Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2014 Archive Dec 1

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User has been spamming video game related articles

petercapaldi.info

links
prior related report
accounts

Repeated attempts to add petercapaldi.info into multiple articles - multiple other redirect URLs have already been blacklisted via the earlier listed report (linked above). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:53, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

 Deferred - added to spam blacklist. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

300mbhdmovie.com

300mbhdmovie.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com - Noticed user Mituakter2333 changing an official link to Jurassic World to this 300mbhdmovie site in this edit. Jurassic World (as you probably know) is an upcoming Jurassic Park movie that has a lot of buzz, so the user is likely trying to capitalize on that. User has added this domain to a couple of other articles, and has even re-submitted the links after they were reverted by other users.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Site doesn't appear to do anything but regurgitate content from other sites, i.e. it doesn't generate unique content. User appears to only be here to add this site. Danke, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:46, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

SGS S.A. Group spam on Wikipedia

Previous incidents
Sites spammed
Spammers

In addition to the accounts listed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vicky4567:

MER-C 02:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

betube.eu

links
related articles
accounts

Multiple single-purpose accounts attempting to create article and links over the last few days. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:41, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

cinemaxtheater.blogspot.com/2014/12/jurassic-world-2015.html

cinemaxtheater.blogspot.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com User Sagitariusadhi has added this URL to Jurassic World, a major upcoming film, several times in the past few minutes. Site just seems to regurgitate content from other sites, like embedding a trailer form CinemaBlend. Here they add a link in the middle of a cite template. Here they add an inline external link for April 2007. Here they replace an official site with their link. Looks like they're only trying to drive traffic to their site. I reported a different spammer the other day adding jive links to Jurassic World, so this might be an article to watch. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

bestorlandovacationpackages.com

links
accounts

Edits by WP:SPA accounts whose only purpose on Wikipedia has bee to spam this URL into multiple articles. Site is highly promotional in nature, and the linked "articles" are being created at that site specifically using SEO strategy flagged at matthewwoodward page discussed at WP:AN#SEO spam attack. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:47, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

yahoo-download.com

Spammers

Dead link spamming, blacklisted. MER-C 12:45, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

priceburp.com

Spammers

Dead link spamming, blacklisted. MER-C 10:56, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

User "fixing" dead links

This user, Divine4778 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been replacing dead links with various other links. I've seen this before and have a hard time determining whether this is good faith or an attempt to spam. Could someone else please take a look at their edits? Deli nk (talk) 13:31, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

It's spam. -C759 (talk) 13:47, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Probably #General notice above. — Revi 13:52, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. It looks like it is all reverted now and I have warned the user. Deli nk (talk) 14:02, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Don't bother warning. These spammers should be blocked and the domains blacklisted on sight. MER-C 02:12, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
HJ Mitchell blocked this editor already, but if you want to blacklist the links, they are listed at User talk:Divine4778. Deli nk (talk) 02:20, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Bet there's more. Keep an eye out. -C759 (talk) 03:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

cityrealty.com citespam?

Account

Link

User:BonnieAClark is a single-purpose account adding citations to cityrealty.com. There is a writer/editor working at this website named Bonnie Clark: https://www.google.com/#q=cityrealty+bonnie+clark. Curious to know where this falls on the spectrum of spam, and what action, if any, would be appropriate. Vrac (talk) 17:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that's a kind of spam, (probably another case of above section?) block or blacklisting? — Revi 17:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Maybe also:
There are however a lot of these links around - not sure if this is blacklistable, these accounts may however need some .. explanation about editing and conflicts of interest. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:03, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Alluc.to

With edits spanning from Jan - Nov.

Link

+ others

Spammers

+ others. -C759 (talk) 06:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Special:Diff/595767527 Hmm, this one too. (COIBot said he put 4 links, but probably 2 is deleted (as I can see 2 in contribs))— Revi 06:08, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
That's a counting error. alloc.to redirects to:
Not sure why they want to use a redirect. I have blacklisted both domains. These accounts also added links to a bunch of splogs for alloc.to as well, e.g. weststage.weebly.com, endangeredandthreatenedspecies.blog.com. These haven't been blacklisted yet. MER-C 08:43, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
No, MER-C, it is a bug Revi .. Oversight in the parser - urls which are unnamed (plain links) are in the output encoded as <li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.alluc.to/movies/actor/Harry+Andrews">http://www.alluc.to/movies/actor/Harry+Andrews</a></span> </li>, and that matches the regex for url-extraction twice, so resulting in two records in the link-addition database. I have updated the code, records after this UTC timestamp should be fine .. but I will have a look shortly. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:16, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

ukrainecalling.com

links
related links
acocunts

Multiple IPs spamming link, primarily to SMS gateway (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views); but also some addition to Mobile dating (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and to Text messaging (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Additions have been ongoing for at least six months. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

anstc.com

Link

anstc.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Spammer

84.94.104.68 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)

See Meta COIBot report. — Revi 09:54, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

letterboxd.com, mirror/gateway to themoviedb.org

letterboxd.com seems to be a mirror/portal to themoviedb.org which is already blocked. I came across it at Concord Production Inc. trying to replace an example of a letterboxd link with a more direct themoviedb one. If the latter's blocked the former definitely should be as a poor copy and gateway to it. It's a pretty useless site which has nothing not available at other databases, as best I can see.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:52, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I see that this is quite generally used, and, for the first and only three examples that I checked, by regulars. Those examples were all used as references. I did not identify any spam of this site yet (maybe that was the problem with the former) - how is the quality of these sites (that it was spammed could have been the reason for blacklisting, reliability may not have been a factor in that decision at all).
Difficult to blacklist, as this is widely used as a reference. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Then to turn it around the sensible thing would be to unblock themoviedb.org. Here's the page for Concord Productions at Letterbox: [8] and it just consists of thumbnails. The page at themoviedb: (... /company/3526-concord-productions-inc) has those, titles, dates, credits, votes (a form of rating) and space for more information. Right now editors are using the worst of the two sites, or perhaps other mirrors, as the better one is blocked.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:19, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Or it needs a massive cleanup first. What I see at the example page you gave (Concord Production Inc.) should just be wiped. Inappropriate external link. I will do so in a minute. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmm .. there is more to this:

The latter seems to be the same as the original - the other sites are .. somewhat related as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

MythTV is a software product; I don't see any problems with it; it's just been misused when added to Concord Production Inc. as part of a spam link. AlternativeTo looks more problematic; just a link aggregator site that is less useful/more advert heavy than a google search or links within an article; DMOZ is a much better alternative so it should never be used IMHO. tmdb is just a redirect, maybe created to get around the block of the main domain, and should be blocked with it if that stays blocked.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 19:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
I've listed mythtv here as it is here abused to circumvent the blacklist on moviesdb.org. I agree that tmdb.org should just be blacklisted as a redirect to an already blacklisted site (will do so in a minute). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:48, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

chotabox.com

Google Analytics ID: UA-43614079 - (Track - Report - reverseinternet.com • Meta: Track - Report)

Spammers

MER-C 11:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

ufusoft.com

Spam pages
Sites spammed
Spammers

Blacklisted. MER-C 12:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

website-scraping.com

Spammers

Blacklisted. MER-C 11:57, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

felt the need to blank this report. MER-C 13:23, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Wordofsearch

Link
Spammers

-C759 (talk) 22:57, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Also this user:
(Already blocked.) — Revi 04:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
-C759 (talk) 06:41, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Blacklisted. MER-C 12:12, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

meraofficialsite.com

meraofficialsite.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com Three India-based IPs attempted three times (so far) to add the site to Adele.[9][10][11] and the links have snuck into other articles Kiran Rathod, Sonakshi Sinha, Silk Smitha and Shreya Ghoshal. I think each addition came from a unique IP, so they are probably attempting to avoid scrutiny. The site appears to redirect users to a relevant page at blogspot.in. I'll remove these links from these articles. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:41, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly, (perhaps only to me) while the IPs appear to be different, they do seem to be watching. Here they reverted my removal of their site from a different IP than that which submitted it. And I manually removed the content so the submitting IP wouldn't receive a notification. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:03, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

IP spamming multiple sites into dozens of articles

links
accounts

The IPs have taken up the same SPA activity, adding a small set of url linkspam into dozens of articles. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:31, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

v2media.ae

Spammers

Dead link spamming, blacklisted. MER-C 07:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

ohack.in

Google Analytics ID: UA-44029414 - (Track - Report - reverseinternet.com • Meta: Track - Report)

Spammers

Blacklisted. MER-C 06:43, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Chevron_Pacific_Indonesia

This page in Wikipedia Indonesia is a fraudulent recruitment claiming to be Chevron Indonesia (A subsidiary of Chevron Corporation in Indonesia). Initially I am believe that the aforementioned page is legitimate, but since I am doubtful about it, I cross reference with other sources. It turns out that Chevron Indonesia stated in their official web page, that public should be aware and careful with all fraudulent recruitment activity claiming to be Chevron, such as this page.

For your reference you may consult with Chevron Pacific Indonesia official website in this URL: http://www.chevronindonesia.com/en/careers/CareerRecruitingFraud.aspx

Hope you find above information to be useful.

--Sir Captain Haddock (talk) 12:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

The page looks like an advertisement for recruitment for the company. Not sure what we can do about it however on en.wikipedia. I noted the domain of the email address, we may be able to track that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:10, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Spamming

User:Deli nk, User:MER-C, User:C759, User:Revi I see you have picked up this pattern [12]

We have a for profit company that is selling this service [www.wikilinkpro.com here]. Supposedly there are accounts with many thousands of edits doing this. I have found a bunch of work orders for it.

Is there a way to create a list of all edits that involve the removal of the [dead link] template? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:14, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I hear that I will have the diffs for the last three months tomorrow :-) Will post. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:28, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Send the diffs and elance/freelancer/whatever listings to legal at wikimedia as well, because they constitute a violation of the Terms of Service. I just reported their domain. As for tagging these things, there's something going on at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested. MER-C 13:15, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
It's basically same patterns as #SEO. — Revi 10:48, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes agree. And this person claims to add these links all the time [13]. Looking at his job history it appears he has been paid for it a fair bit aswell [14] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
The effort does not appear to have worked. Will need to try again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
This may not be a good place to discuss things, but if your "not appear to have worked" comment refers to the list of all edits above, I think some serious coding is needed. On the one hand it would be easy to create an edit filter that tags all edits that remove the dead link template. However, that may generate a long list of edits with a lot of noise. A complication is that sometimes, through cunning or incompetence, the spammers add their link in one edit and remove the template in another. One of the bots that checks the stream of all recent changes would be needed to generate a list of edits to be checked, possibly using a whitelist system of ignoring edits by established editors. Johnuniq (talk) 04:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes what we need is a list of all edits were [dead link] has been removed. Amir was working on creating such as list but it has not worked. I will ask him to try again. This list will than need to be gone through manually but may allow us to find editors that have done a lot of this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Here is an outline: Take a snapshot of all articles once a month (say January and February). For January, determine all articles with {{dead link}}. For February, compare each listed article and check the external links in the corresponding Jan and Feb articles. If a link in Jan flagged as dead is not so flagged in Feb, output the article title and the old and new external links. That might be sufficient, but ideally another automated process would find who added the new link, then find how many similar changes were made by the same user/IP. Changes by an established editor who has only changed a small number of tagged links could be ignored. Other changes would be output for manual examination. That could be done on WMF Labs (I think, I haven't got around to investigating), or it could be done offline by downloading the monthly dumps. Johnuniq (talk) 05:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes perfect. User:Ladsgroup what do you think? Can you do this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
I did exactly this (I sued dump of 3-9-2014 and compared it with latest dump in 4-12-2014) the error happened when I tried to diff up the cases. you have the report soon. :)Ladsgroupoverleg 11:15, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

This is list of all of dead link template removal in the last three months in English Wikipedia User:Ladsgroup/spam, I suggest you to start with grouping by username and check who fixed too much. :)Ladsgroupoverleg 17:22, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I took the liberty to sort it by username. Would be nicer if it would be converted to a sortable table. Did not see any duplicate usernames yet. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

From the list, I already found a user abusing some self-submittal pr websites ( pressexposure.com , onlineprnews.com , pr.com ) ... and that's just after a cursory glance. I'm sure more will be found after digging deeper into the data. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
There are 229 users/IPs on the list more than once; 12 of those have 10 or more diffs. I checked each of the 12 "frequent" users and they are good. Only one IP appears a significant number of times (7), and their edits are also good. What are we going to do? Should a checked edit be marked as such? How (without much overhead)? Johnuniq (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
These recommendations [15][16][17] instruct people to use an account so the issue may not be from just IPs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Found one:

user:Ladsgroup maybe if we remove the ones which use "Wayback" in the replacement such as here [21] or "web.archive" such as here [22] we would have less edits to dig through. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

ANd another User:Bigoil55. Is this one blockable? They have a couple of okay edits. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:48, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Was watching this thread and decided to click through a few. Didn't take long to find Wosvans (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). May be worth noting only one of these popped up on the list, though all of them mention replacing a dead link in the edit summary. Is it worth making another list based on edit summaries? --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
PS: Ideas for best practices re: dealing with these? Seeking a block doesn't seem terribly productive for an account with only a handful of edits not currently active. In this particular case, while it's clear Wosvans is an account that exists to add links to futbolyou.com, it's less clear whether there are some links to that site which would be considered good enough to be preferable to nothing (or to a restored dead link). --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:08, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
And another: Meenka - user's edits are only to add links, and all of them garbage. No question about removing these. --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes they appear to be using throw away accounts. Maybe we should also add edits that contain "dead link" in the summary to the list? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed I've been jumping around the red usernames, which has yielded a number of spam-only accounts. If for no other reason but to reduce duplication of work: Meenka (as above), Stevewalz (was already blocked), Smartalex4 (lots of dotnewz.com sites, problematic enough that I suggested adding to the blacklist), Sialthuong (Buffalotours.com, and a pending AfC at Draft:Buffalo Tours), Shinydiscoball (anyfreehack.com), Selinajackson0615 (links to multiple urls containing "selinajackson", a name I saw one of the others add as well) --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 05:20, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Extended content
Spamlink

riflescopereviewsguide.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Spammer

Stewart5235 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

We should have a dedicated subpage for cleaning up these things.... This is getting too long to add new spammer :P — Revi 09:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes and this only goes back 3 months and likely we should run this monthly going forwards. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:31, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I made Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/Dead link spamming, with really short and basic forms. Please expand. — Revi 09:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I've expanded that page to contain most of the current details regarding this & I've added all the users reported here and at the AN thread. Best to keep discussion to that page now I guess. Sam Walton (talk) 13:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

imagesjourney.com

links
accounts

Ongoing spamming of gallery for several years into several articles. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

SEO Websites advising people to use Wikipedia

Hi, I'm not sure if there's a better place to put this, but I found a few websites trying to get people to use Wikipedia, namely http://www.bnbwebsites.com/wikipedia.htm and http://www.10webtips.com/articles/networking-sites.html . Please ping me or put a talkback message if you responded to me. Thanks! Darylgolden(talk) 13:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Darylgolden Yes there is a lot of this going in. There are many websites that offer to write articles for you for money. And we have 100s of articles on Wikipedia created by this process. The question is what should we do about this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Report it to WMF Legal (legal@wikimedia dot org) as it is a terms of use violation. (wmf:ToU#paid-contrib-disclosure) — Revi 13:50, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
How would I do this, and what would be done to the websites? Sorry, I'm quite new to this. Darylgolden(talk) 00:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
Send them an email, and hopefully something like this happens. MER-C 11:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
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