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Comment by ikt | Hacker News Reader

I think the bigger question is anti-spam in anonymous chatrooms, even with the mobile phone requirements spammers (in particular from Nigeria, why does this country have so many scammers in particular?) are everywhere and spamming all the time, I'm in 5 or so groups and every day 2-3 spam messages have to be deleted. There are millions of fake channels and I wouldn't be surprised if up to or over 10% of telegrams messages sent are spam/scams.

What does matrix do to prevent the tidal wave of spam hitting it?

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I would say it's the same question as "what does IRC do?" as the general design is the same - maybe a bit more friction signing up with Matrix than IRC but at the end of the road they operate on the same trust model. The Matrix team blogged about a spambot attack last year on this very question: https://matrix.org/blog/2021/06/30/security-update-synapse-1...

Side comment: because my mobile number was leaked (breached) by T-Mobile which included my name, I get way, way way more spam via it than anything else. Lots of political spam, 95% or greater from the right/repub end of the spectrum.

Edit, side comment #2: I ported my secondary Google Voice number out to Tello (a low cost MVNO in the US) with a SIM in a spare phone, and all the spam I was getting every day to that number simply stopped instantly. I'm a little amazed to be honest, it's very interesting.

> The Matrix team blogged about a spambot attack last year on this very question: https://matrix.org/blog/2021/06/30/security-update-synapse-1...

Ah sorry that's a spambot attack, the spam on telegram is 99% Indian/Nigerian origin of people literally just signing up to go into group channels and spam whatsapp channels/msg me for how to make riches/join this trading signals channel you'll make millions.

If you're lucky they'll personally message you with something like 'hey' and then wait for you to respond, initiate a convo and try and get you to fall for their classic HYIP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-yield_investment_program

Searching for Ban on a random group channel this is how common it is: https://imgur.com/kOtilgL

the more public group that i am in, i leave "mentions and keywords only" notifications on so it does not bother me with every buzz. that way, only groups that i know are "relevant" can notify me, these groups i can browse later when i get the time

the tidal wave of spam? interesting.

i am member of a group, public, 876 users as of right now, another openstreetmap india group and that one has 1350.

only the osm-in has some sort of "spam" where i see occasional crap thrown on but that gets flagged and removed quickly.

i don't know about telegram but my matrix account(s) are pretty public but i have basically never gotten a stray spam. as i said, one group has a "couple of spam messages occasionally" but i can "report" the user and check tickbox

"Ignore user Check if you want to hide all current and future messages from this user." which should be good.

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