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Answer to an old forum mystery “the Chinese spam invasion of 2018”

Article about: For context. Back in March 2018 ( I had only been a member for like half a year at the point) I think a lot of the older members here may remember a pretty bad period of time of spam posts g

  1. #1
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    Default Answer to an old forum mystery “the Chinese spam invasion of 2018”

    For context. Back in March 2018 ( I had only been a member for like half a year at the point) I think a lot of the older members here may remember a pretty bad period of time of spam posts getting way out of control, before the new member system we have today. , any regular post was getting pushed aside in seconds. Although things off my head were much better by the summer 2018 one thing did stand out in March that year, Hopefully you guys remember but for a week In march 2018 the Chinese spam invasion occurred. At a even more rapid pace then any other spam ever seen. Genuine posts were buried immediately after you created a thread.

    So back to 2021, I have uni work to be done at the moment but i was caught off guard by a video that came up in my feed. By a fairly large YouTube channel and was released on the 1st Nov 2019

    The video being called
    “ The Fake Diploma Forum Spammer - Internet Oddities”

    The Fake Diploma Forum Spammer - Internet Oddities - YouTube

    In the introduction it showed a montage of forums being spammed by Chinese bots in 2018/19. This is when it hit me after all these years “I remember war relics being attacked by this in roughly the same time period”

    The video keeps going and speaks about how these spammers were trying to sell fake university diplomas. Of course I had no way of really proving this happened on the forum until I remembered. “Wait my old iPad has screenshots of the war relics forum” maybe I took a screenshot of these Chinese spammers when they kept posting here

    Luckily I did take screenshots back in 2018! Using the google translation app I discovered what was discussed in the video was what happened to the forum. Chinese fake diploma scammers. For better quality double click the photos to view in a separate tab sorta took these photos in a rush

    D8E5A6CE-29B0-42B3-949E-33FCD4C3B6B8.jpg

    F2FAA3A9-45B9-4AAD-9226-5A20A4B16871.jpg

    8EC1412B-EB11-4FEC-909F-A8343A7900BB.jpg

    There isn’t too much I can add that the video doesn’t cover
    But for people who don’t want to watch the video
    - Chinese scammers basically raided every forum on the internet
    - down the rabbit hole led you to a Chinese messenger site
    - you talk to the mastermind behind all of this
    - what software was used
    - showing it was a scam using bank transfers and all that classic scam stuff
    - not a complete conclusion but a rough one is given

    Sorry for not being related to militaria but I just thought it was super interesting this forum was connected to a big internet event of sorts. I understand this will probably confuse the hell out of new members

    Note - this is in no way me undermining the actions of moderators at the time. I remember they were trying to delete threads as quickly as they popped up but the shear number of bots posting it was impossible to stop

    Also I guess this sorta lead to the new member introduction rule we have today

  2. #2

    Default

    While this was happening, I was taking pre-emptive action by going through the member list and checking new member profiles that displayed no posts, or unusual names, multiple accounts, checked web sites out. Checking I.P. addresses, anything from China, India, and a few other places. I still have physical lists of user names written down.
    Banned many a spammer before they were even able to post.
    Ralph.
    Searching for anything relating to, Anton Boos, 934 Stamm. Kp. Pz. Erz. Abt. 7, 3 Kompanie, Panzer-Regiment 2, 16th Panzer-Division (My father)

  3. #3
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    Default

    Pretty cool to hear that rbminis. Adds more to this overall story!

    Also thanks for your work and all the moderators work now and then with dealing with the problem. Making this thread made me remember how much work had to be done so I fully intend to renew my membership soon!

  4. #4
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    Default

    Great work! I remember it well.

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