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E: Dear peoples. If, in the future, you see a suspiciously quickly prepared and well-formatted post about how to deal with ID theft, please feel free to message me, or post here, or otherwise bring it to my attention. Maybe we can catch it quickly.
Shortly after I flagged this situation to BestOf mods, the post was removed from BestOf. So the party may be over. However, since it's removal, the karma score has continued shooting up rapidly. Idk what's going on. E: The karma has stagnated. The karma continued to rise for a good hour after the post was removed from BestOf. It's not clear to me whether that's just the reddit system putting some lag time on the score, upvotes from people who had loaded the page prior to it being removed, or just how long it took for him to realize it was removed and turn off his upvote bot network... idk.
It's currently happening again, right now!
TL;DR: This is part of a concerted effort by a dedicated affiliate blogger to drive traffic through his affiliate links.
Long story: Read the original post I linked at the top.
There's a guy who's been posting fake threads and responses almost identical to this for a long time. He used to do it in personalfinance almost exclusively, but the mods wised up over there and they ban him every time now. So he's branched out and does it in a bunch of subreddits. In the past month, he's done it in BOLA, TwoX and JNMIL (see my post in BOLA for explanation and archived links). And this time might be his most insidious, because it's a link to StolenIdentity, which is his personal sub.
As for how it works, the OP of the linked thread, "Debtnotmine," is a throwaway created by the shill. He posts a touching story of identity theft using that account, then he logs into another account and posts a pre-prepared reply for how to deal with it. Then he, either personally, or through his shill network, makes sure that it gets traction and gets x-posted to the big meta subs.
This is the fourth time in a month that he's put a comment on the front page of BestOf with this exact method.
I posted a no-link description of this in the bestof thread a minute ago, and it was immediately removed. It would appear that I'm shadow-banned over there. Crikey. They in on it? E: Retracted. I do not believe I'm shadowed in bestof.
Edit: Just after I commented there and messaged the mods of BestOf, the post was removed. At least, it appears to be removed, since it's no longer appearing on the front page of their sub, or in their new queue. Perhaps I was hasty to suggest they're in on it.
E2: More info. It looks like the shill has moved on to buying old accounts, and using those for his comments instead of brand new accounts. See u/kobudo (author of the bestof'd comment -- archive link) and u/kwanzer (BestOf poster -- old archive link (from 11 months ago, when he last posted) and new archive link). Accounts have been dead for months, and have a posting history entirely incongruous with the posts suddenly made.
6.29.17 Update
Here we go again (Archive links to comment and each user page)! He's hitting a new sub this time! /r/AdviceAnimals is our unlucky victim.
And here's the modmail that I sent to the AA mod team a moment ago.
Hey AA mods,
I'm a mod over at /r/bestoflegaladvice and a few smaller places and I've been working with [REDACTED] for a while to try to squelch the activity of a long-time spammer on their sub who has, since his team wised up, heavily diversified and is now spamming a bunch of subs. And he's on your front page right now.
If you'd like to see the full story, here are Part 1 and Part 2 of my in-depth write up, but here's the summary:
The spammer is Twerk, since I first caught him through actions on his account u/twerkitoutbruh, and he has a large number of alts, both that he's created and that he's bought. He goes to a major sub and posts a sob story about some kind of identity theft using one of his alts and then quickly replies to that sob story post with another of his alts with a pre-prepared comment that looks like sound advice for how to handle the ID theft issue. Inside of the pre-prepared comment are links to a post on (one of many of) his personal affiliate blog, and the blog page has affiliate links to credit-related products or services (usually CreditSesame).
A non-comprehensive list of where he's recently done this: LegalAdvice, JustNoMIL, TwoXChromosomes, StolenIdentity (his own sub) through an x-post to BestOf, and now you guys. (Note, archives of all of those are available in the in-depth write-ups linked above)
For an overview of the situation on your sub, /u/OdysseyCadet (OP of your front page post) and /u/Nexcidia (commenter) are both bought accounts (years of inactivity, sudden revival and posting completely unrelated stuff that aligns with Twerk's MO). The comment points to http://smartmoneysource.org/, which automatically redirects to http://smartmoneyresources.org/checking-your-score/, and that's the page he's linked to in a few of his prior posts above. And, of course, that page has his affiliate links.
Could ya give me a hand and remove the post and comment? I sincerely believe the only way to keep our wonderful site spam-free is to hit them in the wallet, and if this post isn't killed he'll get many thousands of hits on his affiliate blog before it falls off your front page.
TL;DR: You're being spammed pls help me fight this guy by deleting his spam.
<3
E: And 13 minutes later, the AA mod team removes it. Big shoutout to them for the help.
7/9/17 -- He's still at it here (archive) with another best-of'd link to this thread in StolenIdentity (archive).
The account used to post to bestof this time is an innocent third party, or a strange bought account. /u/Zalsha (archive) doesn't match the alt or bought account profile he usually uses. But the OP in StolenIdentity, /u/Sortofdim, is a new alt and the replier, /u/paleofuture (archive), is your standard bought account.
And here's the archive of his new website url (but same content) that it linked to.
Gonna go ahead and copy over my list of known alts and add the latest accounts:
Known alts:
Subreddit
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