amazing, this visualization is indeed can link accounts to each others too, this is a tool not just for bust Merit abusing but might be really helpful in connecting accounts with each others, in some cases if not most we will find that what lay behind Merit abuse is multi accounting, a blue circle surrounded by only red circles is a good indicating that this blue circle is even have a connection with a lot of tagged accounts (raise a red flag) or this blue circle is trying to boost its state with tagged bought accounts .

[Piggy]

Look for example this case:

i went here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization

and found this:


then go to see the same in here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json



Run this query in here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

Code:

SELECT 
date,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid,
merit,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1)
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.fromid
WHERE UserData.Username like "hrbt"

Result:

2018-02-17T16:20:47   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1349874   15   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2495721.msg30181948#msg30181948
2018-02-16T13:50:44   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1031556   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2728315.msg30370848#msg30370848
2018-02-15T21:15:19   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1005975   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2728315.msg30354958#msg30354958
2018-02-14T16:33:51   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1192328   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2211728.msg30188246#msg30188246

Done.

[mdayonliner]

I was thinking to make it in here because it may be a place where people doing investigations read and they could make the most out of it. In any case if it makes more sense to have it in Meta let's move it in there, as long as the "Merit investigators" have a chance to know there are tools to make their work easier.

May be this topic worth having both in Meta and this section.

If I am not wrong then most of the "merit investigators" do hangout in the meta section and they have notification on for that board. I recently activated my email notification for Reputation section where for the meta section, my email notification was on from the very beginning. I wanted to give you a real example, it's up to you to chose the right board.

However, I have seen somewhere a mod said you can have same topic in more than one board. May be - you want to look for the reference or if any mod gives a feedback in here then it would be nice.

By the way, I forgot to mention - Good work again.