We’ll continue to update this thread as new cases of Kudos abuse emerge.
Below are example instances that our team has found where certain individuals on the forum exploited the Kudos scoring actions to accumulate Kudos faster.
Example 1
In the first case, a member has created three other accounts using temporary email addresses, which they then used one of these three accounts to create a thread on the forum, and later reply to said thread using their main account.
How are these accounts related to the main account?
The image above shows three newly created accounts with little activity (evidence by their Trust Levels) originated from the same IP address as the main account.
The list of recently used devices for each account:
Main account
hahele3836
Out of the three accounts, only the “hahele3386” account was logged in using mutiple devices. Notice how the location is the same as the main account, and take into account the date of which the hahele3386 account last logged in.
How do we know the three accounts are using temporary emails?
We ran the email address through User Check and all received the same results:
How did this person use the “hahele3386” account to gain more Kudos?
On Dec 28, hahele3386 created a thread asking on how to request TestCloud license, which the main account replied a few hours later, and asked the “hahele3386” account to mark their reply as a solution, which it did about 2 hours later.
Example 2
This case can be encountered more often than the first case, in which the Invite function was exploited to invite several people to the forum. However, a lot of the time, the invited accounts are simple burner accounts created using temporary email addresses.
Some of the signs that we usually look for to determine whether an account is a burner account include:
- Low number of post read (< 100)
- Low number of read time (=< 30 minutes)
- The join date & last seen date are not far apart (less than a month).
Other signs include:
- Trust Level are usually TL0 or TL1
- No post nor thread created → Usually the most obvious sign