Is the evil score system working as expected?

[hosseinimr93]

If you don't know how evil score system works, click here to read the post made by theymos.


In the past few weeks, you have probably noticed the large number of posts made by spammers including links to live sport streaming websites.
Their posts get deleted, but they don't stop. They create new accounts and spam again.

If you don't know what I am talking about, you can use the tool created by LoyceV to see the list of bad posts. Just search for one of following words.

Code:

gitlab
game.tv
deviantart
247sports
raftingsort
ec.europa
battlefy

I just searched for words above (using CTRL+F) in the list of bad posts and found 1100 posts.
Note that these 1100 posts have been made only in a period of 14 days. Also, there are many other posts that are not showing in the list of bad posts. Because in many of their posts, they are using links to reddit. For example, this post.

I guess that these spammers are making at least 2,000 posts weekly.

How do they manage to create that high number of accounts and make posts without paying evilness fee?
Why don't their IP addresses become evil? Is the evil score system working as expected?
Even if they use several VPNs, TOR browser, etc, they shouldn't be able to create that high number of accounts easily.

Theymos (or any admin, if you have access to IP logs and evil scores), can you please check their IP addresses and the evil scores associated to them? Is the evil score system working?
Below is the list of a few of these spammers.  There are hundreds of accounts.

medomedoed
turfoptimization
iyouyoued
Miyaoxc
Raseldomingoss
hdshshdsh444
Mosat
Mikehasan
Danielphillipss
aolanisjena

[1715067575]

1715067575

[jackg]

If you've got enough determination and a few VPN's at your disposal then you could circumvent the evil fee as has been done here...

Theymos might be better off finding a copy of this data like LoyceV created and mining it for similarities in order to run a heuristic on posts but that might cause a problem for authentic users.

[Vod]

If you've got enough determination and a few VPN's at your disposal then you could circumvent the evil fee as has been done here...

Actually, the scammers selling the AWS credits make it so easy for them to run a script and deploy 10 VPN servers and run them till the credits expire.  :/

[Upgrade00]

Even if they use several VPNs, TOR browser, etc, they shouldn't be able to create that high number of accounts easily.

If they switch to one free location with no evilness attached to the IP, they can create multiple accounts at a go and spam the forum with that up until the IP gets blacklisted. After this they port to a different location and repeat.
The system seems to be working, but it's not possible to create a free one without loopholes that can be explored, so there has to be a trade off. Too much strictness could lead to a situation where honest users would be affected and discouraged from joining the forum.

Theymos (or any admin, if you have access to IP logs and evil scores), can you please check their IP addresses and the evil scores associated to them? Is the evil score system working?

If they are using a VPN, which is very likely, then this would not yield any result as the IP matches would be different from the actual location of the person behind the computer, except they log in without it after registering their accounts.

[mprep]

Not sure what his current thoughts are on the evil score system but back in 2015 he expressed the following opinion:

<...>
It also seems to show that the evil score system is working as expected: the vast majority of the Internet is not being forced to pay, and in the isolated sections where a registration fee is required, prohibitively-large fees are very rare.
<...>

The system is imperfect but it's pretty difficult to make an automated IP blacklist system more effective without accidentally hitting regular users in the crossfire. Furthermore, there's quite a few IP addresses and, as with many other goods, a lot of them are available on the open market (be it as part of a collection of proxies, VPNs, etc.). Unless you blacklist all of them (which would be a monumental task on its own), people (or bots) will find ways to slip through the cracks.