You are right. Probably those accounts were created to enter giveaway.
Hey Admin - did you know you have a bot running now every 2 mins?
1 Like
The official giveaway doesn’t use points, only tickets.
But every new user gets 10 notes
Which can be converted to 10 tickets
Which can then bomb any giveaway. So they’ve got 2000 giveaway tickets now. Plus whatever I’ve not thought of.
There’s no evidence of a bot based win as all the members are regularly involved real humans, so my guess is they’re just creating the account just because they can and then deploy the combined power when they choose.
Basically it’s not a healthy thing to allow. It undermines a lot of what is well intentioned.
2 Likes
It’s good that you wrote about it.
It can’t go on like this - something has to be done.
Well you can solve it at the front end, or the back end.
The front end would be to use a more complex account verification. You register with email address, then they send email to confirm, then you use a complex verification it is a human (Captcha, etc) so a bot cannot create an account.
The back end would be to only allow prize winning based on a mininum level, minimum level of engagement.
Can be solved in the middle, code which detects patterns (same IP) and deletes them and bans the IP.
If you do neither, and that is the concern, then basically anyone with the coding skills, or hangs out in the places “dark web” who copies and modifies existing code, can make any forum bend to their will, whether childish posting lots of bad messages from all their accounts to annoy everyone, through to making themselve highly likely to win any prize, through to destroying the community completely.
The competition to guess the Grammy, well you can script entering the Google Forms, using each of the users they created, use a random different guess and so by quantity then win the competition.
Small FYI, I’ve been coding since 1979… and no the bots are not mine but I don’t like well intentioned places like this community to fall foul.
My suggestion is to reward just regular members who accumulated evidence a real human, prizes based on talent are inherently best.
@The_Professor there is currently no address pattern but most are stating Korea, Japan , Taiwan, and China.
From a quick search there seemed to be a short run near the mid Feb. but as you stated, they are running heavier now.
I think I have found a few other that goes back as far as Sept. 12 2020.
Advice:
- close the ability to script the account creation.
- delete all accounts created this way (pattern search)
The presence of accounts not deleted represent an accumulated “army” of accounts to be exercised at a future date for some planned/unplanned purpose.
If there is no IP pattern then it’s a middle harvest event. You are being seeded with future intent.
As to the plan, given the direct monetary gain here is small, probably this site is being controlled to be sold to someone else for a few $ for an, as yet unplanned, vector.
1 Like
Thanks for bringing this to our attention! I’ve got the website team checking it out now 
2 Likes
(Hey Admin - did you know you have a bot running now every 2 mins?)
@The_Professor
See who won - could this be the problem you are writing about?
Weekly Giveaway Winner: Well done @Ginny_Williams!
That’s unlikely a bot as it’s too similar to a real name.
It could be one of many accounts one person has.
Most real people are lurkers, so my guess is a lucky win, potentially magnified luck via multiple accounts, the admin can easily check for that by checking the IP of all submissions, which they may already be doing.
1 Like
Check the date created, if same date, and if then admin check IP then it’s a clear abuse.
Out on my bike it’s a nice day, I’ll look deeper later.
1 Like
Date is not the same. I think someone is creating
account weekly or biweekly to participate in giveaways
And how many accounts are there - can you check it? How many accounts were involved inWeekly Giveaway Winner
All the accounts that has the potential bots have level 1. This gives 10 notes plus 1 ticket for leveling. I know in the past there was a way to do the giveaway without converting to tickets …they can use notes for tickets without converting. Loz stated that they potentially is 15 or so in the giveaway any week.
@sean.l, I would give a good look at the Ginny1 on this as well. Most of the ones I see are level 1.
So if they doing just to level 1 then they could have 11 tickets. They are 9 notes from getting a 5 dollar coupon at 20 notes. They could not get more of the tickets unless they do something to the accounts and gain another 150 pts to get to level 200. At this point they would have 38 or use it to get a 10 dollar coupon.
1 Like
Looks like all ginnie were created to paricipate in giveaways🤣
When I first saw the numbers, I had a thought that there was just an issue with the name script and it was just showing numbers instead of the names or something and not a full commando on their system.
I guess it is a good way to get to 1 million members 
Non admin have less visibility.
You have two lists, total activity per period
https://community.soundcore.com/u
So e.g. sorted for most read last month, this shows more the active and lurkers who are interested (genuinely interested in Soundcore)
https://community.soundcore.com/u?order=posts_read&period=monthly
Then there members of groups, you can sort by account created or last seen and their last post
This is sorted for example for all members with Ginny In name and then last seen
https://community.soundcore.com/g/trust_level_0?desc=true&filter=Ginny&order=last_seen_at
Any competition or prize not based on judged talent is vulnerable to winning by people not remotely interested in Soundcore. Even the guess the Grammy awards can be scripted to submit to the Google Docs form each combination of possible results and with enough accounts make a guaranteed win.
You can minimise the wins to those interested by eliminating a winner without the signature of an interested person (been around a while and resd things, posted a few, etc).
We should avoid objecting to a noob winner as then is denying luck and so put up.an exclusion to new members who would become valuable.
So I’m more against the bots as the winner is not now and never will be interested and so takes and never gives back.
If you export members lists to a spreadsheet and sort by name and then script (I’d use Linux AWK) how many repeating pattern, you can approximate how many multiple accounts made by bots (or a person who uses a username password pattern).
Correct, there’s not remotely 1M interested in Soundcore folks, e.g. how page scroll down here til you get someone not read anything the last month
https://community.soundcore.com/u?order=days_visited&period=monthly
I could invest time to copy paste and count lines but as a swag I’d say less than a thousand.
The level of skill to write a bot if directed for good purposes will easily earn more money than they’d get here as prizes. So my guess is the bot is accumulating many accounts to then sell them to someone who has bad intentions. Typically it’s to take down the community at a time for maximum effect. E.g. to harm a product launch.
1 Like
Happy to help.
If you want advice then delete all accounts inactive for say 3 months as well as all obviously created by a script accounts.
If you don’t then as a mass collective force they can bring down the community, probably at the least convenient time.
Bots take skill, skill usually can earn more money than the prizes on offer, so it’s likely a bigger goal than cheating at competitions.
Amateurs who just create manually multiple accounts are the ones trying to get free stuff by getting more luck by multiple entries, they win prizes but aren’t as damaging as these thousands of bot accounts.
1 Like