Fake titles?

Hi @mbmb​ -

I cleaned up the identified data and taken appropriate actions against the responsible accounts, however, if you are still seeing more fake title page listings that fit this MO (irrelevant industry news links), let me know and our staff can investigate further.

Cheers!

@Michelle​ 4th link from Peter's post doesn't seem to be deleted.

Also, none of the things I bookmarked are deleted. Surely there are a lot. I will post the ones I found here but obviously with limited ability it would not be possible for me to find them all.

The best thing would be the staff executing something like: "Delete every new title added by user x"

Wikipedia administrators have a tool like this. They just press a button and every single page added by a user is deleted by the tool without any effort. You would think that the editors of the world's biggest movie database would have a button or command or a tool like this.

Hi @mbmb​ -

Thanks, I just pushed that final title removal through and it s now off the site. 

Unfortunately, these fake title pages didn't all originate from the same account, so while we can remove bad data, there may be multiple violating accounts responsible.  If you have some additional examples, that will help us identify them further and help with the clean-up.

@Michelle​ I see, thanks for explanation, sorry for late reply, there are so many and it's not easy to collect them as an ordinary user.

Can you start with this: https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0980932

I checked every title here, all same MO from obviously same person (even if it's different accounts)

Can you delete all the titles added by the accounts that added these titles under this fake company page? (I mean not just these titles under the company page but also others added by the users who added them)

Then checking the many name pages I bookmarked to see any remaining & missed titles would be easier.

Hi @mbmb​ -

Thanks for this additional information.  I was able to identify further accounts and remove invalid data.  I have also filed a ticket (#P90871761) for our tech team to help dig deeper with the clean-up effort.

Thanks again!

@Michelle​ Thanks for the ticket.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26761449/ - Had this in my bookmarks, it had a bunch of fake credits and release dates and such. I see everything is cleaned from the page but not the title itself? Can you check the creator of the title to see if it's already on the cleanup list?

same MO, surely same person:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27478031/

(had a fake external link with "The Hollywood Reporter news report" description but not there anymore)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26598173/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27116785/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27127845/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27127850/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27127901/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27119309/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27128200/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27127421/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27121638/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27128231/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27135078/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27145847/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27115395/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27127871/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27499876/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26758287/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27429704/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27528145/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27508650/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27493989/

(What I noticed on these pages is, the data like credits, release dates and these fake external links on these pages is being cleaned up but none of the the actual titles themselves are deleted, why? This makes it even harder to find the titles, I was finding them through name pages, now it's much harder to find them. Why are the actual titles not deleted during the cleanup, only the data on them?

And deleting these similarly formatted external links but keeping fake titles created with them makes it much harder to find these titles.)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27800311/ - This is added with a 1986 Transformers movie trailer link as evidence. Looks fake, can't find anything other than a few fandom wiki page where kids put their imaginations. (this might be by someone else but it's still fake anyway)

Hi @mbmb​ -

Thanks for posting these additional title page reports, they have now all been reviewed and removed.

Cheers!

@Michelle​ Was this ticket (P90871761) solved and closed?

I just found another one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26679278/

Which makes this unanswered question still valid: "Why are the actual titles not deleted during the cleanup, only the data on them?"

@Michelle​ Btw, from what I can see from some wikis he's also vandalising, this is an IP used by him mostly: 104.180.220.84

Maybe if you can list created titles by IP instead of users, you can have a better luck to find them all.

Edit: Wikipedia also has these IPs blocked which looks like the same vandal to me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:96.52.17.79

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2605:8D80:4A1:875E::/64