Spammers want to use UotD in CPDNbeta

[Saenger]

Some pharma spammers have created mass accounts in Beta, perhaps in the real stuff as well, it's just too much to look there. They probably want to become UotD, and have already been, but the account was deleted. The other accounts of the same type are:
392, 393, 397, 398, 399, 403, 408, 409, 415, 418, 419, 422 and 427

I think they should be removed. They hit as well in the beta project uncwdds, but there they are undisturbed yet. I'll post it in the BOINC forum as well.

Edith says:
It's allready in the trac list

[MikeMarsUK]

Yeah, these new spammer accounts are not good news (similar ones have appeared in several boinc projects now). See Trac/400 (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/ticket/400).

I don't think they can become UoTD because they have zero credit, but it's probably intended as 'googlebait' spamming (trying to increase their page rank in google). We've deleted thousands of spammy accounts like this on this phpBB forum.

[Saenger]

Yeah, these new spammer accounts are not good news (similar ones have appeared in several boinc projects now). See Trac/400 (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/ticket/400).

I don't think they can become UoTD because they have zero credit, but it's probably intended as 'googlebait' spamming (trying to increase their page rank in google). We've deleted thousands of spammy accounts like this on this phpBB forum.

They are already UotD at CPDNbeta.
They are not shown on the homepage, and the link seems to be broken on the profiles page.
And they are UotD at the new testproject uncwdds.
I have been UotD as well without credits in several projects, were I'm member but they don't have WUs, either at all or just for Linux.

[MikeMarsUK]

Zero-credit users can become UoTD? How strange. I've added in a suggestion on the Trac item to block that.

[mo.v]

Milo's missed 'member' #253. The UOTD may be that one. I'll make sure Milo knows. If these memberships are from a spambot, I wonder whether an antibot question could be introduced into the application process. This has worked very well indeed on this non-boinc forum. Ask the bots to add 2 + 2 and they can't do it.

[MikeMarsUK]

Unfortunately there are several ways to add an account, and a captcha is only appropriate for manual web-site account creation.

It'd be easy to change over to use the interface which the boinc manager's account creation wizard uses instead (and failing that, the account manager system's account creation interface). These interfaces are all documented publically.

Forcing the account to do some work before it's profile is made visible should work (i.e., keep the account hidden until credit > 0).