Curators: Spam patrol

[bouteloua]

Curators: a helpful new feature Ken-ichi added for going through new users to check for/flag spam accounts. Many are caught by the automated spam-flagging tools, but a lot get through too:

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?description=yes&ids=no&obs=no&spammer=unknown

(Non-curators: if you're interested in becoming a volunteer curator on iNaturalist, you can read more about that here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide)

cassi

[Ken-ichi Ueda]

I'm going to add a link to the dashboard, I've just been tinkering with it as I've been using it over the holidays. While I don't think we'll ever achieve complete victory over spammers, I think some recent updates to our automated spam flagging system in addition this tool should help. I should also note that this serves as a kind of welcome wagon tool for folks who want to welcome new users (and yes, an observations filter would be nice, but it's a trickier thing to do).

[megatherium]

Wow, what a lot of Hungarian soccer spammers! 

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[Chris Cheatle]

Ken-ichi,

I'm curious if there are any plans to add the ability to filter spam flags out of the view on https://www.inaturalist.org/flags ?

This new addition is great, but it does have the side effecrt of making it even harder to find actionable flags on the flags page as folks are more actively trying to remove the spam accounts.

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 1:15:13 PM UTC-5, bouteloua wrote:

[Mark Tutty]

Hi Cassi,

 

Are we marking them as spammers, or suspending the accounts?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

--

[Tony Iwane]

Marking as spam should suspend the account automatically.

Tony

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 1:31:39 PM UTC-8, Mark Tutty wrote:

Hi Cassi,

 

Are we marking them as spammers, or suspending the accounts?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: bouteloua
Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2019 7:15 AM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: [inaturalist] Curators: Spam patrol

 

Curators: a helpful new feature Ken-ichi added for going through new users to check for/flag spam accounts. Many are caught by the automated spam-flagging tools, but a lot get through too:

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?description=yes&ids=no&obs=no&spammer=unknown

 

(Non-curators: if you're interested in becoming a volunteer curator on iNaturalist, you can read more about that here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide)

 

cassi

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[Mark Tutty]

Roughly how many are there a day? I’m thinking of making it a daily thing to knock, say, a dozen off this list. My thinking is if enough of us did that then collectively we would keep on top of it. But is a dozen enough?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: Tony Iwane
Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2019 10:34 AM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Curators: Spam patrol

 

Marking as spam should suspend the account automatically.

 

Tony

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 1:31:39 PM UTC-8, Mark Tutty wrote:

Hi Cassi,

 

Are we marking them as spammers, or suspending the accounts?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: bouteloua
Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2019 7:15 AM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: [inaturalist] Curators: Spam patrol

 

Curators: a helpful new feature Ken-ichi added for going through new users to check for/flag spam accounts. Many are caught by the automated spam-flagging tools, but a lot get through too:

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?description=yes&ids=no&obs=no&spammer=unknown

 

(Non-curators: if you're interested in becoming a volunteer curator on iNaturalist, you can read more about that here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide)

 

cassi

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[Chris Cheatle]

There's 2 types, ones where they fill in a description with whatever they are trying to sell. Those get picked up by the new system. On average maybe 5-10 of these get created an hour.

The 2nd type are still spam accounts, but get no text in the description for some reason. Likely poor programming by whomever is doing the scripts to flood the net with the accounts. Probably one of these is created at least every 5 minutes. These are not picked up by the new tool.

Best guess is at least 200, likely well above this are created daily. And there is a massive backlog of stuff that was previously curated which has not been removed

[Mark Tutty]

I am assuming there is robot detection at account creation, but I imagine spammers have found ways around that. I wonder if a direct message sent to each account immediately after setup, that instructs the account holder to turn off a spam account flag in their account setup. If the flag is not turned off within 24 hours the account permanently stays flagged as spammer unless a curator is asked to clear it. I suppose it wouldn’t take long before they figure that one out too...!

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

[Ken-ichi Ueda]

> The 2nd type are still spam accounts, but get no text in the description for some reason. Likely poor programming by whomever is doing the scripts to flood the net with the accounts. Probably one of these is created at least every 5 minutes. These are not picked up by the new tool.

Chris, can you provide the URL of an account like this? We do get a lot of suspiciously-named accounts that only get spammy content a little while after creation, but we should not mark them as spammers until they create spam. Creating a login like johnny32john or something isn't grounds for suspension. And yes, there are a lot of problems with https://www.inaturalist.org/flags, including the fact that people seem to keep flagging duplicates even though there's nothing curators can do about that. We can add an option to filter out the spam flags, though.

[Chris Cheatle]

I think curators flag them as a violation of the terms of service, specifically regarding machine or randomly generated content which is in section 2 of the TOS.

You've got the idea, the ones with 2 names and 1 or 2 digits.

[Ken-ichi Ueda]

Ok, I think that's going too far. I mean johnny32john is *probably* a spammer, but you can't be sure until they create spam. It's also not clear to me whether there are bots involved. Some people behave very robotically.

[bouteloua]

As an example, https://www.inaturalist.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=kanstrup&commit=Go&source%5B%5D=users

maritakanstrup is possibly not spam, but all the others are almost certainly machine-generated spam, including

https://www.inaturalist.org/people/kanstruphernandez36 * which has a spammy description, but also https://www.inaturalist.org/people/kanstrupsharpe70 and https://www.inaturalist.org/people/kanstrup17hunter which don't have descriptions.

Have there been many false positives reported to he...@inaturalist.org? Chris, I, and others have flagged many thousands of these types of accounts. The question was previously raised here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/0WGPo5F_np0/ubo-hJCMAAAJ

cassi

*lol at this URL http :// www .... title=treatment- and-also-medical- insurance-for-your-animal-pot-bellied-pig #discuss

[megatherium]

I've just mis-clicked during a page load and flagged a legit person as a spammer, and unfortunately can't remember their name beyond it starting with "mmd" Is there any way to see a list of things I've flagged, or something like that?

[cassi saari]

You can see all the recent flags at https://www.inaturalist.org/flags, but no way (that I know of) to sort by your flags only.

[Mark Tutty]

I just did the same thing...

 

I found mine by quickly going to my dashboard, and at the bottom near the link to the new users, it shows the most recent flags. I just opened each of mine in a new window until I found the one I marked incorrectly.

 

I cleared the flag, and unsuspended the account, but the profile still shows “flagged as spam” or something similar at the top of the page. I am hoping that is just waiting for the system to “catch up” and will go of it’s own accord?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

[Chris Cheatle]

On that page you can also set the dropdowns to Spammer = Yes and Flagged By = Manual and see if you can spot it by scanning through, if you can't find it using Cassi's method (although hers is likely faster - this is a backup alternate)

[Chris Cheatle]

Did you unsuspend them or flag them as a non-spammer, they are not the same thing.

[Mark Tutty]

Unsuspended, and “resolved with comment” and I made the comment “flagged as spammer by mistake”

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

[Chris Cheatle]

You need to mark them as a non-spammer. 

It is possible to be suspended for reasons unrelated to spamming. However, spamming is grounds for suspension. So you need to make sure both are done.

You need to use the flag as non-spammer option as well, just unsuspending them won't re-activate the account.

[Lincoln Durey]

Thank you so much for this new tool.  Very helpful, and it is faster than my old searching by names approach.

However, is there a way to search the contents of the user profile texts (lets say for "garage door opener" or "escort") ??

[Mark Tutty]

They often add funny invisible characters into the middle of strings like that, so it’s not always useful to search on them

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[Paul]

Since we are on the spam issue 

What is the best way to handle 

Inappropriate messages in Inboxes 

I’ve gotten a few in the past that were 

Way out there. I’ve noticed Those have disappeared but new ones pop up 

Sincerely 

Paul Kelly 

ck2az

Sent from my iPhone

[Tony Iwane]

Hi Paul,

Please take screenshots of the text (or forward any email notifications of them) and send them to he...@inaturalist.org. Here are instructions for how to take a screenshot on several types of devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org

Tony Iwane

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[Paul]

Hi Tony 

All but one in my inbox say deleted user

I have one more that’s throwing question 

Marks on me I’ll forward this one to the inbox 

It may or may not be spam I’ll let you 

Admins figure it out 

Sincerely 

Paul Kelly 

ck2az 

Sent from my iPhone

[Jane Widness]

A quick tip: if the description is not in your native language and you're using Chrome, you can right-click on the page and translate.  Just got rid of one account claiming to get take care of mouse infestations in some sort of Germanic language.

[jdmore]

Ken-Ichi, very helpful tool!  Any feasibility to add a translate button for the descriptions that accesses google translate, for those of use who don't/won't use Chrome?

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 10:37:39 AM UTC-8, Ken-ichi Ueda wrote:

I'm going to add a link to the dashboard, I've just been tinkering with it as I've been using it over the holidays. While I don't think we'll ever achieve complete victory over spammers, I think some recent updates to our automated spam flagging system in addition this tool should help. I should also note that this serves as a kind of welcome wagon tool for folks who want to welcome new users (and yes, an observations filter would be nice, but it's a trickier thing to do).

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 1:15:13 PM UTC-5, bouteloua wrote:

[Mark Tutty]

+1

 

I mark as spammers all the English ones, then start on the foreign language, but every time I mark one as a spammer, I need to re-translate.

 

Also... would it be possible to have checkboxes, and a “check all” option, and then a “mark all checked as spammers” button? Would solve the above problem...

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: jdmore
Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2019 1:49 PM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: [inaturalist] Re: Curators: Spam patrol

 

Ken-Ichi, very helpful tool!  Any feasibility to add a translate button for the descriptions that accesses google translate, for those of use who don't/won't use Chrome?

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[Jane Widness]

I love the "check all" idea!

If you use a browser other than chrome, chances are pretty good there's a translate add-on/extension.

[jdmore]

As of 23:00 PST January 4, it seems like the onslaught of new spam accounts has only intensified.

Question: it's been a while since I created my account.  Do new accounts these days have to jump through any "not a robot" hoops to complete their sign up?

--Jim Morefield

[Ian Toal]

I have a question. How does a person search for spam. In my experience, I've never encountered spam in general usage, so there must be some way to search it out and flagging it. I have never done this, so any help would be appreciated.

Ian

[Mark Tutty]

Generally speaking, the spam appears in user profiles. Most users will only look at profiles when they engage with another user, such as "who is this that is putting IDs on my observations". I have never seen the spam accounts untill I started working through that new tool. Oh, I have had one suspicious unsolicited direct message, but even that possibly might have been legit.

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[jdmore]

+1 to having checkboxes, and buttons to apply spammer/non-spammer status to all checked.  Would make cleanup of all the old backlog much more efficient.