this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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MODERATORS
 

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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[–] [email protected] 331 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 212 points 1 week ago (13 children)

to be honest, this should have been done way earlier.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 week ago

Still glad you're doing it now!

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's pretty obvious ...

What's scary is how many people just accepted that some woman wanted to randomly spam thousands of pictures with her smoking weed.

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[–] [email protected] 257 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Agreed. When the images started to change it got really creepy.

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[–] [email protected] 155 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 1 week ago (7 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

So was it last week or the day before yesterday? It all happens so fast, I can't - and frankly - refuse to catch up.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My government salutes you!

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

This is a copy+paste of a comment I left on the [email protected] 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.

[[email protected]]’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

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Ah very cool. A recent update too. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Yes. As you can see, a few large instances like lemm.ee, lemmy.ca and others have already updated: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy?version=0.19.11

Hopefully others will follow soon

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week 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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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 week 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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I've been targeted by enough romance spam that I just assume any photo of a woman I don't know was probably stolen from some random Tumblr or Instagram.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thank you for your work managing the spam waves!

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I broke up with her for this reason.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 week 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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week 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?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Ripping a bong on zoom in class?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

with the content i've seen it gave me more of an impression of being captures of a live stream, but that's just guessing

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Yes, as that is how "she" initially introduced herself

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 week 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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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Would rather more positive lore, but I guess it is fediverse lore. Just checked from curiosity, all but 2 messages I have got are from Nicole bots, 1 was another spammer and the other an automated "welcome to this community" bot message.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (10 children)
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week 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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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week 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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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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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