-
32 votes
-
Don’t set up wildcard DNS records for GitHub Pages
18 votes -
Google announces major update to combat AI-generated spam in search results
21 votes -
Generative AI - We aren’t ready
27 votes -
How I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot
50 votes -
Downtime due to sign up spam
25 votes -
Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
14 votes -
I got a spam call and the automated voice that requests their reasoning for calling was my voice AI generated
13 votes -
How to find out which extension opened an advertising tab?
Recently I've been coming back to my chrome browsers to find a tab open with the following URL: (link disabled to prevent giving them any more clicks) https...
Recently I've been coming back to my chrome browsers to find a tab open with the following URL:
(link disabled to prevent giving them any more clicks)https ://theaisecrets.beehiiv.com/p/chatgpt-can-now-work-docs-apps-websites-emails
This is happening across all my computers, both linux, windows, and linux VM, so I don't think it's OS-specific malware, but I suspect a rogue chrome extension is opening the tab, because I have chrome synced across all affected devices via my google account.
I've searched for this particular problem and URL to no avail, so I wondered if there's a way to track back which extension opened the tab, other than by doing a binary search disabling half my extensions at a time (which would be annoying as hell - the tabs only seem to get opened once a day or so).
14 votes -
How a tiny pacific island became a global capital of cybercrime
13 votes -
Permanent US injunction and $650,000 civil penalty imposed on Experian Consumer Services for allegedly sending commercial emails
15 votes -
Bots can complete CAPTCHAs quicker than humans
17 votes -
Are unwanted Reddit push notifications a new thing?
I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push...
I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push notification service, instead I kept the official reddit app installed and the only thing I used it for were its notifications. I still have both apps installed.
Anyway, I was surprised to see one pop up yesterday, especially since it wasn’t connected to my user activity (a new private message or reply to an old comment of mine or something). The notification was just an ad. More specifically, it was promoting some trending post on the site that had “>12,000 upvotes.” In many many years of having the app installed I’ve never seen that before. Is it new?
Reddit’s had a mildly antagonist relationship with its users for ages, but it feels like they are REALLY intensifying things now. I’m glad I got off the train when I did. And sorry for making yet another post about reddit, I think we’re all getting tired of harping on it here.
53 votes -
AI is ruining the Internet
88 votes -
BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting Reddit, causing concern about spam moderation on large subreddits
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/reddit-mods-fear-spam-overload-as-botdefense-leaves-antagonistic-reddit/ the Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API...
the Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike. The changes have led to the shuttering of numerous third-party Reddit apps and have pushed several important communities, like the Ask Me Anything (AMAs) organizers, to reduce or end their presence on the site.
The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense. BotDefense, which helps removes rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with concerning implications for spam moderation on some large subreddits like r/space.
BotDefense started in 2019 as a volunteer project and has been run by volunteer mods, known as "dequeued" and "abrownn" on Reddit. Since then, it claims to have populated its ban list with 144,926 accounts, and it helps moderate subreddits with huge followings, like r/gaming (37.4 million members), /r/aww (34.2 million), r/music (32.4 million), r/Jokes (26.2 million), r/space (23.5 million), and /r/LifeProTips (22.2 million). Dequeued told Ars that other large subreddits BotDefense helps moderates include /r/food, /r/EarthPorn, /r/DIY, and /r/mildlyinteresting.
On Wednesday, dequeued announced that BotDefense is ceasing operations. BotDefense has already stopped accepting bot account submissions and will disable future action on bots. BotDefense "will continue to review appeals and process unbans for a minimum of 90 days or until Reddit breaks the code running BotDefense," the announcement said. The announcement also advised "keeping BotDefense as a moderator through October 3rd so any future unbans can be processed."
51 votes -
Is Gmail killing independent email?
12 votes -
Is anyone else receiving a staggering amount of spam calls recently?
For the record, I am Canadian and for all I know, maybe this only pertains to Canadians, maybe it only pertains to me. But I've been receiving a large amount of calls that just end up with no one...
For the record, I am Canadian and for all I know, maybe this only pertains to Canadians, maybe it only pertains to me. But I've been receiving a large amount of calls that just end up with no one on the other end, or just sounds of busy call centers, or 'wrong number calls' which are happening far too frequently for it to be a mistake. Anyone else experiencing this?
12 votes -
IFTTT / Reddit alerts filling up with porn spam? Here’s what to do
2 votes -
Facebook's new "Widely Viewed Content" report doesn't provide meaningful transparency, and seems to be full of errors and spam
5 votes -
On the trail of the robocall king
8 votes -
Sendgrid under siege from hacked accounts
7 votes -
US phone carriers may soon be able to block all calls from robocallers' carriers
16 votes -
Email isn’t broken, email clients are
12 votes -
My take on email
14 votes -
Woolworths pays the Australian Communications and Media Authority $1 million fine for spam marketing emails
6 votes -
Email is not broken
12 votes -
How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
10 votes -
A novel way to prevent email overload
7 votes -
I'm not a robot
7 votes -
Get rid of (paper) junk mail | No Sweat Tech
10 votes -
Scams, American Express, and obfuscated Javascript
10 votes -
Bomb threat, sextortion spammers abused weakness at GoDaddy.com
7 votes -
How much of the internet is fake?
36 votes -
Thirty-five US states tell the FCC to get off its ass and do something about spoofed robocalls
6 votes -
Worthwhile to post about a spammer targeting nonprofits?
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to...
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to DonorComplete. There was no unsubscribe link. I hit Google, which eventually led me to a thread on TechSoup where I commented with what I had found to that date under the same user name: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/f/24/t/43439.aspx This & other results showed that the "free" website is linked to historically very expensive hosting (historically , ~ $20-$40/mo, now showing about $10/mo) for a static website with very limited support or options.
My research continued intermittently, but there appears to be a network of over 100 domains (active, expired, dormant and/or returning server errors) connected to spam efforts over roughly the last 6 years, questionable marketing tactics dating back to ~ 1998, 4 overlapping corporations with one man as a central figure, several throwaway email addresses and a couple that seem to be dedicated & longer running, a handful of apparently dedicated servers and several shared servers with many connected domains hosted. The messages target nonprofit organizations and churches, with 4 textual variations posted via email, mailing lists, and comments. The first archived comments I found targeted FOSS project mailing lists. Based on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, many small nonprofits used their service years ago, but it looks like the spammers' services have been largely abandoned over the last few years - probably why the new campaign started ~ June.
I've filed complaints with two of the registrars, and at least one of the recently active domains appears to be in non-hosted status. Would there be any interest in my posting a thread with the details of what I've found so far (spreadsheets and mind maps in progress)? Would anyone be interested in helping me present the data in a more easily digestible format a la r/dataisbeautiful? Or can anyone recommend an easier way to report the registrant tied to the spam? I'm not trying to start a witch hunt, but these people seem to have flown under the radar for a long time, and I know many small nonprofits aren't tech savvy enough to recognize the warning signs these folks present.
8 votes -
Netflix will now interrupt series binges with video ads for its other series
32 votes -
Freenode under spambot attack
22 votes -
Some Amazon reviews are too good to be believed. They're paid for.
21 votes -
The Elon Musk impersonators of the internet - For cryptocurrency scammers, imitation is the sincerest form of fraud
7 votes -
Battling fake accounts, Twitter to slash millions of followers
7 votes -
Twitter is suspending more than one million accounts per day in latest purge
27 votes -
Facebook publishes enforcement numbers for the first time
5 votes