Board Game Arena

Gulchen wrote: ↑13 June 2024, 17:32 I saw that comment before the link got deleted, and it didn't make sense: ​ lilycollins just randomly put some link in.
​

And now this is on lilycollins' profile: "This player has been banned from BGA. (forever)"

I got curious, and it turns out that on June 12 for some reason they randomly inserted whatever that other gaming site is in three different unrelated posts. I'm not sure if that brought on the ban hammer.

Such weird behavior from what was not a brand new account. The account was over 1 year old, and they'd played just two games. I mean one game each of two different titles. Not exactly the type of demographic that tends to participate in forums.

Was this account part of a sleeper cell that was activated after a year just to spam? That's playing the long game.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑13 June 2024, 18:44

Gulchen wrote: ↑13 June 2024, 17:32 I saw that comment before the link got deleted, and it didn't make sense: ​ lilycollins just randomly put some link in.
​

And now this is on lilycollins' profile: "This player has been banned from BGA. (forever)"

I got curious, and it turns out that on June 12 for some reason they randomly inserted whatever that other gaming site is in three different unrelated posts. I'm not sure if that brought on the ban hammer.

Such weird behavior from what was not a brand new account. The account was over 1 year old, and they'd played just two games. I mean one game each of two different titles. Not exactly the type of demographic that tends to participate in forums.

Was this account part of a sleeper cell that was activated after a year just to spam? That's playing the long game.

I used to be a moderator on a tech site, and I can say that "sleeper" accounts is an extremely common practice for ad spammer bot accounts. The detail of them playing a couple of games right after they opened the account is similar to how they do it in forum-focused sites, where they'll make the account, make a few innocuous posts that say very little, and then leave it to sit for a year or three.

Another possibility is that the account was made by someone genuinely curious about the site, the player played a couple of games, didn't like the site for some reason and left... and the account was swiped by a hacking script that tests extremely weak, common passwords (like p4ssw0rd).

Nekojin wrote: ↑14 June 2024, 13:09 I used to be a moderator on a tech site, and I can say that "sleeper" accounts is an extremely common practice for ad spammer bot accounts. The detail of them playing a couple of games right after they opened the account is similar to how they do it in forum-focused sites, where they'll make the account, make a few innocuous posts that say very little, and then leave it to sit for a year or three.

Another possibility is that the account was made by someone genuinely curious about the site, the player played a couple of games, didn't like the site for some reason and left... and the account was swiped by a hacking script that tests extremely weak, common passwords (like p4ssw0rd).

Both possibilities are interesting. Hopefully there aren't too many of the former lurking on BGA.

But either way wouldn't that imply that the other "gaming platform" was behind the sleeper or the hack? Or, even worse, the other site isn't behind it but whoever is controlling the sleeper is luring people to the other site to leverage an exploit they've placed on the other site.