Freesound Forums

It's a shame to see a site as valuable and useful as this one continually fall victim to spambots.

What is needed to combat them? More volunteer manpower, a better codebase, more resources?

If we can identify a plan of action, and its requirements, we will have a clearer picture of what we can do. I'm willing to devote some time to this.

Presently, one of my sounds is being download-spammed by a set of accounts that were all made 4 years and 6 months ago. What is the purpose of this? If they wanted to clog up the bandwidth or do a denial-of-service attack, there are much easier ways to go about it.

Just read this thread

https://freesound.org/forum/freesound-project/43906/?page=1#post100282

It does not provide a comprehensive answer. We still get comments with shady URLs, solicitous messages and other such things.

strangehorizon wrote:
It does not provide a comprehensive answer. We still get comments with shady URLs, solicitous messages and other such things.

Yes, this is a different issue entirely. Let me shed some light on it...

We are very aware of the situation and it's one we've been silently combatting for years. Just when we think we've been successful and they've given up, they invent a new way to bother the user base, it's just never ending. The problem is resources, they are limited with Freesound's small team of developers. We don't know exactly how larger platforms do it because it's going on behind the scenes; you don't really think about it. But nevertheless it's a huge plague to the internet.

Here on Freesound (years ago) they used to only target the forum. We introduced a manual human moderation for first posts since it was the only way to really determine if these posts were truly spam/phishing. So nowadays it's really clean and you don't see any of that because it just gets deleted along with the accounts.

Then there was the private messaging bombardment, which I worked with Frederic Font to contain using his scripting/automation prowess. Some still slips through though the net, but it's mostly contained.

Finally we've got to the next stage which is comments on sounds. It's an issue at the moment which we are aware of and we've had multiple conversations about on how to combat this. It's not easy and we're still trying to figure out the best way without having to manually engage with it, that's not something that's feasible to do. I want to give a huge shoutout to Klankbeeld for his vigilance on this, he is doing a great job reporting these spammers to me and I suggest anyone else do the same. I will endeavour to sort it out quickly.

I honestly don't know why these phishers are targeting this platform, our user base is not exactly a prime target. it's a pretty pointless platform to do this on because in my opinion the majority of users here are quite savvy and privy to this sort of thing. It's just a case of "spreading the net wide" in a dumb attempt i guess. But rest assured we do care about this, and are working on the right solutions that don't impact our users and also volunteering moderators.

I hope this information has been insightful

Merry Christmas folks!
Sam

I can only offer two possible explanations. I think they don't suffice to explain the entire story, but they paint pictures some may not have considered yet.

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1.
Even here on Freesound there are those who would seek to make money from their recordings. People are willing to show up to any random public venue, record the sounds that happen there, and then solicit donations for it. Perhaps some of this spam/harassment is the work of another who has a similar vested interest: They own, or are part of, some other website where they can make money on sound recordings. A number of people representing such sites have contacted me over time, trying to get me to join them, but I have no interest in it. I only want to provide 100% free sounds for all.

2.
More kids are using the internet now than ever. A lot of them are inclined to post offensive stuff or outright nonsense on here. There can be many reasons for this: Lack of comprehension about what Freesound is, jealousy toward its users, or a secondhand carrying-out of the profit-driven mindset which explains my first reason (they learn that things cost money, find a site like this which goes against that established model, and attack it for being different). Finally, some of them might be posting offensive things here just because they see that there's no content filter. That explains a lot of the offensive usernames I've seen.

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Well, if the admin/mod team finds that it needs help, any of them can drop me a line. I've seen too many amazing creative tools and websites fall into disrepair and disuse because of issues just like this one. I once used FontStruct heavily but had to quit because of a lack of moderation on that site. At least here on Freesound, I can moderate the comments of my own sounds.

Cheers,

Z.

Recently I got spammed by polish users, it's kinda strange. All 3 users wrote at my sound at the same time.

DigitalUnderglow wrote:
Recently I got spammed by polish users, it's kinda strange. All 3 users wrote at my sound at the same time.

Do you know the usernames of the accounts? It's really useful for us to know

I can't see any comments, perhaps you deleted them already.

I'm starting to see more spam on my content lately. Perhaps one way to fight this would be to not allow comments from any user unless they have actually uploaded some files themselves ?

mikobuntu wrote:
I'm starting to see more spam on my content lately. Perhaps one way to fight this would be to not allow comments from any user unless they have actually uploaded some files themselves ?

Please don't. I don't post sounds. I taken them, use them in my projects, and give them due credits. I think it helps both sound creators and people using and exposing their sounds to others.

Definitely allow everyone to comment.
People should be able to make an account, download a sound, and say thanks!

Perhaps the first 3-5 comments of a user could go though a comment moderation process to be approved, by either moderators or the owner of the sound.

It would make it harder to make spam accounts.
A probable negative side effect, they'd need to leave a few positive comments here and there before spamming so is positive bots spam compensating the negative spam ? xD
Probably not, and it would make actual genuine positive comments lose value by being mixed with bots :/ But it would probably lower the overall spam.

Hey Sadiquecat and friends,
Anyway, they’ve started already. I’ve already flagged and deleted some positive comments about my sounds, promoting some commercial websites that have nothing to do with the subject...

Wishing you all the best !

Kevin

It should also be possible to simply publish comments from new users, but as soon as there is a link in the comment, it could be forwarded to a special group of moderators.

I have been moderating comments from new published sounds for some time now. I also search for certain keywords, but that is not very effective.

When I find a hit, I forward it to the tech boys. They review the text again and delete the spam accounts.

I am willing to be a real moderator for spam. I do not want to block accounts myself (I am a to unsure person) . Someone else can do that after my initial review.

regards

klankbeeld wrote:
When I find a hit, I forward it to the tech boys. They review the text again and delete the spam accounts.

Thanks very much by the way. Really appreciate your vigilance!

Happy to receive your reports

Cheers

I am willing to be a real moderator for spam.

Maybe you could add requirements in order to comment, (e.g user's account age must be 24 hours or more, verified email, or pass a test and/or quiz) or make a whitelist for links so the only links users can add in their comments is YouTube or Bandlab