Attack of the spammers?

This message was sent to you via your profile page at MATLAB Answers.

Hello
My name is miss Jelin,i am looking for a new friend i saw your profile today at www.mathworks.com and became interested in you,i
will also like to know you the more,and i want you to send a mail to my email
address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom l am.Here is my email

address ([e-mail])

I believe we can move from here.I am waiting for
your mail to my email address ([e-mail]) Remember that distance, color or age
does not matter but love matters allot in life Please reply me with my email

Jelin

.

.

Anybody else getting these?

[Arnaud Miege]

Yes, I got it as well. She must be desperate :-)

Arnaud

[Kaustubha Govind]

I got it too!

[Jan]

Of course she is desperate - Oleg did not reply yet, did he?

I assume, Helen can stop this, if somebody sends her the full spam mail containing the headers. It is worth to try, before Jelin gets more followers.

[Andrew Newell]

I have also seen this in the comment to a question.

[Yu Ang Tan]

I got it too.

Yep, definitely suspicious.

Answer 1

[Helen Chen]

We are looking into ways to cut down on this type of unwanted communication. For now our suggestion is to prevent spam, consider hiding your email address from your community profile. You can do this by:

• log into your MATLAB Central account
• go to your community profile by clicking on the "My Community Profile" link at the top right of this page
• click on "Edit my profile"
• check the box for "Do not display my email address"

When users come to your profile, they will see a link "Contact author". Logged in users can use this to send direct email messages to you. If you are receiving messages from a spammer, please do forward the message to Lindsay or me and we will remove the account.

Thank you!

Helen

[Matt Fig]

Thanks for answering, Helen . I have already done this, and I do appreciate that this provides some level of protection. I will send you the address of any email spam I get from now on.

[Jiro Doke]

Hmm, I already had this option on (hide email address), and I still got the spam from Jelin. So "she" must be someone with an account on MATLAB Central.

[Matt Tearle]

Well, that's a point in her favor...

[Jan]

@Jiro: Correct, she must have an account. Therefore it would have been valuable to forward the first spam directly to file@mathworks and let Helen or Lindsay stop this.

[Helen Chen]

We found that she created a second account, so as Jan suggests, please do forward these along so we try to limit these distractions for you. :-)

[Image Analyst]

Helen, I zapped about 4 or 5 messages this morning from people who had made accounts with weird names (random letters). Same thing as before - some kind of pay TV sporting events.

[Sean de Wolski]

@IA, Helen is no longer working with the community applications team (we miss her meetings!). I'd recommend, for now at least, forwarding spammers' accounts to R@ndy.

[Image Analyst]

I just deleted the messages. I can't find them anymore. Next time, I'll try to remember to make note of the user names before zapping the messages and tell Randy.

[Sean de Wolski]

He can detect them anyway :)

[Walter Roberson]

I flag the messages as spam and then delete them.

[Image Analyst]

I made note of several spammers names and sent them to [e-mail] but that account seems to be not monitored anymore by Randy, or at the very least they're ignoring me. I get no response and spammers I've notified them about are still there over a week later. There was another spam attack this weekend and I must have deleted around 70 or 80 messages, some from spammers I've notified them of already, such as this low life, yet the account remains.

[Image Analyst]

John and Randy: I'm spending a lot of time deleting spam, especially over the weekend, like over 3 dozen just today from the spammer ram and many more from others. And he just keeps at it like he programmed some bot to do it. It just goes on week after week afterweek, particularly on weekends when I have to go days without your help. I'd like to enhance the editors powers by having the Answers forum recognize if more than, say, 3 or 4 messages from a particular account were deleted by a trusted editor such as myself , then that account would be frozen and you'd be notified for further action. Can this be done?

[Star Strider]

All the spam I’ve seen are from ‘mailnesia.com’. When I did a ‘DuckDuckGo’ search, I discovered:

Mailnesia.com offers a free, temporary email introduced in 2011. Customer can also create a throwaway email address for registration and any website anonymously.

Seems to me that anyone using ‘mailnesia.com’ isn’t really interested in anything having to do with MATLAB Answers. Perhaps simply trapping and deleting all accounts with ‘@mailnesia.com’ would be sufficient.

[Jan]

@Image Analyst: The 4 eyes method might be useful, such that 2 trusted editors are needed for a temporary freezing. On the other hand some admins control the forum on the weekends also, such that a message on the internal mailing list should be sufficient also.

[Walter Roberson]

I have been thinking for a time that what is potentially needed is a way for sufficiently authorized editors to place an account on "moderation". Accounts on moderation would have to have each post "approved" (released for public view.)

The procedure would then be that a spammer is discovered, and one of the Lord High Mucketty Editors (LHME) flags the account for moderation. The spambot might continue posting, but the user's don't see the posts unless an appropriately authorized person winds through and authorizes them one by one. The admins would be able to apply their tools to blanket delete the postings from the user if they proved to be pure spam.

It would, in my proposal, only require any one LHME to request moderation of an account, but any of the other LHME would be able to release postings, thus providing some room for "second eyes". I suppose that any LHME would also be able to turn off moderation for an account, but the expectation would likely be that an account that is in moderation might be there by reason of postings that are already deleted and so LHME would seldom release a moderation request without checking with admins and the person who requested moderation.

I am not thrilled at the idea of putting people on moderation but I am coming to think of it as a less-bad approach than having the spambots in action until the next time an admin has some "free time".

[Image Analyst]

The problem with requiring two people suspend the spammers from further posting is this. Let's say that I want to delete the 28 spams currently up there by spammer Rai. If I delete all 28 then there is none left for the second person to delete. So I'd have to leave some up there . How many do I delete and how many do I leave such that the second person will notice these spams? And how long will that take? The spammers seem to send out bursts of 10-30 spams in a short period and then wait a few hours and do it again. Waiting could just allow another burst of 30 spams. If I'm trusted enough to do everything else why would I not be trusted enough to be fair and judicious in who I "put on hold" for review by the Mathworks?

[Star Strider]

Right now, Answers is being inundated by ‘mailnesia.com’ trolls. Why not have TMW flag this site at registration and notify the person (or bot or whatever) with something like ‘This is not an e-mail domain recognised by MathWorks. Please enter a valid e-mail address.’

[Randy Souza]

Hi everyone, sorry for the continued inconvenience. We're working on a combination of rate-limiting and account-level moderation that should help with this type of attack. Thanks for all of the suggestions here.

Blacklisting based on email domain is challenging for two reasons. First, the spammers switch hosts regularly, and second, there are legit contributors who prefer to use services like Mailnesia.

Thanks for flagging and/or deleting the spam that you find, and, again, apologies for the inconvenience.

[Image Analyst]

It's good to know you're working on it. Just make sure that the rate doesn't limit trusted members. I often post dozens of answers at a time and I don't want to be limited, but it makes sense for someone who has less than 20 or so reputation points to be "on probation" and have posting rate limitations.

[Walter Roberson]

Changing one's registered email address does not currently require a confirmation via something emailed to the address. I could in theory change my email to (say) live.com and spam ... Mathworks can't block all the common domains.

[Image Analyst]

Is there some way someone can write a MATLAB script using urlread or trendy or something to retrieve mailnesia authors and look at their answers and give us the option to delete them. In the last 12 hours I've deleted over 40 spams and I'm hoping there might be a more automatic or computer assisted method. It's tedious to do one at a time and the weekend is coming up, which usually means an assault of hundreds of spams. Or even if I've already found and identified a spammer to just get all his "Answers" and delete them?

Answer 2

[Jan]

I didn't get mail from Jelin. But several people asked me by email to solve their homework. And two users tried to succeed a discussion from this forum - without telling the corresponding thread or their user name.

How many not really serious messages are you getting through MATLAB Answers?

[Jiro Doke]

I have probably received about 7 or 8 messages through MATLAB Answers asking to solve their homework problems. I have yet to respond. ;)

[Paulo Silva]

I got several homework related messages until I changed my email for a bunch of random letters, that's probably why I don't get spam either lol, the only problem is that I might miss important mail from my fellow matlab Answers helpers.

[Matt Fig]

I have counted 5 homework requests, and three true spams. Also, several thank you's, which are nice!

[Sean de Wolski]

I have gotten two non-homework requests and Ms. Jelin seeking love.

[Jan]

Ok. MATLAB Answers seems to produce a mail noise in a magnitude of one mail per week.

We should introduce some policies - what about: homework questions outside the forum are solved for a fee of 75$ per hour (a fair price for an ingenieer)?

Of course a quote to Matt Fig concerning a love attachment must be more expensive: If Jelin draws off Matt's attention to MATLAB Answers, Walter has to do the complete work alone.

[Walter Roberson]

Ah yes, from 2008:

"Thank you for hiring Muddy Hippopotamus Plc. for your software

needs! A member of our elite RUMP (Random Urgent MATLAB Program) Team will contact you very shortly to confirm the Detailed Specifications for this opportunity, and to finalize the contract rates. Please wait by your mailbox, as we are anxious to synergize with you!"

[Matt Tearle]

Dear Valued Colleague

I am Oleg Ndogo, of the Nigerian RUMP Team of a multinational company with many large assets that have been frozen after a military coup by General Walter Lgonwe. Your honesty and discretion, as have been vouched for by many sources to me, are required to move these important MATLAB Codes to you for your increased benefits. For this service, my uncle Prince Jan Komingo will reward you with $250,000 (US) for your noble assistance. Please send details of your bank account information so that we may proceed with the transaction in a timeful manner.

[Walter Roberson]

Oleg No Dog? Walter Own Leg? Jan Mink Goo? Where do the spammers come up with these names??

Answer 3

[Andrew Newell]

My new favorite:

plz give me ful program

[Matt Fig]

That is a good one!

Answer 4

[Paulo Silva]

There's a remote chance that she's really in love with you! ahahah

I didn't receive one of those yet

[Matt Fig]

At least she has a picture to go by, I don't even know what she looks like!

[Jiro Doke]

Oh man! I got the exact same message! I thought I was special... ha ha.

[Sarah Wait Zaranek]

Yes, me too. Clearly she isn't picky about gender :)

[Matt Tearle]

Paulo, she doesn't want to get involved with a spy! Too complicated -- all those secrets, it's not good for a relationship. I haven't received an email yet either. I assume she thinks I'm a little too young for her.

At least Matt Fig looks like a normal person... Well, as normal as anyone can be who's surrounded by MathWorks paraphernalia... OK, I take it back. It's random spam!

[Jiro Doke]

Ha ha ha! :)

[Matt Tearle]

Sarah, we *are* in Massachussetts, remember...

[Paulo Silva]

:( what? no love for spies, that's sad ;(

[Matt Fig]

I think she is only after me because she heard that I inherited all that money from a distant relative who died in a Nigerian plane crash. If only they would hurry up and send it to me, I could afford all the toolboxes and a new computer to play with them on!

[Paulo Silva]

Your E-Mail ID have just been awarded £950,000,00 pounds in our Mercedes Benz On-Line Promo, Name...Country/Address...Tel...

[Oleg Komarov]

I got it sometime ago!!

[Jan]

If you had replied her, Oleg, she'd be happy now and would not send further spam. What's your apology?

[Andrew Newell]

I hear plenty big talk Oleg this, Oleg that. Who this Oleg fella? He nothing! He girly man! I be the one you want, I give you good time.

[Jan]

@Andrew??? Have you seen Jelin's reputation number? And compared it to Oleg's?! Who is Jelin??? MATLAB Answers is the one you want, Oleg! Take it easy: take us.

Answer 5

[Image Analyst]

Alright, what's going on here : http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/36796-help-me-in-optical-cdma?

A "Mohamed" evidently asked a question over 2 years ago. Now I ran my spam detector tonight and got a hit on some terms, like "putlocker" and this post popped up. At one time, judging from the answers, the original post was legitimate, but now it's been replaced by spam links. Yet the posts don't show any evidence of being edited. I know comments don't say they've been edited, but answers should, and this answer does not show an edit yet it shows a 2 year old date . It's not two years old or my spam detector would have caught it before. So how and when did it get there? Who put the spam there? Did the original Mohamed do it after turning to the dark side, or did someone hack his account? There are several unexplained things about this post. I hope if doesn't reveal a new more powerful level of hacking by the spammers where they can edit anyone's post. I've left the post up for now so we can all see it and discuss it.

[Star Strider]

I didn’t click on the link so I don’t know what it contains (if it even still exists), but ’way back then, uploading files and images using the ‘paperclip/staple’ and ‘picture’ icons wasn’t possible (those capabilities didn’t exist) if I remember correctly. It could be entirely legitimate.

Not being contentious, just suggesting an alternate hypothesis.

[Image Analyst]

The link is just a link to an Answers posting - it's safe to click on. I don't think whether or not they could attach/insert things at the time is relevant.

[Sean de Wolski]

I don't think there is anything illegitimate about that post. putlocker was or is a file storage service that he was likely using before we had the ability to attach our own files on here. No changes to the question have occurred which is why it doesn't show as edited.

[Star Strider]

I A — I did click on the link to the Answers post. I didn’t click on the ‘putlocker’ link. Sean seems to have come to the same conclusion I did.

[Image Analyst]

OK. I didn't realize that putlocker was a legitimate site (I never went there before). But now I don't know why that message wasn't found in the search before now . I think some changes were made to the search functionality. For example a search before a few days ago for "hightail" did not return any hits. But now it returns a hit. I'm not sure why it now finds something. It actually finds "high-tail", with a dash in the middle of the word, whereas before it did not find that message. Maybe the search functionality was changed to try to get more hits than before.