[wp-forums] Coded user for sock puppetry

[Stephen Edgar]

G'day,

A new plugin http://wordpress.org/plugins/super-socializer/ has two shiny new 5 star reviews, that's nice, oh wait...

http://wordpress.org/support/profile/alleydozo <- Created ~5 hours ago and the review is this users only activity.

http://wordpress.org/support/profile/kim1059 <- Created ~4 hours ago and the review is this users only activity.

I'd suggest deleting the sock puppets.

Not sure if moderators can or can't ( I'm not a mod, yet ) but maybe add the users I.P address in the review?  ( 'post_ip_link' )


Cheers,

Stephen Edgar
Melbourne, Australia

Core commiter, contributor & moderator of #bbPress http://bbpress.org
https://profiles.wordpress.org/netweb/   https://twiter.com/netweb

-----Original Message-----
From: wp-forums [mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Otto
Sent: Thursday, 23 January 2014 12:35 AM
To: For forum moderators. See also http://make.wordpress.org/support/
Subject: Re: [wp-forums] Coded user for sock puppetry

PROTIP: Monitor a few of the more "common" plugins reviews. Examples:
Jetpack, the Tumblr Importer, anything "by WordPress.org".

Frequently, I see a pattern of reviews to these plugins.

1. Worthless, 5 star, "worked great, every1 shuld use" type reviews.
2. New account making them has only 3-5 reviews, which are the only posts it has ever made.
3. One of these plugins it has reviewed is not like the others... one of these things just isn't the same...

The idea is to hide the fake review in a tiny pool of seemingly legit reviews for plugins that get a lot of reviews already and which nobody would suspect as also being fake reviews..  I see it a lot on the Tumblr Importer, mostly, because those come up in my feed. But I've seen it on others as well. But the pattern continually repeats. The mail.ru domain seems to be common in those accounts as well.

No pattern to the plugins that the faker is trying to build up though, that seems randomish.

Recommendation: Block account, delete all those false reviews. I find it about once or twice a week.

-Otto