Surveys/Market Research Questionaires

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MyQul

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From time to time (we've had two in the last two days) we get people joining the forum and asking members to fill in a survey or questionaire on some aspect of brewing. Often they claim to be students but we only have their word to say that they are.
Normally we (the mod team) will remove the post and PM the person stating that data mining the forum isnt allowed without the express permission of the owner. I cant remember once when we've then heard back from the person, not even to acknowledge our PM. So my feeling is these surveys and questionaires aren't what they seem.
 
this has happened on other forums I am on It gets you thinking who these people are.
and what they do with all the info they get
 
I don't mind doing them as long as they don't ask for any information like name, address, email etc.
 
this has happened on other forums I am on It gets you thinking who these people are.
and what they do with all the info they get

Exactly. I dont think they're what they say they are. Plus (I dont know enough about computers to know if this is true) can they collect information from you that your not willing to give simply by clicking on their survey/questionaire link
 
I don't know if that is possible but do know as we recently posted in the sales forum we are sick of people joining the forum to use it (and the members) to make money or their life easier without giving anything in return.
 
I don't know if that is possible but do know as we recently posted in the sales forum we are sick of people joining the forum to use it (and the members) to make money or their life easier without giving anything in return.

Didnt think so. Maybe @Covrich might know as he's in IT isn't he.

These survey requests are part of that (including these people who only post in the sales forum) whole rocking up posting once to use the forum for their own purposes, never to be seen again
 
I have noticed one or two posts that have been necro'd that have a link in them to a product by a "new member" with a count of one post, most recent was for scales last week, pretty obvious that this is just someone using google to search forums for the relevant forum mentions and then linking to there product.
 
I have noticed one or two posts that have been necro'd that have a link in them to a product by a "new member" with a count of one post, most recent was for scales last week, pretty obvious that this is just someone using google to search forums for the relevant forum mentions and then linking to there product.

Have you got a link for that thread/post. That seem something we (the mod team) should keep an eye out for as a way people are sneaking product placement onto the forum

Edit: Found it (and removed it). Thanks :hat:
 
Have you got a link for that thread/post. That seem something we (the mod team) should keep an eye out for as a way people are sneaking product placement onto the forum

Edit: Found it (and removed it). Thanks :hat:

Np,
some forums do limit there new members to being able to post only and not create links of any sort until they have 5-10 posts. Tbh i don't notice that many but thats either down to good moderation or we just aren't appealing enough:)
 
Didnt think so. Maybe @Covrich might know as he's in IT isn't he.

These survey requests are part of that (including these people who only post in the sales forum) whole rocking up posting once to use the forum for their own purposes, never to be seen again

I wouldn't have thought so, they may log some things like IP address but unless you install a plugin or anything I doubt they can gather much.
 
Would having IP addesses be useful? I get the impression that almost any digital information is of value to someone somewhere nowadays

Typically most peoples external IP addresses are dynamic (you normally have to pay extra to reserve your own static one).

This is just a pool of addresses reserved from your internet provider.. restting your router you will pull a fresh address out from the pool and your old one is discarded back into the pool.

In other words the address holds little information for you to worry about
 
It could be used as the reconnaissance phase for a spear fishing attack.

A website called beerbydesign.com was infected with a nasty payload recently (I think I posted a warning here) if you weren't fully patched up, best of luck and even then with zero day exploits security products can't guarantee to protect you.

A colleague at work altered me to a suss email. It had already passed through one layer of our security because it was individually crafted and not sent out wholesale so a/v & a/s signatures did not pick it up. So I took the email to a quiet corner and beat it up. I pretended to let it escape onto our network and it squealed to its mummy! our 3rd layer of security had its site as harmless. So I added a block rule.

Shoe websites are now starting to be targeted to harbour malware so look out for the spear phishing of senior female employees in HR being targeted next. :doh: The attack will start with an email along the lines of - 'unfair dismissal claim' or something similar. Or they could send a direct link to infected website (not quite as sophisticated an attack)

The cyber crims are targeting hobbies & interest related websites. specialist web retailers can't afford adequate security and so their sites get hacked ready for a victim to click on.

So if a corporate internet report shows up sports,angling,cycling,shoe,clothing sites no-ones really going to spot anything untoward. but if a site came up as www.soviethackers.ru or www.iptheft.cn then alarm bells would ring.

so filling in a third party survey, where you go to a random website and fill in some questions. I don't advise it. Even a survey created on surveymonkey can be used to grab personal info useful to hack you.

So please be very suss by default. :thumb:

we are at risk including when we send links although youtube links are much safer than most.

Apologies for my random ramblings but I deal with a major security issue every week or two. Staff are actively encouraged to contact my IT team for anything strange or not quite right and this is what makes the difference. We can dissect the threat before its been activated and then we further adjust our security where necessary.

Because sooner or later someone will click on something :oops: and then all bets are off.
 
Typically most peoples external IP addresses are dynamic (you normally have to pay extra to reserve your own static one).

This is just a pool of addresses reserved from your internet provider.. resetting your router you will pull a fresh address out from the pool and your old one is discarded back into the pool.

In other words the address holds little information for you to worry about

your ip address as you know can trace you back to a specific isp. and then an email porporting to be from them saying. - you have been downloading illegal xxxx and we will cut you off etc. unless you login here ..... to confirm you have not been using your computer at this time.

if you type tracert www.bbc.co.uk from a command prompt this will show up in the first few lines your isp. :( crims would do the reverse by putting in tracert 212.58.244.27 (or whatever your ipaddress is)
 
Thanks for that post @dad_of_jon . Some of the technicalities I didnt really understand, but thats exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. If you click on these survey sites can they then 'get at you' some how. It's seems by your explanation, they can.
This is the kind of thing I wanted to warn people against/find out more about as usually one or two forumites click on the survey and fill it in before one of the mod team remove it. I think they also prey upon peoples good nature to help out, especially when the surevey usually says something along the lines of, 'Im a student please fill this in to help me with my course'
 
your ip address as you know can trace you back to a specific isp. and then an email porporting to be from them saying. - you have been downloading illegal xxxx and we will cut you off etc. unless you login here ..... to confirm you have not been using your computer at this time.

if you type tracert www.bbc.co.uk from a command prompt this will show up in the first few lines your isp. :( crims would do the reverse by putting in tracert 212.58.244.27 (or whatever your ipaddress is)

That is true, I never considered the scamming element
 
Staff are actively encouraged to contact my IT team for anything strange or not quite right and this is what makes the difference. We can dissect the threat before its been activated and then we further adjust our security where necessary.

Do they? I remember once some guy downloaded those crypto locker ransomeware to his pc, They it messed up some files , so rather than ring us he got his colleague to try it all first then he rang us the next day.

Thankfully we got it quickly, those ransomewares are horrid.
 
Thanks for that post @dad_of_jon . Some of the technicalities I didnt really understand, but thats exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. If you click on these survey sites can they then 'get at you' some how. It's seems by your explanation, they can.
This is the kind of thing I wanted to warn people against/find out more about as usually one or two forumites click on the survey and fill it in before one of the mod team remove it. I think they also prey upon peoples good nature to help out, especially when the surevey usually says something along the lines of, 'Im a student please fill this in to help me with my course'

yup, there are some nasty pieces of work out there taking advantage of the good nature of the average human being. A poll that is created on HBF is a much lower risk and most of us are familiar with those.
 

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