What happened?
Due to the recent developments, I have decided to make this community moderator-only. There has been a mass spam attack involving gore and nudity. This is now a very serious situation and it is clear that something has to be done to stop this from happening. The new messages might be from a different, psychopathic spammer.
What we decided to do about it
To have better control of this situation, we decided to lock down the community, except for the comment section on this very post. (Please let me know if I’ve missed a post)
Rules
- Please refrain to further spread the newest spam image, especially uncensored versions of it.
- The “It’s my girlfriend!”-joke is long gone. Be respectful, stop using it.
Going forward
Our main goal now is to stop the spread of spam on Lemmy. This seems like a major problem in Lemmy’s concept, so we need to work together to create a working solution to the spam and potential defacing of users.
Update: The source of the gore images has been identified, so it’s safe to say it’s not actually the same person as “Nicole”. Still fucked up, though.
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Just wanted to report that the latest Nicole spam I received 10 min ago is asking for crypto “donations”.
So this may be finally the reason for the phishing, getting crypto donations from gullible people.Looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/....png (the usual stolen webcam shot and description)
Please donate to help me pay for next semester!
BTC: …
LTC: …
XMR: …
By the way, has anyone contacted Imgur about this? I think they would take it pretty seriously.
I got one just now as well. I suspect it might even be a different person using the Nicole spam as a cover?
Edit: does anyone know, are there any plans to allow users to disable DMs? It feels like it should be a basic privacy feature and would have stopped all this. Mastodon has the same issue (apparently there’s an option to stop non followers DMing you, but I can’t find it).
…i received the same message yesterday with a new image, so i suspect it’s the original spammer finally firing his payload…
This was the username (already reported). The Nicole text was part of the image (green text on black) and the message body was the bitcoin IDs. I find targeting the Fediverse for this type of scam to be a bit pointless. I doubt there are many people on here who would fall for this sort of scam. The only advantage I can see to targeting the Fediverse is the inability to restrict private messages.
I got the message a few mins after logging on. Both times on Lemmy, I got the Nicole spam when online (I can’t remember if that was the case on Mastodon). I don’t know if that’s coincidence.
…i’ve received nine nicole messages, each from different usernames, but the payload message was from goldeneyeitemis@lemmy.laitinlok.com…
I just received a DM from a new account following the same pattern as the gore spam, 2+ year old account and the image link named after my username. This time it was a red anime picture saying “Do you like insanity?”. Same person as the second actor?
I just got the same shit. And I’m guessing the previous two DMs were also the same. I didn’t realize that the links were to something other than my profile.
It looks like they’re now posting the 1st gore image directly to communities everywhere.
Has anyone been getting “regular” Nicole spam since the gore picture event? If so, do they resemble the old style of spam in terms of content and instance it’s sent from?
yes, someone did: https://fedia.io/m/meta@quokk.au/t/2038892
More indication then that the gore spammer was a secondary actor.
I think the following happened:
- The webcam of the laptop of some random girl got hacked and someone secretly took pictures
- Someone used those pictures for spam
- Someone made an edit with a dead body using a random image of the internet
I think the latest message is just from a random psycho that either wants attention or likes to see how people react.
I therefore suggest the following:- Ruin their “fun” by locking the community, preventing people from making further comments and preventing any discussion about it (make sure to keep an informative post up that summarizes this to avoid discussion spilling to other communities)
- Contact instance admins to be on the lookout to ensure a swift removal, some might be able to help other admins with image filters.
I also think this is what happened, at least until somebody convinces me the dead person is the same person as “Nicole”. I know they bore a passing resemblance, but to my eye they were different people.
Yes. This kind of things isn’t new to the internet and it’s always attention seeking
I would like to thank the instance admins dealing with this. I haven’t seen any apart from the initial wave.
IMO it would be in good taste to remove the community’s title image until more is known.
I guess that makes sense.
Do we know if anyone has tried a reverse image search? That might be one way to confirm that it’s someone sending gore for shock value just to be an asshole.
Multiple people said they tried, but it didn’t come back with anything useful. Just with more gore. Then again, it might be from a Tor website…
Thanks for the info. The whole thing is despicable.
Yikes, damn, it went in an awful direction very quickly… a very messed up situation, it’s a good thing I didn’t get those pictures, I’m very sensitive to that kind of thing. The jokes ended (as often happens) because of some sick bastard, and it looks like we may have been playing along with this bastard all along.
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Yikes, the fun is over now. This has escalated too much.
Thank you. That was an absolutely awful way to start my day. Glad to see it’s being taken seriously
In my case, it’s a awful way to end the day.
The end of an era
Thank you. This is a smart move.
I enjoyed it while it was enjoyable.Isn’t this what they would want?
Maybe - but I, and a big part of the members of this community don’t see how this should continue otherwise
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