Current mood:

curious

If anyone here, like me, has been added on Livejournal by a bunch of random Russian journals lately and has been curious about WTF they're doing, we have an answer: apparently, they're spambots trying to harvest e-mail addresses from active accounts.

More info:

http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/1449348.html
http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots

LJ Abuse is aware of the problem, so any suspected bots should be reported to them.

ETA: A good way to tell if it's a bot is if the journal has been recently created, and they have a lot of people (often several hundred) friended but few mutual friends.

If you do encounter one, the advice given on nympholept's journal is to just ignore them- do not friend them back, do not comment on their journals (a lot of them are disabling non-friend comments, anyway), simply report them to LJ Abuse. You don't have to give a lot of detail in the abuse report since they know what's going on, just give them links to the journals and say you suspect they are Cyrillic spambots.

(Post a new comment)

	cassildra 2008-10-09 02:47 pm UTC (link)
	Aha! Thank you. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	harrylovesron 2008-10-09 07:04 pm UTC (link)
	You're welcome- it's been bugging me for a while, too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mer1973 2008-10-09 03:13 pm UTC (link)
	ah-ha! Thank you for passing this on. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	harrylovesron 2008-10-09 07:05 pm UTC (link)
	You're welcome- I always found it strange. I looked at the bots' profiles and they always had hundreds of people friended, and few in return. It bugged me personally because I wondered where they were finding me- we never had any friends or communities or interests in common. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	wolfsamurai 2008-10-09 07:02 pm UTC (link)
	I did rather wonder about that. I'd been getting so many of them and they've been suspended almost immediately after. Hell, last night one was suspended by the time I got the notice that I'd been added. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	harrylovesron 2008-10-09 07:07 pm UTC (link)
	I've had a few like that, myself. I had one that friended me, defriended me, then added me again, but the name got TOSed when I saw the hotice. It bugged me because I had no idea why they were friending me or how they found me in the first place, since we never had any communities or friends or interests in common. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	hallidae 2008-10-09 08:13 pm UTC (link)
	Man, some of them were getting suspended even before I saw the emails telling me I'd been friended. (Reply to this)

moonjaguar
2008-10-09 09:19 pm UTC (link)

Shortly after the sale to SUP, I had a couple Russian-only users friend me. One was an obvious serial adder, the other had an active account which I didn't friend back because they only post in Russian and I can't read Russian.

I haven't had random Russian adders lately but the sheer count of hits from anonymizers to my LJ and my site has gone from "here and there" to "50%" since late August. *scratches head*

(Reply to this)

	rekall 2008-10-09 09:56 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks I get those Russian users all the time (some who are already suspended by the time they add me) and had no clue what that was about. (Reply to this)

	stupid_fangirl 2008-10-10 12:39 am UTC (link)
	Then that is kinda odd to me. Since most of those Russian accounts who add me were created a few years ago. <-checking profile every time before add people back since I got trolled before. (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2008-10-10 12:40 am UTC (link)
	i wondered what that was about. thanks. zzinnia (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2008-10-10 01:42 am UTC (link)
	Thanks! I thought I was going crazy for a bit there. (Reply to this)

	Russian friends (Anonymous) 2008-10-10 01:47 am UTC (link)
	Thank you so much for sharing your information. maddie50 from LiveJournal (Reply to this)

	sisterelwood 2008-10-11 07:27 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks! (Reply to this)