Suspicious notes and users

[Phaseolus]

It is quite obvious that mgvaLinden, zwartgeld john123, etc... tries to get a revenge.

The problem is that by getting these hits, it will confuse a lot people that do not join the forum : they will get email notification of hits that will get moderated/deleted soon.

On the other hand : it is very interesting to see how he acts : it will help fighting against fakers in the future

His reaction shows that he is guilty !

[Asiamaniac]

Yes, and maybe something else: Poor little boy, nobody loves him, nobody has got time for him. All that brightens up his miserable life is making such a nonsense here.

Let's donate him a bit of pity....

But there is always hope, little boy: God loves you, too....

[Nomen Nescio]

I think Nerzhul should make one tweak to the system though, ie leaving only the form for single note entry available for some probationary time for those people who are caught faking.

[Nerzhul]

Paulo70, 4065 notes

[alex77r]

I think Nerzhul should make one tweak to the system though, ie leaving only the form for single note entry available for some probationary time for those people who are caught faking.

That is a good idea, but not easy to apply.

A better solution would be to simply lock the account when we observe hits in serials.

[hailtotheking]

I think Nerzhul should make one tweak to the system though, ie leaving only the form for single note entry available for some probationary time for those people who are caught faking.

That is a good idea, but not easy to apply.

A better solution would be to simply lock the account when we observe hits in serials.

Even better (if possible) block his IP-address.

HTTK

[angelita]

I think Nerzhul should make one tweak to the system though, ie leaving only the form for single note entry available for some probationary time for those people who are caught faking.

That is a good idea, but not easy to apply.

A better solution would be to simply lock the account when we observe hits in serials.

Even better (if possible) block his IP-address.

HTTK

That is exactly what i wrote at the dutch forum! It must not be that hard to do that? I cannot imagine he uses different computers to create his accounts, so in that case the problem will be solved.

[vermeer]

So john123 has 2 hits with (the same) 5087 and in the serialnumber.

[helloggs]

It is not hard to block his current IP, but it will not have the desired effect. Most IP addresses are dynamic, if you interrupt your current connection and restore it shortly after, your Internet Service Provider will assign you a different address, so if you would want to block this guy forever, you have to block a whole set of addresses, including other people from the same provider/country. Even if he uses a static address, it is very easy to circumvent a block by using a proxy server.

[Gauss]

A better solution would be to simply lock the account when we observe hits in serials.

Even better (if possible) block his IP-address.

That is exactly what i wrote at the dutch forum! It must not be that hard to do that? I cannot imagine he uses different computers to create his accounts, so in that case the problem will be solved.

That is not easy and, depending on the individual case, maybe impossible. I have written a post explaining the problems some time ago in this thread in the context of a different, particularly persistent faker:

[My god! Is it not possible to simply block them as soon as they create a new account again?

No, that's not possible.

Lots of new accounts are being created every day. At first, all look the same. Hence   (I'll keep that name for simplicity) has to do something before it can be realized that it's really him again.

He can use the same email address only once for a registration: No two accounts can have the same mail address. However, it is very easy to obtain new email addresses, e.g., from hotmail.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com, or a similar provider. We cannot guess in advance which mail address he's going to use next. Therefore he can't be blocked from creating an account based on the mail address.

What can be blocked, and is blocked as soon we get aware of it, is the IP address (something like 195.128.2.97, for example). Each computer that is connected to the internet has such an address, and (slightly simplifying) at any point of the time, each IP address belongs to only one computer. However, there are workarounds even for not very experienced abusers (and   is everything but that). The easiest idea is to simply use a different computer; some are publicly available (internet cafes). The IPs are assigned by the internet provider; therefore switching to a different provider produces the same effect as using a different computer. Dial-in providers often assign the IP addresses randomly, so disconnecting and reconnecting may be another way to obtain a fresh, unblocked IP address.

All such blocking has to be done manually. Moreover, particularly dial-in IPs cannot be blocked indefinitely because legitimate users may be assigned right the blocked IP because they happen to use the same provider. The same holds for large domains that could be blocked, e.g., all computers at a certain university, or even from a certain country.

You see that blocking the account would be a rather stupid thing to do for us because
1) we know about the existing accounts ( , _ , centless_dreamer, clodhopper) that they are his. So all alarms will go off as soon as anyone logs on using one of these accounts.
2) we can't keep him from registering a new account.

Summarising, I would like to point out more clearly that it is impossible to block an individual computer - unless it uses always the same IP address, but this cannot be expected.

[Nomen Nescio]

@Gauss & Co:

That's the very reasons why I did suggest the usage of a probation period with access only to the single note entry form for a faker after the removal of faked entries.

If the faker has learned from having all false entries removed and turns honest, good, but if the faker continues as this current sorry case does, he would have to use a lot of time entering codes one by one, only to have these deleted at a later time and thus having to comply with the fact that all the time spent entering codes one by one was spent in vain

Since blocking a single IP-address ain't effective and as Gauss did point out, locking out an account is neither a good option, this would be a way to reduce the effects of faking. And the entries of a faker's account could be analyzed before restoring full access to see wether the user is a former-faker-turned-honest or still faking.

[helloggs]

Get a new account, enter 50 notes in the simple form and one has the advanced form again.

[vermeer]

Fall into their old habit and get caught once again. Loss their banknotes and start all over again.

[Nerzhul]

The only option we have when dealing with fakers is to be more efficient than them. This means that it should take us less time to clean up their mess than it takes them to enter faked data.

We are on a good way, but not quite there yet. We already have all kinds of scripts to easily delete notes, hits and users with a few mouseclicks. (This has not always been this way!)

The only thing that takes time at the moment are the investigations and the notification of the concerned user. Unfortunately especially the investigations sometimes take a long time ... and remember, avij and I are investing our spare time into EBT, so when chunks of this valuable time are consumed by fakers this feels bitter and "wasted".

Some of these steps can and will be further automated in the future, but I can't say when since my life is rather busy at the moment. In the long run our goal is to have an automatic crawler script (maybe even a neural network) checking the validity of the note data which will warn us about possible fakers and suggest and prepare a solution which can be handled with a single mouseclick.

[vermeer]

What i think of is this. Fakers are not members of our forum, but still can view our messages. But i like to hear their side of the story. Why do they do it (it is so easy to do?). Do they hate us and try to throw sand in our eyes. There is more to this than i mentioned, but i also have other thing to do than just EBT. Yes, i have also to work.