getting rid of those weird Russian LJ "friends"

[realthog]

Huge thanks to quietselkie  for this:

Follow the link below to read how to report to LJ's Abuse Team the serial frienders and spam LJs so many of us have been plagued with of late.

http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I've got another one today.

And for some reason I seem to have forgotten how to ban user.

The command string that is.

Help?

I've been deeply disturbed by the events of this week, and the credit freeze, the banks going under gummit control and today's Wall Street plunge.

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I seem to have forgotten how to ban user"

Far better is to follow the link to nympholept's LJ, and then follow the (very simple) instructions given there. That way you'll get rid of the "friend" for good.

There is no direct "ban user" capability in the LJ software; the best you can do is stop the undesirable's ID appearing on your friends list (and I, too, have forgotten how to do this).

xx

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Visit the admin console ( http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/ ) and type in ban_set username and click Execute.

I picked up another one today. *sigh* Will report these doofuses one by one until some genius coder at LJ figures out how to block them.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Visit the admin console ( http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/ ) and type in ban_set username and click Execute. I've done this so much lately, I now have the console bookmarked. They've got a nice help link there, too, in case you don't remember command syntax.

Yep, it's been a tough week.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. Done.

I too have console saved. But for some reason last night I couldn't remember this very simple thing. LJ's instructions resemble palin-like gibberish to me. Though usually I figure it out. But last night, nope.

Again, thank you.

I think this one has squirmed its slimeyness on my flist earlier as well as yesterday.

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Yes, but by going through the console you haven't in fact gotten rid of the unwanted link: you still appear on their friends list. The only way actually to get rid of these spammers is to report them according to the instructions I gave.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I did report!

Reporting is essential, as you say.

Now that LJ has finally recognized that these slimeists are bots of No Good Intent.

Love, C.

[nympholept.livejournal.com]

Thankyou!

I get daily google alerts for my name, and I've been to 5 other journals today responding to people saying "well I ban_set them, so I'm safe" :/

[realthog.livejournal.com]

No, thank you. You've done us all a great service!