@theymos, what to do with the account farms of Brand New users with 0 posts??

[TheBeardedBaby]

It's not the first time we see a cluster of accounts created in short time span with similar structure of the user names with 0 posts.

Those are most likely a bot created account which are put on hodl to spread their spamshit when needed.

We have also seen such bursts of spam from such clusters of accounts a few time before.

I'll give examples when I get back to my PC, I have plenty.. just check the last 10 pages of my CLUB thread

Now, there is nothing in the rules against creating multiple accounts, that's OK, but when we are talking about 100s of accounts thing are getting more serious.

We cannot report them because:

1. No way to report a brand new account which has no posts. I've requested a few times before to be added report button in the profile page, when we had the problem with bumping bots which deleted their posts in just a few seconds.

2. There is no rule we can step on to report them even if we have that button.

So what we do create new rules or add them to a list to be monitored every now and then for activity and wait until they burst spamming.

Maybe more general solution can be made. Restrict the creation of new accounts from a specific IP allowing only one account per 24 hours.

You tell me what to do and I'll do it.

[Quickseller]

If they start creating spam, report their posts and they should get nuked.

[TheBeardedBaby]

If they start creating spam, report their posts and they should get nuked.

Yeah, but see this post : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4720640.msg51429838#msg51429838

And the posts below, they have 0 posts you cannot report them when you detect them. You have to make a list and keep eye on it but they are many.

I'll pull the data from my thread and the number are scarry, trust me. I don't like to post things without proof, but I have. If you choose a random date and check all the registrations (around 6-700) you will find a pack of accounts with similar structure of the usernames. Those are like between 20- 50 sometimes more than 100 per day. There are also small packs of 3-5 upto 10 account.

It's big variety but they are there .. waiting...

[Quickseller]

I don’t think theymos wants to ban accounts based on this alone.

Perhaps if you start to see a decently sized cluster of these accounts get banned for spamming, theymos could ban any alts of the cluster of accounts getting banned.

[Lafu]

There is nothing we can do about them even they starting post some crap !

[TheBeardedBaby]

Yeah, ok but then this :

Maybe more general solution can be made. Restrict the creation of new accounts from a specific IP allowing only one account per 24 hours.

[suchmoon]

Some (or many) of those accounts could have been proxy-banned. E.g. someone tries to create an account, gets hit with the evil IP fee, changes IP, tries again, leaving lots of abandoned accounts in the process. Perhaps unpaid accounts should be removed after 1 month.

[Jet Cash]

I can't remember - is email confirmation required from unique email accounts for registration?

[seoincorporation]

Yeah, ok but then this :

Maybe more general solution can be made. Restrict the creation of new accounts from a specific IP allowing only one account per 24 hours.

Hello iasenko, i don't think this is the right solution and i will explain why.

Users can't create accounts with TOR or with popular Proxys, they should pay some BTC if they want to do it that way. But people can create accounts with VPNs for free, so if theymos change the code to 1 account each 24h for each IP, then the spammer only needs more VPNs, if he has 20 VPNs he could create 140 accounts each week. And the spammer wins again.

I was thinking of another solution to this... The account who are created and put on hold should be banned in the next 4 days if they don't post anything.

[LoyceV]

Some (or many) of those accounts could have been proxy-banned. E.g. someone tries to create an account, gets hit with the evil IP fee, changes IP, tries again, leaving lots of abandoned accounts in the process. Perhaps unpaid accounts should be removed after 1 month.

I don't have data on this, but I don't expect accounts with an evil fee to be activated just to start spamming. I would suggest to add an evil fee to all Brand New accounts if they haven't posted in the first month after they were created. But: I don't have data on this either: how often do legit users make their first post a month after registration, and how often do spammers activate old accounts?

[khaled0111]

I can't remember - is email confirmation required from unique email accounts for registration?

Unfortunately, no..
It is possible to create a new account using a fake email.

[suchmoon]

Some (or many) of those accounts could have been proxy-banned. E.g. someone tries to create an account, gets hit with the evil IP fee, changes IP, tries again, leaving lots of abandoned accounts in the process. Perhaps unpaid accounts should be removed after 1 month.

I don't have data on this, but I don't expect accounts with an evil fee to be activated just to start spamming.

That's my point, yes. I'm just thinking these accounts should be removed or marked somehow - to reduce iasenko's concerns

[franckuestein]

-snip-

I was thinking of another solution to this... The account who are created and put on hold should be banned in the next 4 days if they don't post anything.

I don't think it's a good solution. Too restrictive. A lot of mid-term fair accounts would be deleted because they don't post anything in 4, 5, 6, 7... days.

Spam is one thing and inactivity is another one but IMHO we can't force people to post in order to don't get banned.

[Csmiami]

-snip-

I was thinking of another solution to this... The account who are created and put on hold should be banned in the next 4 days if they don't post anything.

I don't think it's a good solution. Too restrictive. A lot of mid-term fair accounts would be deleted because they don't post anything in 4, 5, 6, 7... days.

Spam is one thing and inactivity is another one but IMHO we can't force people to post in order to don't get banned.

And what about mixing both your ideas? A user can register and mainly read different threads to get started before shitposting, and after some days/weeks start posting. But when doing this, he is most likely logged in.

In the event of one (or many) brand new account that do not post anything and are not logged in in X days, that ban you are talking about could be feasible

[TheBeardedBaby]

Another concern is that some accounts are created only to send PMs.

It's OK for me, I just want to warn theymos that there are many processes going on under the surface and people don't see them until they get hit by a problem.

There are many accounts developed in the offtopic section, mostly in the Russian Local. Those accounts suddenly start bumping different threads, that is nothing new.
People are selling newbie and Jr. member accounts - I don't see the point of it but it is still happening.


Another thing is that those account maybe posted something and then deleted it. If you go into the ANN section you will find many threads with accounts with 1 post.

[Thirdspace]

Restrict the creation of new accounts from a specific IP allowing only one account per 24 hours.

1 registration per IP per 24 hours is a bit overkill, perhaps hourly limit?

Some (or many) of those accounts could have been proxy-banned. E.g. someone tries to create an account, gets hit with the evil IP fee, changes IP, tries again, leaving lots of abandoned accounts in the process. Perhaps unpaid accounts should be removed after 1 month.

I don't have data on this, but I don't expect accounts with an evil fee to be activated just to start spamming. I would suggest to add an evil fee to all Brand New accounts if they haven't posted in the first month after they were created.

based on the naming scheme, we can tell those were created by a bot not someone genuinely new to forum
I agree on adding a small amount of evil unit, but applied to accounts created from abused IP (mass regs within a period)
a few real users will be affected but it will prevent bot from easily reg many accounts from a single IP
then add another mechanism to reduce/remove evil fee by having the real user actively browsing the forum

[Joel_Jantsen]

Maybe more general solution can be made. Restrict the creation of new accounts from a specific IP allowing only one account per 24 hours.

That is literally the most illogical solution to the problem. I'm assuming there is already some sort of IP based restrictions on accounts which have a history of being accessed from "evil ips". These are the most commonly abused VPN's and free proxies I guess. It's not very hard to find other such VPN's and create an account from a new IP address. Tor even better and if the ISP is known to assign dynamic IP addresses then account creation becomes easier. Theymos can't certainly keep an eye on every IPV4/IPV5 address generated.

I would suggest to add an evil fee to all Brand New accounts if they haven't posted in the first month after they were created.

Every punishment doesn't have to end with an evil fee. Maybe disable the accounts or send them a warning email that if they don't post by a particular date, their account will be perma-banned by the system?

[btcsmlcmnr]

I don't have data on this, but I don't expect accounts with an evil fee to be activated just to start spamming. I would suggest to add an evil fee to all Brand New accounts if they haven't posted in the first month after they were created. But: I don't have data on this either: how often do legit users make their first post a month after registration, and how often do spammers activate old accounts?

If spammers got issues with required fees due to evil IPs, they mostly abandoned those accounts (I agreed with you). I don't think spammers will activate their old accounts if all of their current accounts actively work fine (spam) in the forum, and have not been banned or nuked. However, with such plagiabot's productive reports, and the recent banwave with more than 82xxx permanenent bans (above Newbie), I believe that in the future, they will wake up more brandnew and newbie accounts. Legit users might or might not post in their first months there. Sometimes, they visit the forum, created account, just to read first, and maybe two or three months later, their first posts made. There is no reason to assume that legit users mostly made their first posts within first month after account registrations.

[bitart]

...
And what about mixing both your ideas? A user can register and mainly read different threads to get started before shitposting, and after some days/weeks start posting. But when doing this, he is most likely logged in.

In the event of one (or many) brand new account that do not post anything and are not logged in in X days, that ban you are talking about could be feasible

I like this idea, if someone wants to read, there's no need to register.
If he/she wants to post/ask something, he/she needs to register, but in this case a post will follow the registration pretty soon.
What happens if the brand new account (without any post) is banned because of inactivity after a while (e.g. 2 weeks)? Nothing special, the user won't lose anything but the username itself because it's banned and not deleted.
We could delete the inactive brand new accounts (without any post), in order to help users to register the username again if they were deleted because of inactivity but they really want to post with the choosen username in the future, this could be a second chance for those who are not account farmers...