Chat Bot

Thank You once again, Cassandro, for understanding. (You are 24-Carat "Awesome"!) As you can see, the topic has changed to "Copybots", below. I think a New Thread should be started, but only especially if NAS has STILL not resolved this new issue...

Not stupid. All of us can sometimes be taken for a ride, even NTs. 

What possible motivation could there be for copying an existing thread? Then, ask why again to the answer you've just come up with...

* someone is testing some code which posts new threads to the forums

* someone is fishing for some kind of response

    * they want to find out which accounts are active

    * they want to find the ids of users who may be drawn into conversation

        * they want to engage a user, either at random or a specific target, such that the user creates a session that may subsequently be hijacked by stealing session credentials

        * they hope to steal a large number of password hashes which will statistically yield some which can be brute-forced. They could then hope that users of this site have unwisely used the same password on other sites where money is involved.

        * they want to stimulate a response from users (even indignation), then use CSRF to identify a person's corresponding social media account(s), or trigger something like a "one-click buy" request on an entirely different website..?

        * they want to entice some of those users into 1:1 chat

            * so they can subsequently be sold a sob-story and pressured to give money. 

            * so they can lure someone into uploading pictures of their genitals, which they can then use as a lever for blackmail. 

As you can see, you can go on like this for hours...

California said:

Am I stupid?

NO. Definitely NOT. 

I cannot think of any possible reason which results in money for the person doing it.

Am I stupid?

California said:

Why is that?

It does not make any sense.

Why would people do that?

see if you can think of a possible reason which results in money for the person doing it?

I have noticed that recently some threads have been copied almost completely one to one and opened as new ones by other people?

Thank you, Cassandro for letting us know. Otherwise, I would be replying to them. I already replied to one.

Why is that?

It does not make any sense.

Why would people do that?

Cassandro said:

(I've requested friendship, but not had a response)

I had a response from 'R' after I messaged her.

I tried to engage her in conversation, trying to find out what her interests were.  The only response I got was that she lived in London, she didn't like any sort of music and she wanted a picture.  I asked her to show me her's and I would show her mine (in a manner of speaking that is!) and got no response.  I said how I liked London and asked her what she thought of certain parts of London and whether she liked the museums.  I made a few areas of London up saying how beautiful they were together with some real places and again no response,

I know a 63 year old was not the sort of person she would want to converse with, and I made no secret of that, but why on earth does the first thing she want be a picture.  Once someone has a picture they can try to identify the person using some face recognition software (or even putting it on Facepack and using their system which will recognise those who allow others to tag them in a post.  My mind started running overboard, was it going to be some sort of con artist asking for money by coming up with a sob story, or going to try to lure me in some sort of place I didn't want to go.

There remains something that I am very uneasy about regarding 'R'. And until a sensible post gets posted from her, I think we should just ignore any posts she makes, and then she will not concern any of us.

Note that there is code specific to spam this forum software (Telligent Community), and we've seen it over the past week, and it defeats the anti-spam systems there are. There is code to imitate English responses by picking on key words (Alice is much better than Eliza, and Mitsuku better than Alice, plus they can get human input from elsewhere on the net). People could hack that code together. The aim could be a mass trawl to get personal information.  The Copybot (qv) may have two purposes I can see; (a) create recognised and linked to 'sleeper' profiles that are then used for pharma spam etc; or (b) undermine the general anti-spam systems, by getting Akismet to trust particular IP addresses or patterns, and that could also be an application for a forum chatbot.

I share your reasoning and conclusion, but not quite your confidence.

Maybe we should see this all as water under the bridge, something already dealt with. I think we all agree we want to play nicely here, but sometimes things will divide us. As I say, I could see why people might have thought R* was either (a) a bot; or (b) a scammer after personal details who might abuse vulnerable people on the forum. I could also see why people might think R* was (c) an individual with social and communication problems who should be afforded patience and people should try to get to know.

Does anyone have any conclusive evidence for any of these? The fact that the messages were short means there's not much data to go on. I think it's unlikely to be (a) because although there are chatbots that respond to natural language, I've not yet seen them used in forum spam; and also although the messages are repetitive, they weren't exact repetitions. If the NAS Moderator know that R* is a genuine person (and not a Nexus-7 replicant), they could perhaps have reassured people that they have grounds for that (at the risk of speaking on behalf of R*). I don't think it's reasonable to suppose that rule 4 applies to spambots or abusers trying to get people's personal details for nefarious reasons. And given that we're not all great on reading between the lines, and there has been a problem with spam and spammers imitating humans, some degree of suspicion is understandable, surely? I can also see why people might want to interact more to test an account (I've requested friendship, but not had a response)

I hope people here can understand where we each are coming from. I think the rules are sensible to avoid any legal liability and help people feel comfortable here. The only purpose I can think of for continuing this thread is to reach consensus on how we might interact with R* in future.

Disambiguating Cynosure said:

but then "D.T." transcribes the words upon the picture, defeating the purpose of my posting that way. (a chatbot primarily checks words, not pictures.)

I cannot find the blueish-nighttime-cat themed picture..

Yes, now I remember posting the picture of the flag.

I remember constantly being asked for the photos of myself.

To California. You forget somethings, maybe it is good for some to not recall confusing/bad things...? However, until Posts are edited again (Which I never do)... here are some reminders.

-- In the same Thread, near the end, I posted a blueish-nighttime-cat themed picture. You cannot miss it, it is currently the only picture in that Thread. Under that, you asked: "Is this for the author?", which was the good response... but then DT and NAS charged in, and that was that for myself...

-- Upon other Threads, Miss Elephant-In-The-Room posted a couple of pictures...! These were parodies upon the constant asking for pictures by TP. But not everyone understood the parody/joke... and it required DT to explain the humour (to you) - I must stress that there is nothing wrong with THAT, nothing wrong with "not getting a joke". Yet Miss Elephant removed the pictures, yet the blanks ( . ) are still voted up as I write this. :
community.autism.org.uk/.../69655

-- Lastly, this is your own picture, posted in yet another Thread, in response to: "I like California.":
community.autism.org.uk/.../69018
...This picture was a brilliant response, and it was voted up, although you may not know why...?

That is all for this Post again. I both heed and ignore it all, now, I suppose...

Thank You very much for this reply, ProtectorOfTheSmall! You may notice that I am equally grateful to both yourself and to Cassandro for the acknowledgement. Please also read my reply there as well.

To yourself... You were there at the time, and so you know. I wrote what I wrote here, to explain why I tried what I tried. Thank You for understanding what I meant! I honestly expected another "warning" from NAS in reply, here... yet for myself, all that is slightly over with for now.
At the time, I was watching to see how everyone else handled things, despite offering friendship at TP, there was still no interaction.

I should also mention and Thank Cloudy Mountains, who repeatedly said that TP originally included " being born blind" in the Profile. (...!)

As things are now, I have little else to say. NAS scared me off from Posting in those Threads again. Yet to yourself, Thank You once again for the positive response. Good Fortune to You from Myself.

Thank You very much for this reply, Cassandro! You may notice that I am equally grateful to both yourself and to ProtectorOfTheSmall for the acknowledgement. Please also read my reply there as well.
To yourself... Thanks for saying what you did, about 'bots. I also still do not know what to make of it all, and so stay away from such suspicious things. However, here is a link to an area of it all which made a lot of us find things "creepy":

community.autism.org.uk/.../68998

Given the complexity of the Thread now, it is harder to see, so check the Indentation and the Posts before and after... but basically, after opening a lot of Threads, and stalking California, they became a bit unintelligible... - " Hello, what about you ? , what you like ? , what you do not like ? and what is your interest and hobbies ? " - as if resetting and then later replying to themselves, even.
That was the most "creepy" part, apart from constantly asking for pictures. NAS warned about that, but this was ignored.

I am not put off by this, and, as you know, I may leave soon due to hot weather. Thank You for your reply again, Please do keep up your good and vigilant work!

+1

I do not remember any pictures.

Disambiguating Cynosure said:

...This gains good curiosity from California...

I do not remember this at all.

That's very interesting. Thanks for your hard work documenting this situation.

Thanks, DC, for putting all that on the record. I've read some of the threads involving 'TP', after 11 April, and myself couldn't decide whether TP is a bot (and part of my work is as a Botfinder General). The short, repeated comments with poor grammar might suggest a bot, but on balance I think 'TP' is real. (It doesn't help that  'TP' has the same name as the advanced replicant in Blade Runner. Maybe we should have a version of 'The Imitation Game' where you have to decide who is autistic and who NT.)

I don't think I saw the incident involving 'DT' and the picture. By the way, chatbots can defeat images and CAPTCHAs, often by another part of the bot getting a human to decode the image (so the human can gain access to some other site).  Is it a problem that we don't have a unified approach to suspicious posters? Last week's posts by the unnamed 'Copybot' are still up, and people have unfortunately started responding to the fake thread rather than the original.

Anyway, forums can be frustrating, and I hope you don't take anything too personally, and it doesn't put you off this forum.

Glad Tidings to whomever may read. However, this post is one of the last which I have put off for a long time, and so may not make sense to anyone unless they had been following it at the time, back in April. (Anyone may try to follow it now, but it is very complex, and spread over SIX different Threads!)

I shall refer to R** as "TP" ("That person") in this post. Reasons may become clear later. I wanted to explain my behaviour at the time, while I still have some good reputation left (!), and before it is forgotten, and before I must leave due to hot weather.

In short:
TP was posting very suspiciously, and seemed to be "stalking" a certain User (California). Once TP replied to others and then myself, I decided to try to divert this onto myself, for I cannot be "attacked" or "spammed" due to the way my devices work.
The reason I wrote things which I wrote, was because TP only seemed to respond to VERY short/simple words, sentences, and phrases. I am not used to speaking in this manner, and so I used the words "funny, cute, kittens, fluffy, like" ...& such... a lot.
TP responded positively at points, and even at last posted a list of their own "interests". However it was getting late, and so I posted the "Jabberwocky" Poem to end the "chat" for that night.
The next day... a lot of other Posts are there, of course, from other persons. This confuses what I was curious about, and even NAS posts a "warning". Because of all of this, I do not reply again, yet still watch TP. People try to engage, and converse, yet TP does not respond. I am told off for what I said, yet TP responds to no-one else, even as they are claiming defence of TP. NAS warns, yet still no response from TP.

...Eventually, TPs Threads are "forgotten", and this is what happens:
At at around 21h, of April 9th:
TP removes ALL of the starting Posts, to replace them with the text: "I was bored and not happy here" (sic).
April 10: TP removes their "Avatar".
April 10 (<>9 PM): TP blanks their entire Profile.
April 11: Picture changed to a "Cup of Tea".

...No-One seems to notice any of this. By now I have thought of another approach -Pictures instead of words. TP constantly asked for information and for pictures, and so I decide to reciprocate...
15.18h - I post a PICTURE to TP, because I seem not allowed to SPEAK..
...This gains good curiosity from California... but then "D.T." transcribes the words upon the picture, defeating the purpose of my posting that way. (a chatbot primarily checks words, not pictures.)
Others then post pictures as well... yet all this gains yet another "warning" from NAS?

All of this I cannot follow, and so I do not Post upon these Threads again. And yet, to prove a final point...
A later day... at 18.21h - ...I "Friend" TP. There are no words exchanged, the connection is instant. I cannot "friend" properly due to my devices, yet this successfully happened. And that is <> the end of the matter.

Now it is June, and since then, TP has posted like a "bookmark", upon some other Threads where people have been detailing their interests and habits. But despite persons saying that they are interested in TP... TP does not reply. (This may change if I post this, and depending upon how much "hate" I get?).
This was a long Post, and I make no apology for it. I still stay away from the business, even though TP is also "following" me (it said so in my notifications). That is all for this Post.

Glad Tidings, and this is to Miss Endymion. You began this Thread, and so in order to Post upon it, I must "reply" to you, I apologise...!

My following Post is a long one which you might not follow/understand, due to (fortunately) not being party to the whole business. To yourself and any who may read, all of this was back in April, yet is still present. Only a few may understand it. I do not intend to explain it further, it is difficult to follow, and, well, it was nice knowing all of you...