Recent Onslaught of Bots?

[Pumpkinfrost]

I've noticed an increase in bots, too. I wonder what the deal is.

[Lockheart_fox]

Blue Beastie

Lidke

There is always going to be a bot problem where there is RL profit to be made.

Profit? Where? Linking to practically dead sites and porn that one time? gonk
I think they're just trying to have some kind of fun. whee

Nope I got into trouble once making fun of a bot and someone took it the wrong way and got me banned. Lucky one of the Mods was online and I had to explain what happen and three days later I got my account back also a warring not to do it again. So my advise to you all don't make fun at a bot or you will be banned.

[Chibi Halo]

Are they really bots though? Don't they have it set up so you have to enter a captcha when making a new account now? I don't really think they're bots here on Gaia though. If they were true bots they'd look like this. I wonder how many people remember that lovely "user" avatar.

I've noticed something when it comes to botting lately though (this is on other social sites mind you). They seem to be all about making money from home now. Botting on a lot of social sites and apps is becoming a very big problem and it seems to have increased on sites and apps that are on the Android platform. I'm beginning to wonder if this really is botting here on Gaia if it's not being done in a backdoor fashion through the Android App and the API for it.

[Milk Kittea]

Ugh, so many spam/abuse threads lately... I've been doing a lot of extra reporting. -__-
I worked as a support administrator for an online company for a few years.
I dealt with spam and/or bot accounts daily. This seems like someone is manually making the threads.
I just get the feeling that someone is typing in the sometimes clever/deceiving thread titles.

I keep suggesting that Gaia should look into investigating the IP address where the accounts are located.
They should easily be able to block the IP address, which will at least hinder spammers/botters from posting.
It won't stop the problem completely, but that's one way of temporarily dealing with the matter.

[Lidke]

Oh, trust me, there is. There are always going to be sites where you can buy gaia gold and items for money. (not that you should) They bot and steal existing accounts as means to get those things. Linking advertizements to other sites increases their profit.

TINSTAAFL

Lidke

There is always going to be a bot problem where there is RL profit to be made.

There's no profit to be made on Gaia. rofl

[Chibi Halo]

Milk Kittea

Ugh, so many spam/abuse threads lately... I've been doing a lot of extra reporting. -__-
I worked as a support administrator for an online company for a few years.
I dealt with spam and/or bot accounts daily. This seems like someone is manually making the threads.
I just get the feeling that someone is typing in the sometimes clever/deceiving thread titles.

I keep suggesting that Gaia should look into investigating the IP address where the accounts are located.
They should easily be able to block the IP address, which will at least hinder spammers/botters from posting.
It won't stop the problem completely, but that's one way of temporarily dealing with the matter.

You think they would but there's always the reasoning that the IP number might be used by more than one family member or it could be a free WIFI deal for a college dorm. They don't want to run the risk of blocking out people who aren't doing any wrong is usually what you hear when people ask about blocking IP addresses.

[Marshmlow1]

Pirate Captain Sushi

I assumed they were all phishing links and reported them for phishing.
A mod corrected me on that.
I don't know what's going on, but whatever it is... it looks fun.
I like it... kinda. Lifts some boredom from this place.

I can agree..I still remember when bots kept making topics, linking to a fake gaia site, to put your password in lol Back before we actually had the option to opt out of being warned that we are following a link to leave gaia lol. And even during that, when it was new, becuase they though it would make it easier.

And all that happened was everyone giving the OP props, on making a very legidimate looking page, with a convincing url. The page was easy, it was the url, you had to sell properly lol But everyone was away that if they had to put their password in after following a link, it was a phisher lol

[Milk Kittea]

Chibi Halo

Milk Kittea

Ugh, so many spam/abuse threads lately... I've been doing a lot of extra reporting. -__-
I worked as a support administrator for an online company for a few years.
I dealt with spam and/or bot accounts daily. This seems like someone is manually making the threads.
I just get the feeling that someone is typing in the sometimes clever/deceiving thread titles.

I keep suggesting that Gaia should look into investigating the IP address where the accounts are located.
They should easily be able to block the IP address, which will at least hinder spammers/botters from posting.
It won't stop the problem completely, but that's one way of temporarily dealing with the matter.

You think they would but there's always the reasoning that the IP number might be used by more than one family member or it could be a free WIFI deal for a college dorm. They don't want to run the risk of blocking out people who aren't doing any wrong is usually what you hear when people ask about blocking IP addresses.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
To avoid that, my team & I would go through every account linked to the IP to view all the activity on each account.
That gave us an idea whether or not there was an actual member of the community located at the address.
Every IP address has a story/history, so investigating it after a certain amount of spam is always a good idea.

Also, if a valid member ever comes forward about the blocked address, the block can always be removed.

[Chibi Halo]

Milk Kittea

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
To avoid that, my team & I would go through every account linked to the IP to view all the activity on each account.
That gave us an idea whether or not there was an actual member of the community located at the address.
Every IP address has a story/history, so investigating it after a certain amount of spam is always a good idea.

Also, if a valid member ever comes forward about the blocked address, the block can always be removed.

That is something they should be doing for instances like this but I'm not certain if they have enough in house Admins at the level someone like Sisky is at to be spending the amount of time required to do a thorough checking of suspect accounts. That could be part of the reason why they haven't started doing something like that yet. It's a shame that the economy in California is still bad enough that they might not be able to afford a decent customer care and response team expansion.

[VKiera]

I heard about the bot issues recently in the forums, but frankly I run into bots so often in zomg I just roll my eyes and move along.

Though in zomg, botting has always been an issue, when I get bored I go down to VG and taunt animated over to kill botters, it's always epicly funny, but jokes aside, I'm going to assume the recent outbreak of forum spam is from trolls and not bots.

Just report and move along I say.

[Milk Kittea]

Chibi Halo

Milk Kittea

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
To avoid that, my team & I would go through every account linked to the IP to view all the activity on each account.
That gave us an idea whether or not there was an actual member of the community located at the address.
Every IP address has a story/history, so investigating it after a certain amount of spam is always a good idea.

Also, if a valid member ever comes forward about the blocked address, the block can always be removed.

That is something they should be doing for instances like this but I'm not certain if they have enough in house Admins at the level someone like Sisky is at to be spending the amount of time required to do a thorough checking of suspect accounts. That could be part of the reason why they haven't started doing something like that yet. It's a shame that the economy in California is still bad enough that they might not be able to afford a decent customer care and response team expansion.

I definitely agree. I only tackled extreme cases of spam on the website I worked for because of the heavy workload every day.
It's something that I hope the Gaia staff at least has in their notes to think about.
As far as we know, it's possible they actually already do that & we aren't aware of it.

[Gotham Impostor]

I haven't noticed I don't think, what's the harm in a bot other than annoyance?
You have a pretty avi btw

[Halfling Heroine]

Regardless of whether they're bots or not, they're a nuisance. All we can do for now is report them and move on~

[Repo Beast]

Lidke

There is always going to be a bot problem where there is RL profit to be made.

Love Vault Boy

[Hello Kisty]

These have always been here and always will be. Just report and move on. 3nodding