Attack of the spammers?

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Matt Fig
Matt Fig on 17 Mar 2011
Commented: Image Analyst on 17 Jul 2014
This message was sent to you via your profile page at MATLAB Answers.
Hello
My name is miss Jelin,i am looking for a new friend i saw your profile today at www.mathworks.com and became interested in you,i
will also like to know you the more,and i want you to send a mail to my email
address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom l am.Here is my email
address (meetjeliin82@yahoo.co.uk)
I believe we can move from here.I am waiting for
your mail to my email address (meetjeliin82@yahoo.co.uk) Remember that distance, color or age
does not matter but love matters allot in life Please reply me with my email
Jelin
.
.
Anybody else getting these?
  5 Comments
Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell on 17 Mar 2011
I have also seen this in the comment to a question.
Yu Ang Tan
Yu Ang Tan on 28 Mar 2011
I got it too.
Yep, definitely suspicious.

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Accepted Answer

Helen Chen
Helen Chen on 17 Mar 2011
We are looking into ways to cut down on this type of unwanted communication. For now our suggestion is to prevent spam, consider hiding your email address from your community profile. You can do this by:
  • log into your MATLAB Central account
  • go to your community profile by clicking on the "My Community Profile" link at the top right of this page
  • click on "Edit my profile"
  • check the box for "Do not display my email address"
When users come to your profile, they will see a link "Contact author". Logged in users can use this to send direct email messages to you. If you are receiving messages from a spammer, please do forward the message to Lindsay or me and we will remove the account.
Thank you!
Helen
  21 Comments
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 24 Mar 2014
Changing one's registered email address does not currently require a confirmation via something emailed to the address. I could in theory change my email to (say) live.com and spam ... Mathworks can't block all the common domains.
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 28 Mar 2014
Is there some way someone can write a MATLAB script using urlread or trendy or something to retrieve mailnesia authors and look at their answers and give us the option to delete them. In the last 12 hours I've deleted over 40 spams and I'm hoping there might be a more automatic or computer assisted method. It's tedious to do one at a time and the weekend is coming up, which usually means an assault of hundreds of spams. Or even if I've already found and identified a spammer to just get all his "Answers" and delete them?

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More Answers (4)

Jan
Jan on 17 Mar 2011
I didn't get mail from Jelin. But several people asked me by email to solve their homework. And two users tried to succeed a discussion from this forum - without telling the corresponding thread or their user name.
How many not really serious messages are you getting through MATLAB Answers?
  8 Comments
Matt Tearle
Matt Tearle on 17 Mar 2011
Dear Valued Colleague
I am Oleg Ndogo, of the Nigerian RUMP Team of a multinational company with many large assets that have been frozen after a military coup by General Walter Lgonwe. Your honesty and discretion, as have been vouched for by many sources to me, are required to move these important MATLAB Codes to you for your increased benefits. For this service, my uncle Prince Jan Komingo will reward you with $250,000 (US) for your noble assistance. Please send details of your bank account information so that we may proceed with the transaction in a timeful manner.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 17 Mar 2011
Oleg No Dog? Walter Own Leg? Jan Mink Goo? Where do the spammers come up with these names??

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Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell on 5 Apr 2011
My new favorite:
plz give me ful program

Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva on 17 Mar 2011
There's a remote chance that she's really in love with you! ahahah
I didn't receive one of those yet
  13 Comments
Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell on 17 Mar 2011
I hear plenty big talk Oleg this, Oleg that. Who this Oleg fella? He nothing! He girly man! I be the one you want, I give you good time.
Jan
Jan on 18 Mar 2011
@Andrew??? Have you seen Jelin's reputation number? And compared it to Oleg's?! Who is Jelin??? MATLAB Answers is the one you want, Oleg! Take it easy: take us.

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Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 17 Jul 2014
A "Mohamed" evidently asked a question over 2 years ago. Now I ran my spam detector tonight and got a hit on some terms, like "putlocker" and this post popped up. At one time, judging from the answers, the original post was legitimate, but now it's been replaced by spam links. Yet the posts don't show any evidence of being edited. I know comments don't say they've been edited, but answers should, and this answer does not show an edit yet it shows a 2 year old date . It's not two years old or my spam detector would have caught it before. So how and when did it get there? Who put the spam there? Did the original Mohamed do it after turning to the dark side, or did someone hack his account? There are several unexplained things about this post. I hope if doesn't reveal a new more powerful level of hacking by the spammers where they can edit anyone's post. I've left the post up for now so we can all see it and discuss it.
  5 Comments
Star Strider
Star Strider on 17 Jul 2014
I A — I did click on the link to the Answers post. I didn’t click on the ‘putlocker’ link. Sean seems to have come to the same conclusion I did.
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 17 Jul 2014
OK. I didn't realize that putlocker was a legitimate site (I never went there before). But now I don't know why that message wasn't found in the search before now . I think some changes were made to the search functionality. For example a search before a few days ago for "hightail" did not return any hits. But now it returns a hit. I'm not sure why it now finds something. It actually finds "high-tail", with a dash in the middle of the word, whereas before it did not find that message. Maybe the search functionality was changed to try to get more hits than before.

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