Hello world,

as many of you may already be aware, there is an ongoing spam attack by a person claiming to be Nicole.

It is very likely that these images are part of a larger scale harassment campaign against the person depicted in the images shared as part of this spam.

Although the spammer claims to be the person in the picture, we strongly believe that this is not the case and that they're only trying to frame them.

Starting immediately, we will remove any images depicting "Nicole" and information that may lead to identifying the real person depicted in those images to prevent any possible harassment.
This includes older posts and comments once identified.

We also expect moderators to take action if such content is reported.

While we do not intend to punish people posting this once, not being aware of the context, we may take additional actions if they continue to post this content, as we consider this to be supporting the harassment campaign.

Discussion that does not include the images themselves or references that may lead to identifying the real person behind the image will continue to be allowed.

If you receive spam PMs please continue reporting them and we'll continue working on our spam detections to attempt to identify them early before they reach many users.

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[–] 334 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I gotta give it to you guys. The foresight to prevent a disaster is 10/10. Top tier. Well done.

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    [–] 257 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah it seemed funny at first but the longer this went on the creepier it got as we all realized this isn't just a catfish.

    Whoever is doing this to the actual person in the photos is a terrible human being and should go climb under a rock for the rest of their lives.

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  • [–] 156 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I can't wait for the future 4 hour video deep dive into Nicole history and lore.

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    [–] 123 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Is this Nicole thing really still a thing? That’s so like back when I still had a 401k.

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    [–] 106 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    This is a copy+paste of a comment I left on the !Nicole@feddit.org mod post after the recent incident with the gruesome picture(s?):

    β€œI think if Lemmy doesn’t have the infrastructure to defend against attacks like these which are presumptively conducted by one bad actor, then it doesn’t have the infrastructure to defend against wealthy organizations when our communities do get big enough to be noticed by them.

    [!Nicole@feddit.org]’s history underscores how the messaging system in particular needs a massive overhaul; using image recognition as a filter for messages like Lemmy.World does for image posts (with options for NSFW that isn’t NSFL?), preventing images (and URLs? or only allowing white-listed sites?) from being sent within the first message sent between users (unless a box is ticked?), not showing message recipients images until they are directly opened, and preventing the de-anonymizing of message recipients should be made first priority for the next patch.”

    Edit: not sure if my comment is inciting other trolls/spammers to target me but I just got this DM several hours after commenting

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  • [–] 72 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Ah very cool. A recent update too. Thanks.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Honestly I think the easiest thing would be to not allow images or embedding at all in PMs and perhaps display a warning message when clicking links "you are leaving [instance name]..."

    Analyzing potentially lots of text and images in an effort to "guarantee" safety of users is likely a sisyphusian endeavour that is bound to fail - and furthermore also has privacy issues (namely that "private" messages aren't private at all)

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    [–] 85 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Wait, there are people who genuinely believe she's the one behind it?

    I thought it was pretty obvious that she's the target of harassment. Some people must be new to the Internet

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    [–] 72 points 1 year ago*

    Thank you for your work managing the spam waves!

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  • [–] 72 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    About damn time. The joke has run it's course a long time a ago and if these posts are victimizing an individual they most definitely need to be stopped.

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  • [–] 68 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Considering the spammer has used so many different photos, and they all seem to be "in the moment" webcam photos, I suspect they may have webcam spyware on the victim's computer

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    She looks to me like a college student attending an online class. Looks like it's shot on a laptop's built-in camera, lighting is whatever, she's dressed casually and comfortably, facial expression is neutral or even bored...

    If you're taking a college class via Zoom, can you see your classmates' webcams?

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    [–] 63 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Is this the person some folks around here were referring to as the "Fediverse chick?"

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    [–] 58 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thanks. Even if it isn't a harassment campaign I'm sick of the messaging

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I always thought it was weird how much attention people were paying to span messages. Giving them that much attention only serves whatever purpose they have.

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  • We don’t get many on this platform. It’s the only spam I’ve received here. So getting spam we all shared is something that generates discussion. I don’t think anyone took it seriously. It was mildly humorous at first, but now that knowledge is spreading that this likely isn’t some generic spammer we can deal with it differently.

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What of the recent NSFW/gore images that were shared? Has that been reported to authorities?

    Not expecting police to solve it, but at least it would be on their radar.

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  • [–] 53 points 1 year ago

    we looked into it, we currently believe that to be a copycat not related to the other pms.

    the lemmy.world account involved in that was most certainly compromised from an unrelated data breach and all connections originated from IPs linked to an anonymization service, so there's also not much to follow up on.

    we will reconsider this if it happens again.

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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    This annoys the fuck out of me and I hope whoever is behind it doesn't realize their goals, because I don't want lemmy to degrade into a bunch of spam PMs.

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    [–] 41 points 1 year ago

    part of a larger scale harassment campaign against the person depicted

    Oh boy that's horrible, if true I hope she has reported it to police, and they can help her.

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Damn, I never thought about it this way. Wow. I always took it as a funny thing not thinking of the person in the photo being an actual person who could very well be harassed. Thank you for bringing this to light. Whoever thought of this is a good human being. <3

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    [+] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)
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    [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but are you able to confirm whether admins have reported this to the police?

    Even if violence hasn't been perpetrated, the harassment is still a crime surely.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    I don't know if others have, I only know that we (Lemmy.World, Fedihosting Foundation) have not reported it to the police.

    I don't have high hopes that the police would be able to do anything about this. For the harassment against the person shown in the images, that would likely have to be reported by them directly for the police to take that up.
    For random online spam, as in harassment of fediverse users receiving the PMs, that seems like it would be an extremely low priority for police. It's also likely fairly difficult to impossible to follow up on, considering that the person sending the PMs most likely used a VPN to access these accounts.

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    [–] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I have no context for this and thought it was an April fools joke left up but no, this is a real problem here?

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    [–] 25 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I've heard that if you actually add her on friendica, the mayor of Toronto shows up at your house and gives you an old fashioned.

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