openSUSE:Communication channels:matrix spam
Staying safe on Matrix
Don't feed the trolls
The best thing we can do is disappoint spammers by not replying or interacting with them. Anytime someone spams offensive material or harasses a community, it is because they hope to stir up conversation, drama, and anger. If no one replies or interacts with the spammer, then they will not get the enjoyment they are wanting. It's best to let the mods remove offensive material, ban the offending accounts, and then stay on topic with that channel and act like the spammer was never there.
Suspicious notifications
If you get a notification where the text preview contains a large list of many users being mentioned, then you may want to approach this cautiously by not immediately opening the room where that notification came from. Moderators have the ability to mention all users at once using @room, but spammers lack this ability. To get around this, they use a script that collects all the names of people in a room and mentions them individually. It is uncommon for someone to mention numerous users all at once for a legitimate purpose, and it may be best to ignore a notification like this unless you recognize and trust the user who sent the message.
Disabling image previews
Many clients now include an option to disable image previews and autoplay of videos. Disabling these default options is useful, as it's not uncommon for spammers to upload offensive imagery. Our mod team will remove these offensive posts as quickly as we can, but it's useful to not have these show up as a notification.
- On Element Desktop
- Click on your profile pic in the top left corner of the app,
- Click âAll Settingsâ
- Click âPreferencesâ
- Scroll down to "Images, GIFs and videos"
- Disable the following items
- âAutoplay GIFsâ
- âAutoplay videosâ
- âShow previews/thumbnails for imagesâ
- On NeoChat
- Click the settings icon to in the bottom left section to the right of your username.
- Click "Security & Safety"
- Check the box for
- "Hide images and videos by default"
- On other clients, please check with its help documentation or project webpage to see if this is an option you can change.
Blocking invites from banned users
If you are logged into Matrix using your community account, then invites from users outside the opensuse.org server are blocked by default.
If you are logged into an account from another server and using the Element client, then you can block invites from known spam accounts by doing the following
- Click on your profile pic in the top left corner of the app, click "All Settings", "Labs", and turn on "New ways to ignore people".
- Then, go to "Ignored users" to the section "Subscribed lists" and add !fTjMjIzNKEsFlUIiru:neko.dev. This is a community maintained list of spammers.
Optionally, you can also use MatrixAntiDmSpam.
Ignoring users
Ignoring a user is effectively the same as blocking them. The method of doing this can vary depending on the client you are using.
- On Element desktop, you can click on that user's profile picture, which will bring up a sidebar with their information. Click on the choice that says đ« Ignore
- On NeoChat, you can click on that user's profile picture, which will bring up a new window titled Account Details. Click on "Ignore this user".
- If youâre using Element on mobile, or another client, you can type /ignore @user:example.com in the message box in a room and press âsendâ. Make sure to change the username in this command to the user you wish to block.
Reporting Abuse
If the issue is happening on a platform ran by openSUSE including the spaces, rooms and users with opensuse.org in their name, please email us at mods-team@lists.opensuse.org.
If the issue is happening in a space, room or username that ends in :matrix.org, then email abuse@matrix.org.
Please include information such as the full usernames of those involved, the name of the space or room and any other important details in your email.
Attribution
This article was uses information from and was inspired by this page from the Ubuntu community.