Hello Russians, Ukranians, Who are You?

[liveonearth]

I notice that people who have been adding me as a friend are posting in what looks like Russian language. Hello! Why are you interested in my posts? Who are you? Do you know each other? What is it that you are interested in? What do you believe in? Since I cannot read your posts, I know nothing about you.

Comments

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

Probably bots, and best to block them and/or report them, especially if you see that they have very few posts and comments in their profile.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

OK, someone else said this. How many counts as very few? And can these bots really access my email? What else can they do? What IS a bot? Pardon my ignorance.

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

Very few = less than 50, in my book.

A bot is a program that is designed to do an automated task. In the case of malicious LJ bots, they try to gain access to personal information by "friending" accounts (probably thousands at a time). Friending them back allows them access to information in your locked posts. Once a bot has access to your posts, it will spider through them to glean information. You might think there's nothing for them to see, but a lot of people put a lot of very personal information into their posts.

At the very least, a malicious bot will try to find valid email addresses to add to spamming lists. They won't be able to actually access your email. That's on a different system that friending them will not give access to.

There are plenty of legitimate bots, as well, but they don't ask to be added to your friends lists.

Here's a page that lists LJ's bot policies - as you can see there are a lot of automated tasks going on that we're not aware of. That's the danger of posting things to a system that's not your own. Your information is at the mercy of what they will and will not allow on their system.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

So if I don't friend them, they can't access my private posts? Or is there some way that they can beat LJ security?

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

Correct. There's always the chance that somebody will hack LJ security for access to private posts, but I'd imagine LJ has a pretty good security person or team watching out for that kind of stuff. They also rely on us to report things that seem odd, such as somebody who only posts and comments in a Cyrillic language friending somebody who obviously only speaks English.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Cool. I *always* look at the journals of those who friend me and if their posts are not in a language I can understand, I don't add them. What's the point? I also don't add people whose subject matter isn't of interest.

Ah, and thanks to you I've become aware that this word is not part of my vocabulary, but it should be:

Cyrillic alphabet = an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet and used for writing Slavic languages (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and some other Slavic languages)

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

Ah. So it's actually "Cyrillic alphabet" which is used to write "Slavic languages"... very good. We both learned something today. :-D

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

Ah, see? Now you're getting responses from real people. These people are not bots! They're responding to your posts with reasonable responses. Bots don't do that.