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I found a set of several user accounts that are all posting spam on superuser. I think an IP-ban or other more direct intervention may be warranted than the normal close/flag votes, and so I wanted to draw attention to it here as well.

Start with this user:
https://superuser.com/users/98224/sabio47

Check not only all his questions, but all the answers to his question and user accounts that posted those answers.

Right now I only see three accounts and 5 posts, but those are just the ones I know about and it definitely looks like the start of a pattern.

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  • I almost asked the exact same question about two accounts on SO yesterday. According to their "how it works" article authors get a cut of the ad-revenue for their articles.
    – Flexo - Save the data dump
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 8:21
  • They started to hit on WebApps, too webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/19054/… (and there's a junk answer on another question posted by that same username)
    – jonsca
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 12:10
  • 1
    The same user was also spamming stackoverflow proper recently, and has been deleted there as well.
    – Verbeia
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 12:45

2 Answers 2

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You know what one of my favorite things about being a moderator is? Unlimited, binding spam flags of burnination.

Spammy instances of said URL were detected and burninated, and spammy users were merged and watch-listed. We'll suspend or destroy them if they keep it up. Thanks for the heads up!

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  • 1
    Because of your avatar, I just imagined the above sentence in Spock’s voice. Hilarious.
    – kinokijuf
    Commented Feb 11, 2012 at 21:10
  • @kinokijf Reading this today, less than two weeks since Mr Nimoy's passing, it's also kinda sad now.
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 1:50
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In the interests of "teaching people how to fish" ...

  • use the Advanced Super Ninja Search option url: with the wildcard * at the end to find any other posts with that URL.

  • flag them for mod attention.

  • burnination will happen forthwith; you gain flag weight for being awesome

So in this case, url:"http://computersight.com*"

https://superuser.com/search?q=url:%22http://computersight.com*%22&submit=search

It is possible for us to blacklist URLs but I find that 99% of the time these spam URLs are completely ephemeral. By the time you ban it, they have already registered a few hundred new ones and moved on.

I am open to blacklisting URLs if there is indeed a recurring pattern of abuse, but blacklisting isn't worth it unless there is a demonstrated pattern of this specific URL appearing at least on two different incidents.

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9
  • Interesting, there were two new users on SO yesterday that I flagged all of their answers as spam because they were links to computerinsight.com and webupon.com that had almost nothing to do with the question other than one keyword in the titles. One of the users (stackoverflow.com/users/950220/annello) got deleted, but the other is still around with no answers (stackoverflow.com/users/950213/anne)
    – Flexo - Save the data dump
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 8:16
  • See my comment above, "anne" is working her way to WebApps, too.
    – jonsca
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 12:12
  • @jonsca thanks for the tip, the same search used on webapps picked up 1 question, and I cleaned up (it was flagged for spam already)
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 14:16
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    This isn't gonna stop by deleting the posts one at a time via close/flag votes, or I wouldn't have bothered with a meta post about it.
    – Joel Coehoorn Mod
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 20:30
  • @JoelCoehoorn no more have shown up since then. If it continues even after yesterday's cleanup, then we can consider more serious action like blacklisting. But so far there hasn't been a reoccurrence.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Sep 18, 2011 at 22:05
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    @JeffAtwood it seems that the spammers have returned with a vengeance. Adding this URL to the blocklist would make sense at this point.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Sep 19, 2011 at 21:39
  • @nhinkle that is done
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Sep 19, 2011 at 21:53
  • They're back: stackoverflow.com/a/9673521/168175
    – Flexo - Save the data dump
    Commented Mar 12, 2012 at 22:11
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    computersight is now blacklisted
    – Geoff Dalgas
    Commented Mar 13, 2012 at 5:55

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