Timeline for Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 1, 2017 at 23:09 | comment | added | Shog9 | This is definitely a good approach. Based on what I've seen in the past, these groups are using search engines as their proof of work - so if they can't get the pages they've spammed into Google, they're not gonna get paid. That's eventually gonna make this a waste of time no matter how cheaply they're able to post it - but if we also take steps to make it more expensive (that is, more tedious: IP-blocks / rate-limits, content checks, automated account deletions would all slow them down to a degree) then we may actually discourage further abuse. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 14:18 | comment | added | Servy | @6'whitemale Not letting them add links prevents them from giving SEO to links, but these profiles are full of phone numbers and addresses and other such information, along with keywords that the spammer wants them to be found with, which is being indexed. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 9:20 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | @Mokubai: I'm certainly not against taking measures to prevent those spam profiles from being created in the first place. That said, this form of phone number spam is purely an attempt at search engine index stuffing, so if we can keep Google from seeing it, we'll have solved 99% of the problem. Nobody's likely to call a tech support / insurance scam number because they saw it on a Stack Exchange user profile; the goal of the s[pc]ammers is to get those numbers to show up when someone Googles for "car insurance UK" or something similar. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 8:22 | comment | added | Mokubai | While de-emphasising them for Google is a Good Thing and would likely reduce the level of "win" for the spammers in the long term it doesn't really change the fact that they are easily accessible to users, easy to stumble upon and apparently easy to create en-masse. Chances are they'll just keep doing it as long as it confers even the slightest public presence regardless of whether we defend Google from the tide of crap. We need to deal with the problem here, not just before it heads out the door to your friendly local search engine. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 6:38 | comment | added | user315433 | Some such logic already exists: links in site profiles of users with <= 10 rep are rendered as plain text. Adding noindex to them makes perfect sense. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 4:22 | history | answered | Ilmari Karonen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |