InsaneJournal Announcements

Continuing Sale

squeaky

8/31/11 03:38 pm

Due to the issues this week, we have decided that it is necessary to continue the Permanently Insane account sale through the long weekend.

This will allow us to build a bit of a financial buffer incase further issues cause us to need to abandon our current hosting company.

Permanently Insane accounts are still available from http://www.insanejournal.com/pay for $50. This is the same cost of 2 years of Self-Committed access with even greater benefits. You will be helping the site and you will get some of the best benefits this site has to offer. Its a win-win.

• Leave a comment

• jenseng

  10/2/11 02:16 pm (UTC)

  

  So, when I tried randomly searching journals (about 30 times), I kept getting sent to all these funny usernames with default view styles and the oddest entries. Some about pools, others about boxing, but all of them have these random links placed periodically through each entry. Some of the links go to other funny named journals (with more links), some take you offsite. Each link is titled the same thing (but each journal has its own title for those links).
  
  I thought maybe random search was taking me through more recent random searches but these journals and their posts look too much like the spam campaigns that go on with random comments and unrelated links.
  
  Then, being the button-pusher that I am, I randomly searched again. I get sent to paydayloannows2. And smithsa after that.
  
  Either IJ is letting advertisers have journals now, or someone has played around with the 'random search' coding. Either way, the spam campaign has stepped up, me thinks.
  
  Their profile displays this:
  Date created: 2011-09-08 07:12:56
  Date updated: 2011-10-02 14:01:09, 13 minutes ago
  Clients used: Web: 2.0.0
  Journal entries: 100
  
  or something similar. There were a few made just a few days ago with over 20 journal entries.
  
  A few hundred spam journals posting a few hundred journal entries a month... is this why IJ gets slow?

  • Reply
  • Thread

  • jamescuck

    10/3/11 06:20 pm (UTC)

    Edge Technologies is a Web Software Development company working in various fields.

    • Reply
    • Parent

  • squeaky

    10/3/11 06:37 pm (UTC)

    

    This is an ongoing problem on IJ. We are aware of it and suspend these journals as fast as we can find them. Unfortunately they get created at a rate we cannot control.
    
    We are looking into ways of slowing down, if not stopping this activity.

    • Reply
    • Parent
    • Thread

    • jenseng

      10/4/11 04:38 am (UTC)

      

      Is there a method of reporting bots available to us as users? (I didn't see anything specifically related to bot-reporting in the support forum's 'ask a question'.) Cause I could waste a day just clicking 'random journal' and reporting all these bots lol.

      • Reply
      • Parent
      • Thread

      • aviationgin

        10/5/11 01:36 am (UTC)

        

        i'd do the same thing whenever i saw one, maybe there should be an option on the userinfo page to report the user as a spam bot

        • Reply
        • Parent
        • Thread

        • jenseng

          10/5/11 09:18 am (UTC)

          

          that would be awesome! ....except for when it gets abused by spiteful people who want to create some havoc, or who want usernames to clear up, or other people who want to use up resources by button-mashing.
          
          something similar to what lj has (http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/bots.bml) could be successful with modifications to it. adding a captcha, ip logging (to help in the event of abuse of form) and requiring the submitting user to not only be logged in but to select applicable information from drop down boxes, like:
          
          journal type: user/community
          how did you stumble across it:
          -search randomly button
          -followed link in my/someone else's journal
          -external search engine
          -website redirect'
          
          why you think this journal is spam:
          -all public journal content is advertising
          -public content is random blurb with intermittent links to other ijs/blogging sites/websites
          -other (and, honestly, this would be to catch anyone/thing that wanted to use this form for malicious reasons)
          
          
          etc. or something similar to dreamwidth's antispam campaign (http://dw-antispam.dreamwidth.org/profile). the unfortunate part of this one, i think, is that squeaky would have to 'trust' new volunteers. so, if someone joined up and started banning ip's in a fit of rage, yeah their username is captured so they may be dealt with/banned themselves, but then someone has to go through and fix the new mess. hell, this could happen accidentally. a small work around could be that only ij members with journals that have been active and on site for one year as a minimum may be accepted. then the email address(es) associated with that naughty journal could be used to suspend/ban ALL related journals if the user is determined to have banned others maliciously.
          
          i know, i know, i'll shut up now. :x

          • Reply
          • Parent
          • Thread

          • briankinney

            10/8/11 09:47 pm (UTC)

            

            Giving users ban power would be a nightmare... I know people who've had journals for 10 years that would abuse it. But the reporting system is a good idea.

            • Reply
            • Parent

          • azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org

            10/30/11 10:52 am (UTC)

            

            Speaking as one of the coordinators of the Dreamwidth antispam team, any given member of that team is limited in the damage that they could do because they do not have the power to fully ban an IP address from reaching Dreamwidth, just put restrictions on them for logged-out commenting. Only Dreamwidth staff/the Terms of Service team have the full authority to completely ban an IP or suspend a registered journal; the antispam coordinators have some authority over OpenID spammers though.
            
            Having volunteers who can go through the reports and either dismiss them as not valid, or confirm them as valid and pass them along saves a bunch of time; I can then present staff with a list to double-check and do things with rather than staff having to do all the work themselves.

            • Reply
            • Parent