RE: F.D's Bogus Posts, Please No more note posting?

[+yawppy]

As most of the community already knows, this week Groundspeak had a few "Bots" invade and posted several bogus logs. The only way to get rid of these is to delete them.

 

Well for some it is a simple process and others not so easily accomplished. Some may have only a few hides, while others have a few more than others. I fall into the latter.

 

I have been deleting, as fast as I can: But now to compound the situation, fellow cachers are posting notes, giving more attention to the "F'D bot", which also complicates me having to delete additional logs. VERY TIME CONSUMING!, please do not post additional "Notes" to "Remind" CO's about deleting, I am in the process of deleting as time allows, I work 60, and have a social life as well, so 10 to 15 deletions a week, here and there, is about the best I can do.

[+SSO JOAT]

So let me get this straight, you have people coming along posting notes to your caches to tell you that there are bot notes on your caches? If that wasn't such misplaced effort, it would almost be funny... I've never understood why someone would post a public note to a cache page that should be a private message to the cache owner anyway.

 

Baffling.

[+ZeLonewolf]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by while some idiot script kiddy can waste the time of hundreds of cache owners in this way. This should have been dealt with from the lily pad in one fell swoop to erase all bot logs immediately after they are discovered.

[+Touchstone]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by ....

 

How did you come to that conclusion?

 

Edit to add a more on topic response:

 

If you have some local Forums, I would suggest posting something there as well. At least in our area, many locals don't even log in here.

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties, and completely understand your frustration

Edited October 9, 2010 by Touchstone

[GOF and Bacall]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by while some idiot script kiddy can waste the time of hundreds of cache owners in this way. This should have been dealt with from the lily pad in one fell swoop to erase all bot logs immediately after they are discovered.

 

Agreed. But GS is too busy making pretty pictures to hand out for geocaching in some particular area or other.

[+ZeLonewolf]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by ....

 

How did you come to that conclusion?

 

Because the logs are still there. Many days later. Don't try to tell me that GS doesn't have the technical capability to do a mass delete of logs by a user; an insider with direct access to the database should be able to do this with a few commands. As someone who does software development with large databases on a daily basis, I don't understand what the hangup is.

[Keystone]

The topic of this thread is a request not to post "note" logs on caches hit up by the bot.

 

Please remain on-topic, respectful, and otherwise in compliance with the forum guidelines. Thanks!

[+EscapeFromFlatland]

post "note" logs on caches hit up by the bot.

 

ok.

[+BlueDeuce]

...

If you have some local Forums, I would suggest posting something there as well. At least in our area, many locals don't even log in here.

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties, and completely understand your frustration

 

Exactly what I was going to say.

 

On both parts.

[Clan Riffster]

So let me get this straight, you have people coming along posting notes to your caches to tell you that there are bot notes on your caches?

I had this happen to a few of mine. The bot logged "TFTC" on all 70 or so caches of mine, including my rather extreme hides. Several folks have these hides on watchlists, and were surprised at the brevity of the log as compared to the other real find logs, and posted to that effect. They didn't realize it was just a bot.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Just delete the logs and move on. Did over 50 in about 20 minutes.

[+coralteach]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by ....

 

How did you come to that conclusion?

 

Edit to add a more on topic response:

 

If you have some local Forums, I would suggest posting something there as well. At least in our area, many locals don't even log in here.

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties, and completely understand your frustration

 

I'm from your area, and I don't even know what a "bot" is. I thought that when someone just puts TFTC and nothing else they just had bad manners. I don't know if I've been "botted" or not. So, if I don't know, how would Groundspeak?

[+ZeLonewolf]

I'm from your area, and I don't even know what a "bot" is. I thought that when someone just puts TFTC and nothing else they just had bad manners. I don't know if I've been "botted" or not. So, if I don't know, how would Groundspeak?

 

When all of your caches, including the one that sits in the lava of an active volcano, get logged with an identical anti-geocaching message with a link to an anti-geocaching blog, and then you look at the user account, and it was created yesterday and has 4000 finds in a 6-state region, well....that's usually a good indication. And in any case, the bot attacks usually get discussed on the forums, so it's not hard to identify them. Hopefully these are isolated incidents and won't become a systemic problem.

[+Touchstone]

I'm from your area, and I don't even know what a "bot" is. I thought that when someone just puts TFTC and nothing else they just had bad manners. I don't know if I've been "botted" or not. So, if I don't know, how would Groundspeak?

 

When all of your caches, including the one that sits in the lava of an active volcano, get logged with an identical anti-geocaching message with a link to an anti-geocaching blog, and then you look at the user account, and it was created yesterday and has 4000 finds in a 6-state region, well....that's usually a good indication. And in any case, the bot attacks usually get discussed on the forums, so it's not hard to identify them. Hopefully these are isolated incidents and won't become a systemic problem.

 

What ZeLonewolf said, although I add that it's been very infrequent on the Left Coast, so I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it, unless you read about it in the Forums. The East Coast appears to be a more frequent target for some reason, and they seem to do searches for Keywords within Listing Titles.

 

As far as cleaning up the erroneous Log Entries from the Bot, I'm not all that concerned about it. They will eventually drop off the page and be consigned to the obscurity they deserve. Groundspeak appears to be killing the accounts as soon as they are aware of them, and that's sufficient for me. If they can catch the Perp and take legal action, that would be icing on the cake.

 

Back on Topic I was going to suggest that maybe your Listings could be Locked temporarily, to prevent people, who appear to have good intentions, from Logging their helpful feedback, but considering the large number of Listings you own, I'm not sure that's a very practical solution.

 

I think this sort of thing will have to be worked out at the local level with the Community. Adding additional Log Entries on a Listing doesn't sound productive to me.

[+yawppy]

Just delete the logs and move on. Did over 50 in about 20 minutes.

WOW BBW SUPER PC, 24 SECONDS, per deletion.. can you leap buildings in a single bound too? Have already "moved on", just a simple request, and am sure the notes were posted with good intentions, but still.. only 24 seconds.. timed it did ten in appx 12 minutes...

[Mr.Yuck]

It's absolutely ridiculous that Groundspeak just sits idly by while some idiot script kiddy can waste the time of hundreds of cache owners in this way. This should have been dealt with from the lily pad in one fell swoop to erase all bot logs immediately after they are discovered.

 

Script kiddy. I haven't heard that term in years. Yes, I agree, there was about 2 years ago, a horrific fake logging incident all over the U.S. (not a bot, some retired guy that figured driving close to caches was good enough), and the Frog stepped in and deleted thousands of find logs in one fell swoop. The technology does exist.

[+rickjill]

Just delete the logs and move on. Did over 50 in about 20 minutes.

WOW BBW SUPER PC, 24 SECONDS, per deletion.. can you leap buildings in a single bound too? Have already "moved on", just a simple request, and am sure the notes were posted with good intentions, but still.. only 24 seconds.. timed it did ten in appx 12 minutes...

Click view log, click delete log, click confirmation, next cache. Time elapsed: somewhere between 24 secs and 72 secs. Still a big unearned pain in the posterior.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Just delete the logs and move on. Did over 50 in about 20 minutes.

WOW BBW SUPER PC, 24 SECONDS, per deletion.. can you leap buildings in a single bound too? Have already "moved on", just a simple request, and am sure the notes were posted with good intentions, but still.. only 24 seconds.. timed it did ten in appx 12 minutes...

Click view log, click delete log, click confirmation, next cache. Time elapsed: somewhere between 24 secs and 72 secs. Still a big unearned pain in the posterior.

I use Firefox, so I went to my cache list, center wheel clicked each cache link (creating a new tab for each listing) quick scroll, 3 clicks per listing to delete the log, when all done, closed out Firefox.

 

And yeah, not something I really wanted to do, but not a big hardship to keep my listings "clean".

[+wandering4cache]

Using GSAK to work from, I emailed a ton of cachers in our area to delete the logs. A lot of these people haven't even logged onto GC.com in over a week.

 

I can bet those logs aren't going to be deleted by the CO.

[+Chokecherry]

Does it matter if the logs are deleted ultimately? And does it affect anyone but the cache owner?

[+sbell111]

Does it matter if the logs are deleted ultimately? And does it affect anyone but the cache owner?

In the case of bots, it really doesn't matter to anyone else. BS will claim that this bot log somehow forces him to come by and DNF the cache, but I don't see how that could be true.