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(Okay, sarcasm aside) I was browsing through the badge list a while ago and got an eyeful of this:

enter image description here   enter image description here

I couldn't get them all in one screenshot, but these are the (spam) accounts I've seen so far (I suspect there are more, but they probably got pushed down the list by the time I had a look): Is A Red Car More Expensive On, Having Two Car Insurance Polic, Types Of Car Insurance Uk Comp, Ethical Car Insurance Companie, Cheap Fiat 500 Car Insurance, etc.

All their profiles are pretty similar, see below. That account was created today. The oldest one I found (the "Cheap Fiat" one) is two days old.

enter image description here

I checked their "activity"; no comments or posts. Clearly these geniuses are aware that actually posting this crap on the site (questions/answers/comments) isn't going to work (Tips hat to Mods). Their profiles are spam.

While I was working on this post, I figured something like this must be going on on other SEs, and sure enough...I was right:

I haven't checked further, but this appears to be a pan SE problem.

I'm not posting on Meta.SE (since this post was originally for Chem. meta... but then it blew up into something else). I trust that our Mods can raise this issue there (Meta.SE) and deal with this plague more effectively then me.

Tip to Mods: I suppose if you type "car" and search for users, you might get them all (but I don't think users with 1 rep show up).

Q: The next time I see something like this happen, how do I get a Mod's attention quicker? I can't custom flag any posts, because there are no posts to flag. ._.
Once this mess is dealt with, you can give me a medal ;-)

It turns out this was a known issue (post is 6 days old), courtesy, user bummi.
So much for my medal :(

Looks like the accounts I linked have all been purged (the Mods work fast)! Mithrandir pointed out that new users can be looked up here.

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    $\begingroup$ Related spam-profiles-are-getting-my-goat-could-we-have-better-tools-for-mods-to-deal-w $\endgroup$
    – bummi
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 7:58
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    $\begingroup$ This is a known problem. They're on every. Single. Site. There are like 15k on Super User, and each one of those has an account on a random other site. I've been destroying them over on Literature, but I'm pretty sure that the SE staff are going to do something about it... eventually. $\endgroup$
    – Mithical
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 8:16
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    $\begingroup$ Also, here's an easy way to see new users: chemistry.stackexchange.com/… $\endgroup$
    – Mithical
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 8:19
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    $\begingroup$ Re: flagging folks with no posts: you can always flag one of your posts. Mods will be able the issue from there. $\endgroup$
    – J F
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 11:50
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    $\begingroup$ @JF Hmm, you're right, doesn't look like it can be done any other way. (Though I'm generally uncomfortable with flagging my own posts). Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – paracetamol
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 11:58
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    $\begingroup$ @bummi Dammit! They beat me to it! :O $\endgroup$
    – paracetamol
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 12:03
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    $\begingroup$ You should be uncomfortable flagging your own posts. There are few exceptions where we actually need to do something with your posts, and most of those actions are not positive. If you need to talk to a mod: Use Chemistry Chat - the next mod usually is not far away. If you can't use that, all the mods have plenty of posts here on meta. Just leave a comment on one of our posts, we will come back to you. (cc @JF) $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 13:25

1 Answer 1

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We are aware of this. The team is aware of this. There will be a solution.

I have heard of that issue sometime last week, but found it not pressing enough to investigate, or make a fuzz about it. It hit SU the hardest with some 10k+ accounts. I know that the team is working on solutions. While this is certainly a nuisance, at the moment there is nothing that we should do as moderators, except for destroying the users. We will do that whenever we have the time.

Purging those users is of course annoying and not a nice task, so please don't make it worse by flagging your own posts. Those flags will show up on your profile and artificially inflate your flag-count for nothing. And then you might show up in the hitlist for most flagged users making the whole tool a little less useful.

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