SPAM via Message Center

Jan Buchmann · July 30, 2009

Hi fellow researchers,

yesterday I received this message:
From: greatone
Subject: I am intrested in you
Iam Intrested in you My name is Lucy 24 years girl old and single, I am tall good looking and caring honest girl. i see your profile today at www.zotero.org and became intrested to know you,I hope you will be the true loving, honest and caring one that I have beenlooking 4,Remember that colure,language or distance dos't mather in any relationship, And I have something special to tell you about me, So please contact me directly through my email address at [redacted] so that i can also send my picture directly to you. Kissssss Lucy

It seems that some users use personal zotero-mail to distribute their spam. Is there a policy to get them warned and then removed from zotero or another mechanism to deal with this?

This is the first SPAM message I received here, so I don't know, if this is a big problem yet, but I have to say that I'm surprised that spammers have found this scientific community in beta state so fast.

Cheers,
Jan

dstillman · July 30, 2009

Thanks for reporting this—it's the first we've seen of it. We've deleted the account and associated messages, and we'll take some steps to try to prevent this in the future. Kissssss Dan

Jan Buchmann · July 30, 2009

Thanks for the quick response and the care-taking!

With tall, good looking, and caring greetings ;-)
Jan

amandafrench · July 31, 2009

I got a spam message today myself from a "person" I'm not following named "joomjoom":

Hullo Mrs.Amandafrench

I'm Joom thai people I'm studying master degree about policy and I want information about policy in your city. And I would like to be friend with you? I'll wait you reply. joom bangkok Thailand You can travel in my country manything beautyful.

In general, I'd prefer it if only people I'm following could send me Inbox messages -- never mind the spam issue.

Cheers, brilliant Zotero developers!

dstillman · July 31, 2009

Amanda: I've removed the account (which had only sent three (different) messages, so any anti-spam features likely wouldn't have caught them anyway).

We can probably add an option to only allow messages from people you're following.

adamsmith · July 31, 2009

This is a spam account, too:
http://forums.zotero.org/account/37200/
no private messages I know of, but this
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8056?page=1#Item_9
leads to a teeth whitening product...

sean · July 31, 2009

Thanks. Banned.

adamsmith · August 19, 2009

Forum spam from
http://forums.zotero.org/account/39982/
here
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8355/style-tweaking/#Item_14

fcheslack · August 19, 2009

banned.

Gitty K · September 13, 2009

this might be another one, see the selfdesctiption/ links on the profile:
http://www.zotero.org/deborahsmith

adamsmith · September 16, 2009

http://forums.zotero.org/account/47988/
is a spam account, too
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8788/chiropractic-marketing/

mark · September 17, 2009

Just clicking on a couple recent registrations under New Zotero People, there's a terrible amount of spam accounts. Three examples:

http://www.zotero.org/richardc2641 and
http://www.zotero.org/patriciag2982 (use the same picture)
http://www.zotero.org/christymurdock

mark · October 10, 2009

Some more:

http://www.zotero.org/armpitsweata
http://www.zotero.org/armpitsweatcure
http://www.zotero.org/buychampix
http://www.zotero.org/fredascampi
http://www.zotero.org/limpiezarestau
http://www.zotero.org/tampits1

But anyway, it is so ridiculously easy to find spam accounts that the only thing that's going to help is an automated solution.

fcheslack · October 10, 2009

Putting in place an easier way to review new profiles and ban spammers this weekend. Unfortunately the last time I ran a list of recently banned spammers (by IP, email, and account name) through the automated solutions that have been recommended none of them would have been filtered out.

I've disabled the ability to add links to profile bios for now in the hopes that the spammers will get the hint (the fact that they were already nofollow links apparently didn't faze them).