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A spam campaign to promote content hosted on divisare.com is currently under way. As of right now, there are 11 posts over 48 hours in the Metasmoke archive for spam posted on SE:

https://metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/search?body=divisare.com

The spree started on Ask Ubuntu on Saturday, then moved to Math Overflow a few hours ago, and is now most recently hitting Super User and Server Fault.

(I note that all of these are sites which are not subdomains under the stackexchange.com domain umbrella, though they are all members of the Stack Exchange network.)

The divisare.com site looks like it allows new users to upload random content (it's supposed to be about architecture, but the spam posts are unrelated to this topic), so I'm guessing what happened here is that spammers discovered this and are going unnoticed by the site's management (or maybe they noticed, but are not yet getting their shields up properly).

I'm creating this meta post mainly to have something to link to when sending a complaint to divisare.com, but to keep this nominally as a question, can somebody confirm or correct my observations so far?

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    Sorry, but are we going to create meta posts for every spam attack on the SE sites? If so, we can end up with a huge list of useless posts. I am not sure if we should want that.
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 6:20
  • This question has nothing to do with the software that powers stack exchange. instead it is talking about spam posts which already discussed a ton times.
    – Optimus Prime
    Aug 7, 2017 at 6:44
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    @SagarV it has everything to do with the software that powers the Stack Exchange network. It exists to gather evidence how the current spam filters doesn't catch these particular spam posts and tries to educate users how to flag and help SE staff to fine tune the filters.
    – rene
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:09
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    @PatrickHofman I don't see much of a problem, as long as it isn't 10 posts every day. I'm sure this is done only for severe network-wide spammers that might require more attention from both users and SE staff.
    – rene
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:11
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    11 posts over 2 days are a pretty negligible volume, simply using regular spam flags is almost certainly more efficient than spending any time discussing this.
    – Mad Scientist
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:12
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    What is the added value of these posts? There is nothing to discuss, nothing to do. It is merely a report of a message one user sent about a few spam posts on the network...
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:13
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    It is on-topic, so at best the close reason is wrong, use downvotes if you feel it is not useful
    – rene
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:14
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    @PatrickHofman maybe write an MSE question then to have a common understanding if this is useful or not. I personally don't mind but if it gathers so much resistance then maybe the policy should be fleshed out first then. You have time to write a post?
    – rene
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:23
  • I might when I have the time somewhere these days. @rene
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 7:26
  • My previous spam posts have generally been well-received; there are less than five so far. I am bringing up a potential issue for possible discussion, but I admit that the severity of this particular incident might not yet warrant a network-wide heads-up. I certainly don't post routinely on this topic; there is on the order of 100 detected spam messages per day which go unannounced and uncoordinated (and who knows how many don't get reported into Metasmoke ... my impression is less than 20 per day network-wide but I could be wrong).
    – tripleee
    Aug 7, 2017 at 8:12
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    Using meta to document what we know now and invite answers to discuss the matter, and provide further suggestions and insights, seems to be in line with how Stack Exchange themselves occasionally use this site, though I suppose you could argue that it should be their exclusive privilege.
    – tripleee
    Aug 7, 2017 at 8:12
  • That sounds fair, but often users on the metas disagree with SE using the meta Q/A for announcements and 'blog posts'. Some even closed and try to delete such posts. @tripleee
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 8:41
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    Meta isn't a personal blog platform. I'm all for fighting spam, but as others said, starting discussion about any spam post we're getting is way too much noise. Start a real blog, and post a link in your profile. Those willing to join you in fighting the spam can follow this.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Aug 7, 2017 at 9:49
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    @PatrickHofman: Those disagreements are almost always limited to political announcements.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Aug 7, 2017 at 12:57
  • Quite some users were hesitant to use Q/A as blog too, I remember @NathanTuggy
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 12:58

1 Answer 1

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Sent the following to the address in their "contact us" dropdown.

I'm contacting you to alert you to a spam campaign which involves your site.

I have posted some details here:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/299387/spree-of-divisare-com-spam

Briefly, it looks like the spammer is abusing your site to host their spam content, and posting spam messages linking to that content on Stack Exchange sites (basically forum spam or blog spam, though Stack likes to think of itself as "not a forum" and definitely isn't a blog).

Victims of similar attacks in the past have temporarily disabled new uploads by users who do not have a previous history on the site until the spammers go away, though how exactly to cope obviously depends on your site and its community.

Thanks in advance for your expedient attention to this matter,

--
tripleee
just a regular user on Stack Exchange who decided to complain

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    Probably nitpicking here, but you are not answering your own question ;)
    – Patrick Hofman
    Aug 7, 2017 at 6:23
  • Fair point; should be a comment. I'm skirting here and not flagging it, though.
    – tripleee
    Aug 7, 2017 at 8:07
  • I'm marking this as accepted because the spam seems to have stopped. There is no way to tell whether my complaint actually made any difference; I never heard back from the site maintainer.
    – tripleee
    Aug 9, 2017 at 18:14

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