Re: [OSM-talk] Large number of seemingly automated, non-SEO spam edits

[Jack Armstrong dan...@sprynet.com]

Same thing is popping up in the Denver, Colorado area. I've sent messages to the new users. If no reply, I will begin deleting.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Johnson
Sent: Mar 14, 2018 4:08 AM
To: Talk Openstreetmap
Subject: [OSM-talk] Large number of seemingly automated, non-SEO spam edits

Seem to be getting a large number of spam edits all with comments matching aabbbbbbbb, where a is any single lowercase letter and b is any single digit, have appeared in the last 48 hours.  So far the items being mapped have had name=* matching the same pattern, area=yes, and not much of anything else, and certainly don't seem to be of any value or decipherable to any casual observer.  These have started appearing in Oklahoma, which is why I noticed them in OsmCha.

Users that I've noticed so far that are doing this, totalling 261 changesets, all fitting this pattern:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mike%20Gothie

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/t-max

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/ghostsail

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mrana3

I strongly suspect there are more accounts doing this across the US (since the mrana3 one only had a bounding box that intersected Oklahoma, no edits within it, but did have them on either coast), and the oldest account appears to be from March 5, 2018.

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