"Vkontakte" - a paradise for the spammer

The social network “Vkontakte” is famous not only for terabytes of music and video, but also for megatons of spam that rolls on users. And if most users like tons of pirated content, then they tolerate spam for unknown reasons, perhaps naively believing that this is the case everywhere; and to someone permanent invitations to groups from newly minted friends in general seem to be normal behavior. But, nevertheless, let's see why it turns out so why “Vkontakte” is so spammed, unlike the same “Facebook”.

Bots

The social network is officially already 106 million people. How many of them are bots? No one knows, but there are definitely more than a couple of millions of them. They say their number reaches 40 million. If it turned out that this percentage of bots is on Facebook, not only TechCrunch and Mashable, but also the New-York Times would write about it. We have the same ...

Bots are different, there are two main types:

• autoreg, i.e. automatically registered accounts
• hacked accounts, which in turn are divided by the type of hacking:
• with a retreat (password recovery by mail)
• from brute (brute force password)
• from fake (fake page, copying the original)

And those and those very much. Despite the fact that hacking one account is theoretically punishable under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, hacked accounts are sold quite openly by thousands of pieces and the price for them is quite low (around 1200r per 1000 pieces). Moreover, they are valued higher than accounts with avtorega, not because of the importance of personal data, but simply because self-registration accounts are recognized by Vkontakte and often deleted, sometimes along with the groups they promote; those who have been hacked live happily ever after, and the illegality of this method does not concern either the sellers or the customers.

Attempts to protect

Attempts to reduce the number of spam was a lot. For example, in September 2009, confirmation of new accounts via SMS appeared. This innovation has almost killed the ability to automatically register a large number of accounts. However, later, the requirement of confirmation by telephone was made mandatory not during registration itself, but only in the implementation of certain actions.
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Also, many actions require CAPTCHA input, but others do not. As a result, for example, an invitation to groups by criteria (that is, by search) is quite expensive (100+ rubles for 1000 invitations), and without criteria, by friends — cheap (say, 2 rubles for 1000 invitations).

Untwisted groups fall under the filter, making it impossible to further send invitations. This is treated by adding bots to the group or deleting non-accepted invitations. Both of them have been automated for a long time, however, the restriction on deleting invitations is a limit of 500 per day, therefore this method is less popular.

Mass cleanings also occur occasionally. Automatically registered accounts are calculated and deleted, groups are blocked. If the principle of non-imposing sanctions for external factors works in Yandex and Google, since with such an approach there will be a lot of support for competitors, then Vkontakte no one thinks about it, the groups just banned indiscriminately.

Megatons of spam

As a result, spam "Vkontakte" is not much, but very much. He is almost everywhere:

• invitations to groups, if you have not closed this opportunity for all
• group invitations from recklessly added friends
• add you as a bots friend
• posts on the walls of profiles
• messages on the walls of groups
• messages in group discussions
• pictures added to group albums

etc. etc.

Who is guilty?

There are many reasons for a terrifying situation, here are some of them:

• Most people are idiots. From sitting in "VKontakte" all idiots except spammers. Low culture and literacy of most users: short passwords, viruses, mutual stating of any stranger, etc.
• Poor security soc. networks: non-ideal algorithms for calculating spammers, insufficient attention to the problem, possible engagement of moderators / administrators.
• The popularity of "Vkontakte" ... Although, Facebook is more popular and lives because it is normal, so the argument is controversial. Russian hackers and spammers are not the only ones in the world.
• When it comes to a large company with managers at the age, customers usually don’t understand that spam is hidden behind terms like “promotion of a brand group on a social network”, and even from hacked accounts.

What to do?

You can give a lot of tips to solve this problem.

• Each user can invite in groups of 40 people per day. I think if you reduce this number to 40 invitations per month, real users will suffer slightly, and the number of invitations from bots will be reduced by 30 times
• You can calculate bots and hacked accounts not only by technical methods, but also by simple test purchases. We ordered 500 thousand bots in the group under the guise of a client from the SMOShnikov, and they were banned right away.
• For any suspicious activity, require confirmation of your account on the cell. It will kill and autoreg accounts, and any hacked and already confirmed on the cell.
• Use technical methods more actively: the majority of spammers use public software, such as Viking, VIP, VKBot, etc., there are also not so many anticaptcha recognition services (most use antigate), there should be distinctive features of these connections.
• Make a filter for duplicate messages. If spammers are forced to uniquely write letters in the mail, as well as SEOs are forced to make unique content for search engines, then Vkontakte is still spamming the same on the walls of groups and nobody cares. For private messages, such a filter, it seems, is already working, but not for walls and discussions.
• I don’t know what is happening now by pressing the “this is spam” button, but it would be nice if after a dozen of such clicks, the account was frozen until it was found out, all messages / invitations were hidden. It is necessary, of course, to create a transparent system of appeal against blocking of accounts.

This article does not claim to authenticity and is only a private opinion based on the study of open sources. Merry Christmas!