mmm4444bot
Super Moderator
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2005
- Messages
- 10,962
For the second year running, recognition for the source of most SPAM on this site goes to India. (Don't worry Philippines; you're right up there, too.)
And, again, this doesn't jive with global statistics. The vast majority of all reported SPAM on the planet comes from Ukraine.
(CLICK THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE)
During the past year, I manually reported and banned 843 members posting SPAM -- for stuff like resorts providing sex with children, heroin by mail, forged employment histories built to order, Russian pornography, all manner of academic cheating services including PhD diplomas, to name only a very few examples.
269 of these members posted from India. That's 32%. (I banned an additional 78 fake members from India who never posted anything but had toxic credentials.)
Old-timers here may recall when we used to get 30-50 SPAMs a day. At that time, most of the SPAM here did come from Russia and Ukraine. The SPAM rate dropped substantially, however, after I began contacting businesses directly to ask why they paid people to plaster their URLs all over the place (interfering with the tutor/student relationship and possibly supporting forced-child labor). I also provide documentation that their business name, address, phone number and SPAM had been reported to databases. My hope was that many businesses would complain to whomever they had hired to increase traffic to their site or would cancel their agreement outright, so that, in turn, the name freemathhelp would eventually find its way down the supply chain to the actual spammers as not a good site to abuse. After all, once credentials get into akismet (one example), over 200,000 forums are able to reject registration attempts or purge those who've already joined.
Aggressive reporting works. For two years now, the daily SPAM rate has been closer to five. This bar chart shows 2017 data.
(CLICK THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE)
Ukraine apparently gets the message; India, not so much, yet.
Also of note is a substantial increase during the past three months of spammers posing as math students, posting valid questions (sometimes even showing some work!), but it's just a ploy. Their profiles contain SPAM. So, if you reply to a "student" today and find the thread missing tomorrow, this could be why.
Happy New Year. ?
And, again, this doesn't jive with global statistics. The vast majority of all reported SPAM on the planet comes from Ukraine.
(CLICK THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE)
During the past year, I manually reported and banned 843 members posting SPAM -- for stuff like resorts providing sex with children, heroin by mail, forged employment histories built to order, Russian pornography, all manner of academic cheating services including PhD diplomas, to name only a very few examples.
269 of these members posted from India. That's 32%. (I banned an additional 78 fake members from India who never posted anything but had toxic credentials.)
Old-timers here may recall when we used to get 30-50 SPAMs a day. At that time, most of the SPAM here did come from Russia and Ukraine. The SPAM rate dropped substantially, however, after I began contacting businesses directly to ask why they paid people to plaster their URLs all over the place (interfering with the tutor/student relationship and possibly supporting forced-child labor). I also provide documentation that their business name, address, phone number and SPAM had been reported to databases. My hope was that many businesses would complain to whomever they had hired to increase traffic to their site or would cancel their agreement outright, so that, in turn, the name freemathhelp would eventually find its way down the supply chain to the actual spammers as not a good site to abuse. After all, once credentials get into akismet (one example), over 200,000 forums are able to reject registration attempts or purge those who've already joined.
Aggressive reporting works. For two years now, the daily SPAM rate has been closer to five. This bar chart shows 2017 data.
(CLICK THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE)
Ukraine apparently gets the message; India, not so much, yet.
Also of note is a substantial increase during the past three months of spammers posing as math students, posting valid questions (sometimes even showing some work!), but it's just a ploy. Their profiles contain SPAM. So, if you reply to a "student" today and find the thread missing tomorrow, this could be why.
Happy New Year. ?
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