There is a poster that seems to be here just to harvest replies. What should I do?

There was a spare of this a few months ago, always the same poster, eventually that user name went away. I can understand harvesting to a degree but some of the questions are so stupid that wouldn't be the reason, what brand of kettle to do you have it what colour is your toothbrush

Perhaps be more consistent with ‘poster has not returned ‘ comments

A few years ago, an MNer challenged people to identify her from her threads.

It was possible to work out her full name, her DC’s names & ages, where she lived & their school.

She was pretty shocked.

Something I noticed about that poster is that despite me only following 5 boards on here when they posted on Sports which i don’t follow it appeared on my Active list

If you have posted on a whole variety of threads over a number of years, it can be worked out how old you are, whether you have kids, their sexes and ages, if you have pets, what your job is, what your DH/DP does for a hobby, that your parent has x medical condition, you can't stand olives and that you live in a house with x bedrooms and within walking distance of an Aldi. When you post about your disagreement with a close friend about their wedding arrangements, they or someone else you know can search your posting history and work out exactly who you are from information gleaned over all those previous posts of yours.

If you have mentioned the name of the small town you were born in and have lived all your life, that area has only a few primary schools, the name of one of which could be your bank's security question. If you have also answered a 'What was no 1 in the charts on the day you were born?' thread on here, and have also gaily mentioned in telly addicts that you share a first name with an Eastenders actress, someone could send for your birth certificate and find out your exact date of birth - especially if your birth announcement was in your local paper. With your surname.

Your new kitten has been posted (with pics) on the litter tray board and you've asked for names, and happen to mention that you can't use x name as it was the name of your childhood pet. Another bank security question answered.

Do I need to go on?

These types of threads have been going on for ages - at least two years. Always the same type of us,Essex shit such as “what did your childhood home have that you do t have now”. Followed by a three word answer. Followed by hundreds of replies, but no further interaction from the OP.

I got really peed off with it, so called the person out on all the threads. Didn’t end well for me (rightly so, in the spirit of the guidelines, but they really annoyed me 😂).

I still see that type of thread so often, can usually guess just by the title, but now I just ignore and move on. Still amazes me, though, how many people are willing to spill their guts on a thread with so little input on the opening post and no further interaction from the OP.

I found one of their posts. Definitely seems like an info harvesting bot to break passwords. I can only assume MN is seeing something behind the scenes that we don’t to make this okay? I would imagine if you answer one of these threads, you become a target, yes, but it still sucks that it happened to you. And yes, the username has definitely been chosen based on limited MN outsider knowledge and news searches.

Exact same thing happened to me the other day and I've been on x maybe about 3 times in years.

On the ‘What is your maiden name’ thread, I replied it’s ‘Reported’.

I find this unsettling. These aren’t innocent questions and I’m sure most users here realize that, but a few won’t. These questions are designed to illicit answers that can be put together to break passwords or security questions - favourite school subject, middle name - did they ask for favourite number or names of childhood pets as well?

Yes, unfortunately many of us voluntarily give up a terrifying amount of information to have social media and use ready-built AI, but that doesn’t make it right or okay. If these posts are as you describe in this comment, I have to assume either MN knows this user well enough behind the scenes to say they’re not data harvesting OR they’re just ignoring obvious data harvesting. Very strange as it sounds like a bot trying to break usernames’ passwords. Could be someone testing an AI out?

Genuine question. How would it be really easy?

They don't interact at all, that's the thing. Just start a thread and then never come back.

Just report it. Troll hunting is against the rules as well

Maybe they're just lonely/bored and looking for interaction.

Ditto....they are either clickbait threads or ignorant posters, either way, best ignored.

RTFT.🙂

Ooh - news incoming..

A thread I've been looking at has just been hidden...

Anyone care to explain what the problem is, please?

It depends, could be a bit, could be someone home sick with nothing else to do. I’m shocked sometimes how much I’m on here on a day off!

It isn’t, AI doesn’t need to ask people about their pets, it’s already trained on huge amounts of existing text from the internet.

They've been here for aaaages. Serial name-changer. Will sometimes revert to numbercolourbird type names.

It's my only 'hide thread' poster.

I call them the question plopper. Plop a question and then sit back and watch the replies come flooding in.

I have reported, but the only deletion is when they strayed into bereavement. Even MN could agree that is not a place for meaningless engagement, so they sacrificed the clicks in favour of deletion.

I do think there should be deletions for obvious disingenous posters tbf, but then...it would all be dustballs around here.

I’m almost certain it’s AI being trained. That should be incredibly alarming for everyone here, given proven Russian interference in our online public discourse.
if I were MN I’d be blocking that kind of nonsense.

Because it helps those who are innocently taken in

Some of the TRA political activists who are on and off (and around) Feminism:Sex & Gender Discussions (aka FWR) board have been open about wanting to identify posters on MN. A few do seem to be from tech backgrounds. Other boards have the odd ‘bad actor’, too.

Or it’s a social experiment of some sort.

Anyone who’s worried: de-register from MN, get yourself a free, ‘throwaway’ email address on somewhere like Proton, and/or a VPN, and then register if you want to. Also change username frequently.

@Smallorveryfaraway no you can't block individual users, despite quite a few requests in the past. You can hide threads but not posters.