Potential spam auto-detector

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Matt J
Matt J on 26 Sep 2014
Commented: Chad Greene on 25 Nov 2014
Apparently, a spam auto-detector has been added to Answers, which flags certain messages as "potential spam" and gives the following dialog buttons,
But when I confirm the message as SPAM and hit the delete button, I find that it takes a long time for it to respond. Is this normal?
  5 Comments
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 18 Oct 2014
Star's link is gone. Matt's is still there. I can only guess that since there's nothing inherently spammy about the content (no links or anything), that it didn't catch it. I don't think being flagged as spam notifies them about the author at all. I was catching kolli and some other bad actor repeatedly until I actually sent a message to John and Randy. Then I didn't see them anymore so I presume they disabled the accounts. Only once have I seen non-spam in there and it was by Chad Greene - I couldn't figure out why it caught it but I marked it as non-spam. It seems like if an author has more than 1 or 2 spams deleted, then at the very least it should notify the Mathworks so they can review/disable those accounts. Right now it does a good job of catching them but disabling the accounts is still a pretty manual process.
Chad Greene
Chad Greene on 25 Nov 2014
Thanks, Image Analyst! :)

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Accepted Answer

Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 26 Sep 2014
I didn't create it. I merely logged it here. I think it must have been either Randy or John.
You're right - it does take a very long time. I don't know how a message gets flagged like that. I don't know if that happens if someone flags it as spam or if it's more automatic. I do notice in the "Flagged Content" list that there are some orphaned items that have flags that you can't get to the actual posts anymore because they were deleted. So in the past I've been looking for flagged spam posts (or closed posts via the Recent Activity link) and calling them up and first removing the flag, then removing all tags, and finally deleting the post just to make sure there will be no orphaned flags. I don't know if all that is necessary anymore with their new way of handling spam.
  6 Comments
John Kelly
John Kelly on 2 Oct 2014
MathWorks implemented a new spam filter in September
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 19 Oct 2014
It's interesting that comments will get noticed and flagged as spam, such as this one but don't show up in the spam trap. Does it get only Questions and Answers but not Comments? This question is actually not spam, but I left it (didn't say it was not spam) so you could look at it. I only noticed it because the date of last activity was way prior and not in chronological order.

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More Answers (1)

Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski on 26 Sep 2014
I like the way it makes spammers' accounts have negative questions counts :)
For the pause, I just hit refresh and it still logs it.
  5 Comments
John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 27 Sep 2014
Edited: John D'Errico on 30 Sep 2014
Can I vote for a more than mild shock?
Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski on 30 Sep 2014
@Matt, Yes, hit the button, it'll appear to hang, hit F5 (or whatever your browser's refresh is) and it still logs the button press.
@John, I'm sure you could optimize it :)

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