Darkoshi

spam goes on, in spite of war?

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 07:52:59 GMT

An old post of mine got three linkspam comments today. The comments were posted by a Ukranian IP #, and include the URL of "Custom Software Development Company RexSoft".

Per Norton SafeWeb and Google, the site doesn't have unsafe content.

Per the Wayback Machine, the site has existed since at least 2017.

Per the web site itself, the company has locations in the USA, the UK, and Kyiv, Ukraine.

It seems the entity that left the comments was unclear how to make their URL get posted as an HREF link on my journal, as the 2nd and 3rd comments, posted several minutes after the first, had only the URL. So I'd guess it was a person posting the comments, not a bot.

It seems an odd time, during a war, for someone in Ukraine to post linkspam. That's why I checked if the site might have malicious content.

It also occurred to me that maybe Russia, not that Rexsoft company, could be behind the linkspam. As this page says, "not only are Google getting better at devaluing spammy links, the repercussions from Google can be devastating if caught."

Linkspam like that could hurt the company rather then help it; maybe Russia wants that. It seems an implausible action, but who knows. I will delete or screen the comments eventually.

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Random thought from yesterday, regarding how some of the Russian soldiers were told Ukrainians would welcome them, and were surprised by the resistance:
Maybe Russian (and other national) intelligence agencies have a hard time gauging the sentiment of people due to all of their own (and other) disinformation campaigns that they've been waging. Maybe they can't easily tell which and how many social media posts are by their own disinformation agents versus the actual population.

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Another random thought from yesterday:
Take your kid to work day must be very boring for kids whose parents work from home.

Out of curiosity, I looked into that Rexsoft linkspam some more.

There have been several recent and similar linkspam posts and comments on other sites. These were all posted with a user name of "ann2022":
forums.tarot.com
kboards.com
vivecraft.org
ragezone
cracked.io

Four of those same pages also have linkspam for another site, develux.com. That is a company with locations listed in Kyiv, Ukraine; Malta; and Kissimmee, Florida.

Here's another page with posts from last year that link to both sites:
caclubindia

So it seems there may be a relationship between those 2 companies, or in the people posting the spam for them.

The Kissimmee, Florida address is referenced on other pages as "Devellux Inc".
The same address and Devellux name is used on this site: essayservice.com.
Amusingly, they have a page that discusses their "Honor Code". Given all the things that (as I would expect) go against their listed honor code, I wonder if there are any situations for which someone could honorably use an essay writing service for?

Rexsoftinc's NYC address (347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1009) is referenced on other pages as N-IX USA INC, and Hoshovsky Law Firm ("Mr. Hoshovsky has practiced law in Ukraine...".

This xing.com page says that "Alexander Volt" is a vice president of rexsoft.
This Alexander Volt fellow is also listed as working at IntellectSoft. IntellectSoft is a company with locations listed as in the US, the UK, Norway, and (you guessed it) Kyiv, Ukraine.

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spam calls

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:11:35 GMT

Even if these spam calls are intended for nothing other than to find out when I'm likely to answer the phone, what is the point of them, if when I pick up, there is no response and no message, only dead silence followed by beep beep beep, disconnect?

All that does is to further condition me to never ever EVER answer the phone if it's not a number I recognize.

Or are they really dialing random numbers trying to find fax machines, because sending fax spam is still somehow a lucrative activity for someone?

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metrorail stations

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 04:00:47 GMT

This page has a great "prove you're human / not a spammer" test thingy at the bottom, although I fear it may be too difficult or confusing for some people, especially if they're from someplace without much public transportation. But maybe that's on purpose, as they only want locals to post comments.

https://ggwash.org/view/65334/topic-of-the-week-what-does-trick-or-treating-look-like-in-your-building-or-neighborhood

The question, and sometimes the map, changes each time you reload the page.
Even I'm not certain about some things (one question mentioned the "full time" yellow line; not sure what that means, or how one can see that on the map).

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wow. robot discrimination part 2

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 20:20:19 GMT

My recent "robot discrimination" cross-post on LiveJournal just got an anonymous spam comment. It is in the exact same style as all the past spam comments I had been getting before I enabled the option to "Show CAPTCHA to anonymous commenters" back in mid-October. I haven't gotten a single spam comment since then until now.

I just checked, and the CAPTCHA is still enabled and working (oddly, the CAPTCHA text shown is the normal English/Latin alphabet, but the instruction text within the text box is Russian).

So what this means is that there are people who post spam like that manually, or this spam bot is able to pass the simple LJ text CAPTCHA (which wouldn't be surprising as that is why many sites have changed to other image-based CAPTCHAs). In other words, Amazon's robot test, which is also simple text-based), would fail against this bot.

Isn't it a funny coincidence that the spam comment was posted, on this particular post? It almost makes me want to unscreen the comment rather than deleting it.

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phone spam

Sat, 26 Nov 2016 20:15:56 GMT

This was a new one for me.
Pick up the phone, hear what sounds like a live voice saying "Hello?"... I reply Hello, and the lady's voice says "I'm sorry, I was having trouble with my headset", which really makes it sound like a live person. Then she starts off reading some marketing spiel. During which I try to interrupt to say I'm not interested and would she please put me on their no-call list, but the voice just keeps on going without pausing, as if it must be a recording after all.
I hung up.

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livejournal link for editing entries

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 02:17:41 GMT

This is the LJ link for editing entries:
http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml

I need to use that page occasionally, as edit links no longer show up for me by my LJ entries on the regular pages. It's probably due to my journal style being old or no longer supported, but it doesn't bother me enough to make me want to change the style because of it. Dreamwidth, where I post and edit most of my entries, doesn't have the problem. But due to spambots posting a lot of spam on some of the older entries on LiveJournal, I've been having to edit them to lock or disable the comments.

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niceties, oddities

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 06:31:00 GMT

The killdeer chicks must have hatched. I saw & heard the 2 adult birds along with at least 3 small ones cheeping about in the shade of a tree.

Worked late today. Left the office a bit before 11pm. The ..critters.. in the trees making their noises - I don't even know what they are (note to self: look up the critter sounds; do cicadas make 2 different kinds of sounds?), but the sound is so relaxing and peaceful for me. And the quality of the night - the temperature, amount of humidity, scents as well as sounds - reminded me of similar nights experienced when I was a child.

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Outside the gate on my driveway, something odd. Reddish brown spots, like something bled along there. They don't look like rust spots, as they aren't directly under the gate. Maybe a dog was wandering around bleeding. Or maybe a dog caught some prey and carried it, bleeding, in its mouth.

Then I remembered something odd from yesterday. Driving home, I had passed a guy jogging along the side of the street. It's rare to see a jogger in that area. He had orange shorts on. The odd part was a black scarf over his mouth. It had white circles on it which somehow reminded me of those ghost/ghoul masks. It's summer and was probably at least 85 degrees outside. Why would someone jog with a scarf over their mouth in summer? It's not a dusty area. I wondered if it was some kind of gang initiation.

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For the past month, my LJ has been getting spam comments on old posts, all of the same style but with different wording and URLs, and from different IP numbers. At least one every other day. All comments on my LJ are screened by default, so it's not doing anyone any good.

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Last Friday, the day I found out about my sister moving... when I went outside for lunch and a walk, I got caught in a rainstorm and got soaked. The forecast had foretold a clear sunny day, so although it started to get stormy and sprinkle, I didn't pay it much attention, other than bringing my umbrella along. My mind was on other things. Then suddenly it was pouring down, really pouring down, and even standing under a tree with my umbrella didn't help much. After it finally let up, I walked to our nearby Fitness Center to dry myself off with paper towels. It sounded like I was the only person in the building. Besides the paper towels, there was a blow-dryer that I used to dry my shirt. That was an experience. But my pants and shoes were still quite wet, and I didn't want to wear wet socks and shoes the rest of the day. So I drove home and worked the rest of day from there.

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hmm? ahh... malware

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:07:35 GMT

I got an LJ Notice that "grevvlad" added me as a friend. So I looked at their profile. It doesn't show me on their friends list, so I suppose they added me and then removed me. I couldn't figure out if it was a real account/person, or something spammy/nefarious.

Their LJ seems to only have videos posted. If you click on some of their interests... say "moontale"... it shows several communities where this person is the only, or nearly the only poster. And the things posted on those communities are again mostly videos - music videos. Dark/industrial/metal type music. As well as videos of an anti-German(?) slant.

Certainly suspicious. But if it is something spammy, it is more complex than usual. And what is the purpose?

Ah! As I was browsing a few of those LJ pages, I got a popup that my MalwareBytes blocked something... so the purpose must be to install malware on people's computers, or something nefarious indeed.

Yay! for MalwareBytes Anti-Malware PRO. I installed it with the real-time protection module this weekend, after buying a license (4 licenses actually... one for my friend's computer, one for my mom's, one for Qiao, and one for me).

Today's log:
08:31:29 *** MESSAGE Protection started successfully
08:31:34 *** MESSAGE IP Protection started successfully
21:26:59 *** IP-BLOCK 82.146.59.111 (Type: outgoing, Port: 49523, Process: firefox.exe)
21:50:49 *** IP-BLOCK 82.146.59.111 (Type: outgoing, Port: 49799, Process: firefox.exe)

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Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:32:22 GMT

As I mentioned in the past, I'm getting a lot of spam comments on LiveJournal lately. Some of them don't include any links, and don't advertise anything. I haven't figured out the purpose of these. It may be to make the user seem less suspicious, for administrators checking on the user's activity, after they've been reported for spamming. For example, one user has posted various comments on different journals, including:

"Great, I never knew this, thanks." (on my entry)
"Beneficial info and excellent design you got here! I want to thank you for sharing your ideas"
"Great view I recently hit on your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my..."
"Great work keep it coming, best blog on earth. "
"Hi there, awesome site. I thought the topics you posted on were very interesting ..."
"Keep posting stuff like this i really like it."

and then the odd comment out (but still not including any link)(and oddly, posted in English on a Russian journal),
"The aims of acne treatment are to prevent new spots forming, to improve on acne treatment already ..."

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