Junk accounts - what is it? Are they a threat? How to get rid of them?

[angel55]

There is a huge amount of accounts that were registered that haven't made a single post.  Perhaps those on es could get deleted as a lot of them contain usernames that others may wish to have.

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[wwzsocki]

Thank you for your answers @TytanowyJanusz, @Cryptovigi, @tbct_mt2, and other members.

I see that the scale of Junk Accounts keeps getting larger the longer we are talking.

Few posts above I have published a screen with my reports statistics to show that I tried my best to do something with this Junk Accounts from a longer time.

After thousands of reports, I just gave up because there was 10 new spam post after I managed to report one.

I have even taken part in a special group where we have cleaned spammy threads and reported them to mods for deletion.

All these efforts show no effect and finally, I just stopped to take any action after multiple reports of spammers account.

Despite everything, they were never banned because only spammed the forum and this is not a permaban misdeed.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

@wwzysocki I was thinking a lot how to fight against spammers, pseudo-goodposters and i came up with this thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136341.new#new
Hope you will like it. Of it's pilot competition. If it will work i'll host one by one.

[wwzsocki]

...Besides, I don't like the idea of tagging a user just because he is doing bounty and that in the near future he might sell his account or sell merit...

Not "because he is doing a bounty" only multiple social media campaigns at the same time (in the past or even now) and most of this accounts are not active from the time when bounties were not profitable anymore. Additionally, there are no normal posts in this junk accounts only signups to airdrops and bounty campaigns registrations.
Sometimes there are posts if such junk account takes part in a signature campaign (Level 3) but you will find nothing more as spam like "great project" or "to the moon".
Additionally, no merits awarded from other members in months of time or not active from a year or more.

This is what I meant not a normal member which takes a part in a signature campaign and writes quality posts.
I think is an obvious difference between these two types of accounts?

You just simplify too much @Stompix, this is not a discussion when you take a few words out of the context from my article, like the above quote.
I never said that I have something against regular, frequently active members who are involved in bounties or to tag them because of bounties, I am a bounty hunter by myself

Lately, @Theymos banned Yobit campaign and all spammers involved.
Today, if there is only a little more spam on the forum, we recognize this immediately because from almost a year there are no big bounties and spam is at the minimum, right now.
Two years ago such a Yobit campaign would have no impact on the forum because there were literally hundreds of such spammy campaigns and nobody would tag involved bounty hunters for spam. Additionally, I never heard about signature and participants ban, this is something new and I am happy that happened. Something can be done and now is the best time.

Don't let abusers the possibility to keep or sell this Junk Accounts in the future, when better times for cryptocurrencies come back and FOMO mania begins again.

[wwzsocki]

There is a huge amount of accounts that were registered that haven't made a single post.  Perhaps those on es could get deleted as a lot of them contain usernames that others may wish to have.

Here I can't agree.

No matter what if somebody registered then maybe he is actively reading but not posting. I don't see any threat in such accounts. Personally, I was reading this forum for almost 2 years before registering. I can imagine that there are people who are registered for a long time and haven't posted even once but maybe they use PM's and read the forum. You can never know only mods are able to see this and as I said: no threat they are harmful.

You will have to stay by your actual username which is quite catchy also   .

[wwzsocki]

Finally, something has been done and we are experiencing a wave of bans on the forum for plagiarism and other abuse of rules.

This is just great and the quality of the forum would be a lot higher without this junk accounts.

@LoyceV created a few great threads to keep up with banned members if somebody is involved in spam reporting for example.

This is a waste of time to report banned members posts, so check this: Banned users thread first if you need to know who is banned actually.

A wave of bans: 400 yesterday, 300 the day before. What changed?
Autobans (the week before) February 1
Autobans (the week before) March 1
Autobans (the week before) April 1

[bitart]

...
This is a waste of time to report banned members posts, so check this: Banned users thread first if you need to know who is banned actually.
...

This is the reason I would support to change the user's rank to 'Banned' instead of the Newbie, Sr. member etc. ranks, if the user has been already banned.
I know the whole forum would look horrible, because of the amount of the banned users, but it would be useful for those who are searching for proper information on the forum, they could quickly exlude the unnecessary posts from a topic

[wwzsocki]

This is the reason I would support to change the user's rank to 'Banned' instead of the Newbie, Sr. member etc. ranks, if the user has been already banned...

Fully agree with you. I don't know if a banned tag or maybe something else, but for sure one should easily see if the member is banned or not.

I think this is not a secret and should be easy to verify and today even when using BPIP.org is not easy to check banned users.

[bitart]

This is the reason I would support to change the user's rank to 'Banned' instead of the Newbie, Sr. member etc. ranks, if the user has been already banned...

Fully agree with you. I don't know if a banned tag or maybe something else, but for sure one should easily see if the member is banned or not.

I think this is not a secret and should be easy to verify and today even when using BPIP.org is not easy to check banned users.

Thanks for that
It has been proposed and mentioned several times but it seems that Theymos just don't want to implement this kind of feature in the near future (or ever)...

[wwzsocki]

...proposed and mentioned several times but it seems that Theymos just don't want to implement this kind of feature...

I just found that in BPIP.org, we can see if the user is banned, I have never seen this before.
 
Would be better to see this immediately here on the forum, but is better than nothing or to search in compilation threads of banned users, because it takes a lot of time.

The time is the key factor here. Nobody wants another tag or something, only to spare the time for everybody (members, moderators).

How many times did somebody report banned users posts, only because he wasn't aware of that fact?

Additional work and lost time, only because we miss a small feature.

[malevolent]

Would be better to see this immediately here on the forum, but is better than nothing or to search in compilation threads of banned users, because it takes a lot of time.

If you can't see it on a user's profile, you can Ctrl+F their user id in the modlog https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php, I think it goes 3 weeks back.

[wwzsocki]

If you can't see it on a user's profile, you can Ctrl+F their user id in the modlog https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php, I think it goes 3 weeks back.

Thank you @Malevolent this modlog works pretty good but only with recent bans (as you said is only 3 weeks).

In the last few days, I was using Bpip.org to check banned members and I have to say that this is so far the best method available.
I was working on a thread with a lot of spam and that is why I had to find the best way to check banned members.

Literally, I need 3 clicks to check this on Bpip.org which is ok. This is all about the time because every second is important when you work online.
Especially, when one is reporting multiple posts or members using the report button and additionally has to check them manually for a ban to avoid double work.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Additional work and lost time, only because we miss a small feature.

This has been discussed before, but theymos has never seemed keen to act on it. I've always kind of felt that it probably isn't great to display a banned tag to all users, as it would prejudice people against that account's posts, which could otherwise be entirely accurate and constructive, kind of the same way we don't display trust on every board. However, I think it should be displayed to all users who have reported >1000/3000/5000/whatever reports, as as you say, it would save a lot of time investigating and reporting already banned accounts.

Still, you can get your three clicks down to one if you install the BPIP Firefox or Chrome extension, which will put a link to each user's BPIP profile under their username: BPIP.org Chrome & FireFox Extension.

[wwzsocki]

...Still, you can get your three clicks down to one if you install the BPIP Firefox or Chrome extension, which will put a link to each user's BPIP profile under their username: BPIP.org Chrome & FireFox Extension.

Great suggestion o_e_l_e_o, I didn't know about this BPIP.org extension for Chrome & Firefox browsers.

With this extension checking, banned users take indeed only a single click and really works great but from few months I am using Brave as my main browser.

Anyways, I will try to use FireFox when I will be working on reports. Or maybe there is a way to get it working in Brave too?

[o_e_l_e_o]

I have only very briefly used Brave, so I can't give you a full answer here. However, since Brave is based on Chromium (the same framework that Chrome is based on), many Chrome extensions will also be compatible with Brave, and it should be as simple as installing them from the Chrome Web Store. Have a look here for some more information: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017909112-How-can-I-add-extensions-to-Brave

The Chrome Web Store link for the BPIP extension is here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bpiporg-chrome-extension/gnpadhillpjighiahdbjbjgihpilakda

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I personally do not mind accounts filled with posts with reports until they stick to the section created for this purpose.

Exactly.  There have been thousands of so-called "junk accounts" ever since I've been a member here, and as long as they're just posting their bounty information in that section, I could care less.  The only real problem with them is when their bounties require them to make posts on bitcointalk--and we all know that happens.

There's not much we can do about it anyway except to report garbage posts and hope the users get banned.  The recent mass banning of plagiarists was a godsend IMO, and the forum definitely needed a good housecleaning. 

[wwzsocki]

...The Chrome Web Store link for the BPIP extension is here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bpiporg-chrome-extension/gnpadhillpjighiahdbjbjgihpilakda

Thank you for this info I will check it and hope it will work in Brave.

...The recent mass banning of plagiarists was a godsend IMO, and the forum definitely needed a good housecleaning.  

Indeed when the wave of bans started I felt like something is finally done with "Junk Accounts". All these bots are making great work cleaning this forum and the difference is obvious.
Two years ago I was daily reporting dozens of posts only when I was just reading the forum, not for a purpose. Lately, this is only a few reports in a week, which makes a huge difference in reading and content quality. Of course, I still try to avoid spammy sections and threads.