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I had a look at badges today, and in the list of recent badges I saw a display name that struck me as odd and spammy, that just got rewarded the Autobiographer badge.

I then took a look at users that recently got awarded this badge (check the above link), and noticed a lot of spammy accounts. These are 1 rep users, that just uploaded a (company)logo as their profile picture, and filled their about me with advertisement. Often accompanied by a link to some company in their website field.

These profiles where in multiple languages, and for companies from multiple locations. It almost looks an organised effort.

I manually flagged the first few users by raising a modflag on one of my own posts, by lack of content from the spammy users.

Taking into account the tremendous amount of flags that are recently being cast due to all the heated discussions here on MSE, I think it could take a while before my flags are handled, and I respect that. But are there any other, more automated processes, that deal with this type of users?

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  • Strongly related, maybe duplicate: Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 9:12
  • @Glorfindel maybe this is even more relavant, but perhaps outdated. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105218/…
    – Luuklag
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 9:14
  • General consens is not to waste moderator time on that issue, there are more important tasks for the mods.
    – Sir Cornflakes
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 9:17
  • @jknappen this is not a FR, so why should this be a duplicate?
    – Luuklag
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 9:22
  • Because of the content match, I don't care for the tags.
    – Sir Cornflakes
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 9:32
  • Interesting comment from Bhargav Rao on one of the linked posts: "If any moderator stumbles upon this post, there's now a way to detect users with spam in their profile on creation. You can jump into Mobotics and add your site to the list. – Bhargav Rao Apr 17 '18 at 0:23"
    – Luuklag
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 11:01
  • it is just as with any profile: flag one of your own posts, explain what is wrong and link to the troublesome userprofile.
    – rene
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 11:13
  • @rene there simply are too many to do that. SE ought to have some sort of automation for this.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 11:14

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A good catch, but on the other hand: if a tree falls in a forest, but nobody is around to hear it ...

Meaning: sure, some such profiles are in fact spam, like krygen2019 who is brand new, and does nothing but promote some product:

... Need to know how Krygen XL functions? Here is the solution to your inquiry as I have referenced above, it is the best male upgrade supplement

But without you telling us about that, why would anyone get spammed, just by the profile existing? So, yes, it is annoying that such profiles exist, but "it existing" won't "spam" anybody. Because nobody will notice it.

And just to add some thought for thought: what about another recent entry from your that badge list. It doesn't such much either, just an account that has multiple +1 accounts on various network sites. But is it spam? So alone the description "has a company logo and doesn't do much else" isn't a clear indiction of a problem.

I think the essence here is: there is no way to easily flag a profile. But that topic has been discussed plenty of times.

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