(bots#9) Bot Information + comments + questions
See all bot posts: Cyrillic russians serial adding friend friending livejournal bot random auto spider
Do not link directly to this post, link to the tag above. If you have been linked directly to this post, tell the person to fix their link.
I've just split this post out from the bot-report post which has reached 109 comments.
You can leave questions/comments here.
I am not a representative of Livejournal Support. I'm just someone with fast fingers and some google skills who can copy and paste.
A lot of people are asking questions about the bots, I just want to make sure that everyone gets answers, because Livejournal Support don't believe in informing the public.
For any real Russians: Livejournal's offical translation of "suspended" is "заморожен" (frozen) (thanks jimmy_chaosmann!)
If there are any other confusing translations, please let me know and I will try to explain them.
click here report the bots to livejournal, because it actually works.
Since people have been asking, here's what you could say:
Hi, these "russian bots" friended me and nympholept told me to report them.
http://bot1.livejournal.com
http://bot2.livejournal.com
...
I realise you're really busy and it may take a while to investigate these.
Thanks for all your hard work investigating these bots!It is probably a good idea to put "+(000) var UF StS StD" in the subject line, so they know immediately what your report is about.
The url formatted list of bots is so they can click them easily.
And the thankyou at the end is because they really are putting a lot of time and effort into this (I know at least 5-10 more people per day are reporting bots because of my posts - maybe 50 now!)
Of course, if you have additional questions, you're free to ask LJ, but you don't need to give them a long explanation of what the bots are doing
What I know:
If you ban_set them, but didn't know you could report them until now, this message is not directed at you.
People who do not report bots to Livejournal are selfish and allow the bots to continue to... do whatever it is they do.
What you do is akin to seeing a burglar at your neighbours house, but just locking your own door instead of calling the police.
When you ban someone from your journal it only stops them from commenting, and removes them from your friend-of list.
You are still on their friends list. They can still see, save and repost your public entries.
And they do:
http://shopwritedoll.blogspot.com/2008/10/exceptional-house-plans.html
http://alldaydifficult.blogspot.com/2008/10/blues-lead-guitar-tabs.html
http://kingwhohear.blogspot.com/2008/10/confessore.html
http://upbrothercat.blogspot.com/2008/10/derriere-les-fagots-restaurant.html
(These are spam journals that have reposted people's entries about the bots!)
If anyone knows who owns those journals, please let them know. (google can't find them)
Reporting the bots to LJ-Support is the only way to get rid of them for sure.
If you have notifications turned on, you can see a list of people who have recently added you here: http://www.livejournal.com/inbox/?view=befriended
If you want to be able to use that page, but don't want emails, you can choose notifications, but disable being sent an email on the subscriptions page
September 30: they're learning english (those journals have now been suspended)
September 29: Livejournal "Support" staff still only authorize the answers that say "There's nothing you can do about people friending you" instead of my answers telling them about the bots.
However, The Livejournal Abuse Team are great. (Except for "Veronika", who tried to tell me that the bots were not a problem, then refused to apologise)
October 3rd: Livejournal Support Staff are now posting and authorising answers suggesting that people report the bots - hooray!
Do not link directly to this post, link to the tag above. If you have been linked directly to this post, tell the person to fix their link.
I've just split this post out from the bot-report post which has reached 109 comments.
You can leave questions/comments here.
I am not a representative of Livejournal Support. I'm just someone with fast fingers and some google skills who can copy and paste.
A lot of people are asking questions about the bots, I just want to make sure that everyone gets answers, because Livejournal Support don't believe in informing the public.
For any real Russians: Livejournal's offical translation of "suspended" is "заморожен" (frozen) (thanks jimmy_chaosmann!)
If there are any other confusing translations, please let me know and I will try to explain them.
click here report the bots to livejournal, because it actually works.
Since people have been asking, here's what you could say:
Hi, these "russian bots" friended me and nympholept told me to report them.
http://bot1.livejournal.com
http://bot2.livejournal.com
...
I realise you're really busy and it may take a while to investigate these.
Thanks for all your hard work investigating these bots!It is probably a good idea to put "+(000) var UF StS StD" in the subject line, so they know immediately what your report is about.
The url formatted list of bots is so they can click them easily.
And the thankyou at the end is because they really are putting a lot of time and effort into this (I know at least 5-10 more people per day are reporting bots because of my posts - maybe 50 now!)
Of course, if you have additional questions, you're free to ask LJ, but you don't need to give them a long explanation of what the bots are doing
What I know:
- The bots friend people automatically from community member lists, and user friend lists. You may notice familiar names on the friends list of a bot.
- They have been around since at least April, I first noticed them in August - so did a lot of other people.
- A lot of them post the same content - if you take some of their post, and google it, you will find many others journals with identical content.
- Not all of them post the same stuff, there are many variations. I don't know if that means they're newer, or they're just assigned to a different group. Some are more random and very hard to identify - google still helps.
- They almost always use Cyrillic (Russian), I'm told it often doesn't make much sense (I don't speak Russian, so i don't know)
- Sometimes, they reply: don't let that fool you.
It is either automatic, or it is the person controlling the bots. Lately, they have been accusing me of being a bot, because I post the same message telling people to report them to Livejournal. - No-one knows what they are for.
Livejournal is currently researching ways to automatically identify them, and block them from registering.
Update: Livejournal staff can now automatically identity bots that are reported to them, but are not able to locate them unless they are reported. - One theory is that they are saving all your entries, and when people re-friend them, they save all their friends-only entries. Pictures, email addresses, names, street addresses, phone numbers - some people post these things, and the bots want them. 5000 bots friending 100,000 journals = identity theft.
There have been reported of recent Russian hackings. I do not know if these are related - The Userpic replacement problem is NOT related
Userpics are appearing differently because of a CDN cache problem, and is being worked on by LJ developers. - There was also a bug where suspended users were adding friends - it was reported, and is now fixed
If you ban_set them, but didn't know you could report them until now, this message is not directed at you.
People who do not report bots to Livejournal are selfish and allow the bots to continue to... do whatever it is they do.
What you do is akin to seeing a burglar at your neighbours house, but just locking your own door instead of calling the police.
When you ban someone from your journal it only stops them from commenting, and removes them from your friend-of list.
You are still on their friends list. They can still see, save and repost your public entries.
And they do:
http://shopwritedoll.blogspot.com/2008/10/exceptional-house-plans.html
http://alldaydifficult.blogspot.com/2008/10/blues-lead-guitar-tabs.html
http://kingwhohear.blogspot.com/2008/10/confessore.html
http://upbrothercat.blogspot.com/2008/10/derriere-les-fagots-restaurant.html
(These are spam journals that have reposted people's entries about the bots!)
If anyone knows who owns those journals, please let them know. (google can't find them)
Reporting the bots to LJ-Support is the only way to get rid of them for sure.
If you have notifications turned on, you can see a list of people who have recently added you here: http://www.livejournal.com/inbox/?view=befriended
If you want to be able to use that page, but don't want emails, you can choose notifications, but disable being sent an email on the subscriptions page
September 30: they're learning english (those journals have now been suspended)
September 29: Livejournal "Support" staff still only authorize the answers that say "There's nothing you can do about people friending you" instead of my answers telling them about the bots.
However, The Livejournal Abuse Team are great. (Except for "Veronika", who tried to tell me that the bots were not a problem, then refused to apologise)
October 3rd: Livejournal Support Staff are now posting and authorising answers suggesting that people report the bots - hooray!