So, I was just cruising the web this afternoon when suddenly I was at a site that I did not recognize that had about 25 or more photos. One caption said that it was the server room on the east coast and another caption said BCTS. I don't know what was going on and it seems to have cleared now. I had previously visited a site called "Chat GPT" that did not interest me, so I left. I don't know if this caused BCTS any grief and if it did, I am sorry.
Gwen
Comments
Karen West has been hacked..
I sent Erin a DM earlier due to what looks like the author Karen West's account had been hacked. There was a spammer using her name to post spam about various drugs they were trying to sell.I don't know if the entire site was hacked or possibly just Karen's account.
I was only online for a few minutes when I found it but I never ran across anything like you were subjected to Gwen.
I notice that Erin or another of the BCTS staff has already taken care of the spammer's posts also.
Blossom
It's not "hacking."
Just spammers creating new accounts and choosing an already-existing author's name to post "stories" under.
We don't know why they keep using Karen West for this.
Melanie E.
Could be...
A subroutine that hackers use to find the most ramdom and common names on the web.
"... most random and common names..."
I don't know if BCTS has anything in place to prevent two different members from having the same name. Perhaps that could help, and force the "bad guys" into naming themselves "Karen West Fake", "Karen West Fake 2", ...
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I'm a Moderator on a face book group (1), and for many months we have fighting off an endless stream of 'random name' posters. flake-book has gone from "show us your driver's license with photo, or we destroy your FB page/site" - even if it was somebody's >business<, to "meh, whatever..." They have also Forced auto-approval of new members in groups - making screening them impossible.
Content and actions of our "Karen West"s seem fairly 'mild'. Some of their posted videos are far more stupid than even USA 'reality TV'. It looks it's "click bait" to get people to go to their video games etc. sites.
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(1) I'm on the Vegan Love group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/583888551756009/ No, we are >not< a dating/matching group. We are just mostly animal Sanctuaries, news and events, some mutual self-help, and vegan propagand -er- information.
Once again, it's not hacking or duping names.
They're creating new accounts, then picking a random name from the author drop-down menu to post content under.
For whatever reason, Karen's name is the one they keep choosing from the list.
BC uses this system of author name selection so that multiple authors can be tagged in a single story, or so that a single poster can post stories from multiple authors (such as in the case of migrating stories over from other locations.)
It's a trust feature that the scam-bots are abusing.
Despite how clever they may think this is, you can generally tell who a story was actually posted by simply by looking at the "submitted by" line, rather than the author line.
Or, I guess to put it more simply: author tags are simply metadata tags like any other. They can select any metadata tags they want... but they haven't (yet) actually hacked any long-time members' accounts and caused real havoc.
Melanie E.
Data?
I've got my own stuff to deal with!
Love, Andrea Lena
StarTrek: TG
Artificial lifeforms seem to have a refreshingly fluid relationship to gender.
The AI from Robert Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS
seemed comfortable with presenting as either Mike or Michelle.
And Lt. Cmndr Data proved to be a wonderfully progressive
parent by letting the child he built chose her own sex.
(Poor kid, Lal's fatal cascade failure still breaks my heart;
she would have made a really interesting recurring character,
far less annoying than Worf's son Alexander or the Crusher brat...)
And who can forget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUnGHUZ5KOo
~hugs, Veronicabot
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Yep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLx_MfJjEQM
Love, Andrea Lena
Oh, well done!
Even if Tasha Yar found Data to be "fully functional," your picture suggests that the android might have had a more active love life as a female!
Hugs,
— Emma
Someone messing 'round
I did notice that someone must have gotten into my account, because a few of my stories are a lot funnier than I remember them. And I mean A LOT. Like not just "ha ha" but also "ho ho ho hee hee."
- iolanthe
Edit them if you like
My preference though would be to leave the humor; too much that isn’t funny at all is happening IRL.