![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
Upcoming anti-spam changes: confirm your emails now to avoid problems later!
We've been stepping up our spam detection and enforcement[1] recently, as spammers continue to use Dreamwidth for a bunch of unsolicited advertising garbage and search engine backlink spam. Part of our upcoming planned changes to make the site more unfriendly to spammers will involve reducing the number of things you can do on the site before you've confirmed your email address, as well as limiting the visibility of profiles and accounts whose email addresses are unconfirmed.
We know a lot of our users have multiple accounts, and that roleplayers in particular have a bunch of accounts they either aren't using yet, or were using at one point and have retired, temporarily or permanently. To make sure that legitimate accounts don't get inconvenienced by our planned future restrictions on accounts with unconfirmed email addresses, please take a few moments now and check all your accounts to make sure the email addresses listed on them are your current email address, and that you've confirmed your email address on each account.
To learn about confirming your email address, see "How do I confirm my email address?" To check that your email address has been confirmed, log in to the account and go to Confirm Email. (This is also where you can send a new confirmation email if you need to confirm your email address.) To change your email address if it's out of date, log in to the account and go to Change Email Address. Finally, if you have multiple accounts and may have lost track of or forgotten one, go to Lost Information and enter your email address under "Have you lost your account name?" -- the site will email you a list of all your usernames.
If you have a little bit of extra time, please check the username list for every email address you may have ever used on the site. We often run into problems where people change which email address they're primarily using, update some but not all of their accounts to use the new email address, and then lose access to the old email address later on. If that happens, we are very limited in the number of ways we can help you recover access to the account if you forget the password or someone breaks into your account, and people in that situation often lose access to the account entirely and can't get it back. It bums us out when we can't help you get your account back, so spending a few minutes now to do some digital housekeeping can help you and us to lower the chances you'll lose account access.
Please share this post with your friends, especially friends who haven't visited Dreamwidth for a while! It's hard for us to contact people who have outdated email addresses, and we really hate it when people come back after a few years away and discover that they can't get into their accounts any more because they've lost access to their email address. We want to keep your account around for as long as we're here, and we want to make sure as many of you as possible who take a break can still get into your accounts when you come back, whether you've been gone for six months or six years!
We'd also like to thank everyone who helps us out by reporting spam they see on DW! There are a few different types of spam that we tend to get, and each one has a different way to report it to us:
If you get a spam comment: Delete the comment, and choose "mark as spam" when you do. This puts the comment into our comment spam wrangling system, where our antispam volunteers will take actions to make it harder for that person to spam in the future (if it's anonymous spam) or refer the account to us for suspension (if it's a logged-in spam account).
If you see a spam entry, such as on Latest Things or using the site search: Open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spam entry or the spammer's journal. We'll take it from there.
If you get a spam entry to your community and you're the community admin: Delete the entry, and choose "mark as spam" when you do. This puts the entry into our spam wrangling system, and our antispam volunteers will handle it. If you're not the community admin, but you see a spam entry and the admin hasn't handled it yet, open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spam entry or the spammer's journal. Again, we'll take it from there.
If you get a spam entry to your moderated community's moderation queue, and you're an admin or moderator of the community: Choose "reject as spam" to remove the entry from the moderation queue. That will put the entry into our spam wrangling system, and our antispam volunteers will handle it.
If you see a spam profile, such as when accounts add a bunch of people to their reading list and their journal is empty but their bio is clearly spam, or you're browsing Directory Search or Interests and click on a profile that's clearly spam, open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spammer's profile. We'll take it from there.
(If you see spam entries or spam profiles from accounts that were created within the last day or so, chances are pretty good that our detection systems will catch them; don't feel too bad if you don't have time to report those. We're still chewing through the backlog of accounts that were created before our updated detection systems, though, and sometimes spammers create accounts and let them sit dormant for a while to avoid detection, so please do report anything older than a day or two!)
[1] We use a number of flexible definitions of spam, but a good rule of thumb is we consider spam to be "accounts that are here primarily to get their off-DW content in front of the eyeballs of people who didn't go looking for it, not here to participate on the site". This includes accounts that are trying to get their off-DW content to rank higher in search engine results by increasing the number of outside links that the search engine sees for their website. It does not include something like regular DW users posting about their projects, like an author linking to their books, an artist making a community for their webcomic updates, someone who makes jewelry linking to their Etsy shop, an adult performer linking to their OnlyFans account, etc. Genuine DW users should feel 100% comfortable linking to their presence elsewhere on the internet, even things that are commercial in nature and even in separate accounts or communities so it isn't part of your main account, and if we get that wrong, please do yell at us about it: no spam detection is perfect, because spammers are endlessly inventive. What we're looking to get rid of are the inauthentic accounts created by people who have no interest in DW itself, just looking for yet another place they can put their "search engine optimization" content or "backlink generation" content: every site that allows user-generated content accrues that kind of garbage, and we're really trying to crack down on it because it wastes everyone's time and resources.
(Comment notification emails may be delayed for an hour or two, due to the high volume of emails generated by a![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_news post. This was posted at 1:40 PM EST/1840 UTC (see in your time zone). Please don't worry about delayed notification emails until at least two hours after that. You may receive multiple copies of this email notification due to a known issue with sending out that huge numbers of emails: we apologize, and we're still working to fix that problem.)
We know a lot of our users have multiple accounts, and that roleplayers in particular have a bunch of accounts they either aren't using yet, or were using at one point and have retired, temporarily or permanently. To make sure that legitimate accounts don't get inconvenienced by our planned future restrictions on accounts with unconfirmed email addresses, please take a few moments now and check all your accounts to make sure the email addresses listed on them are your current email address, and that you've confirmed your email address on each account.
To learn about confirming your email address, see "How do I confirm my email address?" To check that your email address has been confirmed, log in to the account and go to Confirm Email. (This is also where you can send a new confirmation email if you need to confirm your email address.) To change your email address if it's out of date, log in to the account and go to Change Email Address. Finally, if you have multiple accounts and may have lost track of or forgotten one, go to Lost Information and enter your email address under "Have you lost your account name?" -- the site will email you a list of all your usernames.
If you have a little bit of extra time, please check the username list for every email address you may have ever used on the site. We often run into problems where people change which email address they're primarily using, update some but not all of their accounts to use the new email address, and then lose access to the old email address later on. If that happens, we are very limited in the number of ways we can help you recover access to the account if you forget the password or someone breaks into your account, and people in that situation often lose access to the account entirely and can't get it back. It bums us out when we can't help you get your account back, so spending a few minutes now to do some digital housekeeping can help you and us to lower the chances you'll lose account access.
Please share this post with your friends, especially friends who haven't visited Dreamwidth for a while! It's hard for us to contact people who have outdated email addresses, and we really hate it when people come back after a few years away and discover that they can't get into their accounts any more because they've lost access to their email address. We want to keep your account around for as long as we're here, and we want to make sure as many of you as possible who take a break can still get into your accounts when you come back, whether you've been gone for six months or six years!
We'd also like to thank everyone who helps us out by reporting spam they see on DW! There are a few different types of spam that we tend to get, and each one has a different way to report it to us:
If you get a spam comment: Delete the comment, and choose "mark as spam" when you do. This puts the comment into our comment spam wrangling system, where our antispam volunteers will take actions to make it harder for that person to spam in the future (if it's anonymous spam) or refer the account to us for suspension (if it's a logged-in spam account).
If you see a spam entry, such as on Latest Things or using the site search: Open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spam entry or the spammer's journal. We'll take it from there.
If you get a spam entry to your community and you're the community admin: Delete the entry, and choose "mark as spam" when you do. This puts the entry into our spam wrangling system, and our antispam volunteers will handle it. If you're not the community admin, but you see a spam entry and the admin hasn't handled it yet, open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spam entry or the spammer's journal. Again, we'll take it from there.
If you get a spam entry to your moderated community's moderation queue, and you're an admin or moderator of the community: Choose "reject as spam" to remove the entry from the moderation queue. That will put the entry into our spam wrangling system, and our antispam volunteers will handle it.
If you see a spam profile, such as when accounts add a bunch of people to their reading list and their journal is empty but their bio is clearly spam, or you're browsing Directory Search or Interests and click on a profile that's clearly spam, open a support request in the "Anti-Spam" category and include a link to the spammer's profile. We'll take it from there.
(If you see spam entries or spam profiles from accounts that were created within the last day or so, chances are pretty good that our detection systems will catch them; don't feel too bad if you don't have time to report those. We're still chewing through the backlog of accounts that were created before our updated detection systems, though, and sometimes spammers create accounts and let them sit dormant for a while to avoid detection, so please do report anything older than a day or two!)
[1] We use a number of flexible definitions of spam, but a good rule of thumb is we consider spam to be "accounts that are here primarily to get their off-DW content in front of the eyeballs of people who didn't go looking for it, not here to participate on the site". This includes accounts that are trying to get their off-DW content to rank higher in search engine results by increasing the number of outside links that the search engine sees for their website. It does not include something like regular DW users posting about their projects, like an author linking to their books, an artist making a community for their webcomic updates, someone who makes jewelry linking to their Etsy shop, an adult performer linking to their OnlyFans account, etc. Genuine DW users should feel 100% comfortable linking to their presence elsewhere on the internet, even things that are commercial in nature and even in separate accounts or communities so it isn't part of your main account, and if we get that wrong, please do yell at us about it: no spam detection is perfect, because spammers are endlessly inventive. What we're looking to get rid of are the inauthentic accounts created by people who have no interest in DW itself, just looking for yet another place they can put their "search engine optimization" content or "backlink generation" content: every site that allows user-generated content accrues that kind of garbage, and we're really trying to crack down on it because it wastes everyone's time and resources.
(Comment notification emails may be delayed for an hour or two, due to the high volume of emails generated by a
dw_news post. This was posted at 1:40 PM EST/1840 UTC (see in your time zone). Please don't worry about delayed notification emails until at least two hours after that. You may receive multiple copies of this email notification due to a known issue with sending out that huge numbers of emails: we apologize, and we're still working to fix that problem.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
But social media is a different type of spam than anything else. And really, I want to know what to report if I'm on network instead of second-guessing.
no subject
no subject
But then there are other accounts that aren't empty but you squint and you're like, "Okay you're either an anarchist with no other purpose in life than to undermine the establishment or you're a bot? I can't tell?" Or also, "Either someone is super into memes and shitposting or a bot? I also can't tell?" I tend to block those under an abundance of caution, but not report them, but I'm lately getting to the point where I might start reporting them out of an overabundance of caution, but I'm not there yet.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Automated detection has come a long way in the last 20 years, and there's a lot of tools you can use to find and stomp them, but there's a certain amount of spam detection that is always going to have to be "a trained human being looks at an account and decides if it's real or fake". The human brain is so good at pattern-matching that I can actually spot spam accounts in languages I don't speak in the slightest -- and distinguish them from real accounts in that language -- without machine translation a lot of the time. (I still confirm with the machine translation, but that snap judgement is almost always correct.) And, most fascinatingly, the skill doesn't necessarily cross services: I'm better at spotting a spambot on Twitter than the average Twitter user, but I'm nowhere near as confident in my accuracy as I am on DW, where I can look at a list of 100 accounts and tell you without even loading the profiles which accounts are going to be spam and which are real with a 99% accuracy rate. It's so bizarre, especially when you're staring at a profile and going "I know this is spam, the further confirmatory investigation proved that I'm right this is spam, but I have absolutely no idea what I saw in this profile that made my hindbrain convinced that this is spam".
no subject
"I know this is spam, the further confirmatory investigation proved that I'm right this is spam, but I have absolutely no idea what I saw in this profile that made my hindbrain convinced that this is spam".
The beauty of the brain making connections faster than conscious thoughts :D
no subject
Honestly, the most legitimate-looking 25% of spammers have such an overlap with the most out-of-the-ordinary 25% of real users that every site is going to make mistakes, and I'm of the school of thought that says if you aren't making occasional mistakes, you're probably not being aggressive enough with your spam enforcement. So don't worry too much! At most it will temporarily inconvenience someone, and we're quick to undo it when we get it wrong.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
[1] For instance, the people who are having trouble using DW from certain VPN networks are victims of this: 99% of spam comes from VPN services that are really lax about getting rid of spammers, people who are running DDoS networks, and people who are engaged in high-traffic security "testing" to try to find websites that have security vulnerabilities. On the other hand, plenty of our users are using VPNs for privacy or personal security purposes, or to route around state-sponsored censorship, so we can't just shut off all VPN access entirely. So we're trying to thread the needle of just blocking the really awful VPN services that don't police their networks without blocking the ones that our users are using, but sometimes we don't even have a choice about whether or not we can block that traffic, our host is doing it for us. tl;dr: this shit is complicated and it takes way too much of our effort to deal with it and when I'm Empress of the Known Universe, spamming will be a hanging offense.
no subject