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Tech Support Scammers Invade Spotify Forums To Rank in Search Engines (bleepingcomputer.com)

Posted by msmash on from the clever-workarounds dept.

Tech support scammers have been aggressively posting on Spotify forums to inject their phone numbers in a bid to vastly improve their odds of showing up on Google and Bing search results, a new report claims. And that bet seems to be working. From the report: They do this by submitting a constant stream of spam posts to the Spotify forums, whose pages tend to rank well in Google. While this behavior causes the Spotify forums to become harder to use for those who have valid questions, the bigger problem is that it allows tech support scammers to rank extremely well and trick unknowing callers into purchasing unnecessary services and software. BleepingComputer was alerted to this problem by security researcher Cody Johnston who started to see an alarming amount of tech support scam phone numbers being listed in Google search results through indexed Spotify forum posts. The tech support scams being posted to Spotify include Tinder, Linksys, AOL, Turbotax, Coinbase, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Norton, McAfee and more.

33 comments

  1. to solve this problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    call [insert scam number] now. Don't think, just do it now!

    1. Re:to solve this problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of these phone scammers, telemarketers and call centre people need to be put to death.

  2. Comment Spam is News? by bengoerz · · Score: 2

    I realize that December is slow, but comment spam doesn't seem newsworthy.

    1. Re:Comment Spam is News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Most of the comments here are spam too, this one included.

    2. Re:Comment Spam is News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They deserve to be fed to Larry.

    3. Re:Comment Spam is News? by sconeu · · Score: 2

      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    4. Re:Comment Spam is News? by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.

      I'll take two, hold the Vikings...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    5. Re:Comment Spam is News? by Altrag · · Score: 2

      Its huge news! A scammer figured out how to game Google!

      And 3 hours from now we can expect the follow up story where Google tweaks their algorithm to compensate. Hurrah!

    6. Re:Comment Spam is News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spam egg sausage and spam without vikings? EUUUGHHH!!

  3. Google sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Time and time and time again their ranking engine is manipulated. But, they have their top men working on it.
    "Who?"
    "Top men."

    1. Re:Google sucks by ThePawArmy · · Score: 1

      And a few Bottom men too ... you know... for those kinds of websites.

  4. This is where MODERATING is done. by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    Spotify is a music site. Aren't discussions like this off topic for the entire forum?

    They could probably set up automated moderating to remove posts with certain keywords, required-review for the first several posts by new users, etc and stop a large swath of these before they even show up. But that would be too much work for the company.

    Everyone wants their own little walled-garden area for social interaction between users, but no one wants to take the responsibility for administrating them anymore. The result is Disqus embedded everywhere, and that appears to be not-moderated at all in my experience.

    1. Re:This is where MODERATING is done. by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      This sort of advertiser spam is what killed Usenet for good. Sure, it wasn't doing well at the time, but it wasn't terminally ill either. Then the invasion of spammers made it an all but useless service. So yes, you need administration and moderation.

    2. Re:This is where MODERATING is done. by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but moderators don't actually DO anything. I don't know why, but moderators never seem to clean up spam or move off-topic posts or do any of the things that moderators are supposed to do. They're either lazy or incompetent. I think the problem is that nobody checks their work, so they can get away with playing phone games all day while they're supposed to be working.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:This is where MODERATING is done. by Altrag · · Score: 1

      Difference is Usenet was decentralized with no authority to take control of the problem. Spotify on the other hand is perfectly within their rights (and likely their capabilities) to filter spam from their own forums. And if they don't, Google will just tweak their page ranking algorithm and the problem will naturally go away after a while once the spammers realize they're just wasting resources (though that still leaves Spotify with a heavily polluted forums section -- they'd still have to try and clean the crud out even after the fact.)

    4. Re: This is where MODERATING is done. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's test that theory with this post!

      Begin:
      Appy Apps and Luddites
      Fuck systemd
      In Soviet Russia...
      fuck windows 10
      APK hosts files are a panacea
      Gay N!ggers
      Does it run Linux?
      Frosty piss!!1!
      Lameness filter encounteres
      smelly chimps
      Pepperidge farm remembers!

    5. Re: This is where MODERATING is done. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      You're posting as AC. They wont see a reason to moderate something at -1 already.

  5. So, call them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We could go 4chan on them and start calling them. Tell them we saw their posts for free technical support on Spotify and then ask them a random question found on Stack Overflow. After a while, they might be actively trying to take down their own content spam.

  6. And THIS is why Net Neutering is REQUIRED! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enough! Just cut them off! NOOOOOW!

  7. Spotify has forums ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where ?

  8. Cut them off at the source by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    They're mostly taking advantage of old people whose heads aren't all there anymore. Like it or not that's going to be a lot of us. It's not just Alzheimer's either. There's a general decline as you get older and you become more vulnerable. I'm guessing nobody likes talking about it because old people are a major voting block and it would play well with them. Regardless, it would make things so much easier if we'd acknowledge it and work on counter measures.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Cut them off at the source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that until the 70s, and even the 1980s, if you called someone out as a liar, those were fighting words. Now, it is a compliment, because it means that one was able to bamboozle someone else.

      This mindset didn't really start happening until the 1990s. Now, we have prominent political figures (on both sides of the political spectrum here in the US) who lie on a daily basis, and don't care if/when they get caught. Older people remember when if someone said the sky was blue, they wouldn't have to go out with a spectrometer to validate that fact. This is why they are such marks, as they never have dreamed that people could be so lousy.

      Also, as per Indians... racist much?

    2. Re:Cut them off at the source by Altrag · · Score: 1

      God help the first Indian who actually shows up at my door for any reason

      Uh oh! Danger!

      I'm simply going to walk him off my property.

      Well that deflated fast ;).

    3. Re:Cut them off at the source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When 90%+ of the phone scammers are from that region it isn't racist, its stereotyping.

  9. Track Them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the scammers left valid numbers, then they can be traced. Sounds like another photo opportunity for law enforcement.

  10. Can somebody 'splain this sentence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The tech support scams being posted to Spotify include Tinder, Linksys, AOL, Turbotax, Coinbase, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Norton, McAfee and more.

    OK, I don't grok that.

    I've never used Tinder, but I know approximately what it is (dating site, right?) Why would anyone look for anything related to tech support on a dating site? And if you saw something totally off topic like "hey, call this phone# to solve your Windows problems!" wouldn't it leap out as being a scam? And it isn't like a bunch of 80 year olds are going to be on that site, either. Amazon, similar: it's a shopping site, not a tech support forum!

    There's clearly something I'm not grasping, here.

    AOL, maybe I get that, since it's probably filled with less technically literate people.

    1. Re:Can somebody 'splain this sentence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would anyone look for anything related to tech support on a dating site?

      The sexbot he ordered from Tinder(in the near future of course) malfunctioned and won't put out.

  11. Just two questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are these scumbags in jail or dead yet ?

    And if not, why ?

  12. Its been happening by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This guy noticed it happening around when Google became Alphabet. He even reported it to the government then did a TED talk about it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c6AADI7Pb4

  13. Moderating by sgunhouse · · Score: 1

    As moderator on a tech support forum, I see such things regularly. Fortunately we're a small forum and thus it is easy enough for a handful of people to monitor - and likewise as a small forum we don't get as much as any of your big social sites would. But I did see a McAfee spammer just today, so apparently they must think we are worthwhile ...