What is up with all this Chinese spam on this section lately?

Question

I have literally just looked on this section and had to scroll down half an hours worth of Chinese spam to get to the real questions. How come Yahoo Answers aren't blocking these people? Do you find them annoying as well?

Answer 1

Those are spambots. Basically, Y!A has a problem with their registration security - it seems to be pretty weak, and so it's easy for a computer program to create many new Y!A accounts at once. The program then auto-generates questions containing spam content.



This has been going on for the past couple weeks or so. The only reason why you don't see this entire section filled with spam is because many active users have been reporting them. If you see these types of questions, do your part and report them, since it helps the site in the long run. (TBH though, I would imagine a lot of active users losing motivation to report questions, due to some of the upcoming Y!A changes.)

Answer 2

It's a bot. I can read Chinese and I can tell you it's complete gibberish. The sentences don't even make sense, but apparently the bot's dad went missing and then there's this hotline for a lucky draw.



Well that stopped and now it's about this lucky draw in a Chinese TV show called "I am a Singer". It is a singing contest for pop stars and it's very popular in China at the moment. I think that the programmer of this spambot is Chinese as most of you foreigners would have never heard of this TV show. I doubt even the expats in China know about the existence of I am a Singer. In other words, it's region-specific knowledge.

Answer 3

This has been going on for a few weeks now. Reporting them does nothing, since they seem to be making new accounts every few seconds. Clearly this is some kind of mass spamming computer program. Its just way too fast for any human to be doing it. I think we'll just have to put up with it for now. If there was anything that could be done, Yahoo would have done something by now.

Answer 4

Yeah, it keeps mentioning a dog eating 7 baby chicks or something like that. I don't get it either.

Answer 5

It looks like some kind of DOS attack that oddly enough seems to be set to run pretty much every day.



Probably something stupid about the new format that makes it easier to do.



report them.

Answer 6

That's still happening, bro. I asked a similar question.

Answer 7

I'm glad other people see it too. I thought it was just me. That's a relief of sorts...

Answer 8

Yes omg I was thinking that it was just my cell but I guess not! Its annoying!

Answer 9

I thought I was on the wrong website.

Answer 10

yes i thought it was my laptop jesus i was like.......wow im glad i know mandarin :P