Surge in suspicious follows

[azurelunatic]

Some dormant spammer journals have started to activate and follow people. The usual pattern is that they have an empty journal, will follow one or more people, then add spam links to their profiles and/or spammy entries.

If you are followed by a likely spam journal, do not follow them back. Place a support request in the anti-spam category.

Comments

[pauamma]

That might be why ladyreika followed me. Or it might be a shared interest. (No obvious spammy links in their profile as far as I can tell, but I'm not well-versed into spammer users.)

[althea_valara]

Thanks for this. I was followed by a few and was about to make a support request, but wasn't sure which category to put it in.

[calliopes_pen]

It could be why nekobomb suddenly followed me. I wasn't certain. I had wondered, as there are no shared interests, and it's empty aside from a post in 2009.

[teigh_corvus]

Ah, thank you. dianasugar followed me yesterday, and I couldn't figure out why.

[lilly_c]

I had one subscribe recently.

[oursin]

This may be why peculiarcharm followed me. Only a few other journals being followed, only a few and no recent entries in the journal, and a link in the profile to a Very Dodgy Site.

[ng_moonmoth]

The link goes to a generic page in the support category describing support requests. I searched, but didn't find anything about how to bring a spam account to the attention of DW other than by marking a comment as spam. Is there a way to send a message somewhere that this account is suspicious and should be monitored?

[jennifer]

Yes, please file a request using the page https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit and select "Anti-Spam" from the Category list. Thanks!

Thanks!

[ng_moonmoth]

Looks like the powers that be have already gotten to the user. They are no longer in my list of subscribers. But good to know the details for future reference.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I have a post up in my journal for people to drop the names of their suspected spam accounts, so we can get a community list going. Would it be more helpful for you if we preemptively ban them so they can't follow us in the first place, or would you prefer that we not ban them until they add us so you can compile more reports to confirm the fact they're spamming?

[denise]

You've probably seen the dw-maintenance post since then, but just for future reference: it doesn't matter if you ban an account or not, just report it and the antispam team will deal with it. (Please note that this is just for this batch of spam follows -- like, formerly-legit accounts that have scuzzy looking sites in their profile URL. We can't do anything about someone with a legit account following you.)

[worlds_of_smoke]

Coolbeans! Thanks. :)