AO3 has recently seen a wave of comments claiming to be made by the "AO3 Trust & Safety team", notifying you that your account has been restricted. These claims are not true. These comments are not being made by real AO3 volunteers and your account has not been restricted.
AO3 volunteers, including the Policy & Abuse committee, will never communicate with you through comments on your work. All important communications from AO3 will be sent through the email associated with your account. More general announcements will be posted on our official social media accounts or published as news posts on AO3 or OTW.org.
If you receive one of these comments, do not click on any of the links in it, reply to it, or interact with it in any way. The links in these comments lead to sites asking you to verify your identity by providing payment information. This is a common credit card scam. AO3 does not ever ask users to provide payment information, and the Policy & Abuse committee will never comment on your works asking you to "complete an identity verification process".
If you encounter one of these comments or believe your account has been compromised, please view the instructions under the cut!
We suggest that you review your account to verify that you're using a unique and secure password. Check out the advice from our Policy & Abuse committee on Protecting Your AO3 Account and Keeping Your Account Secure.
If you believe your AO3 account has been compromised for any reason (i.e. you received an email that your username changed), you can change or reset your password to ensure control of your account. Changing your password will automatically log you out of all sessions on all devices. You can find the option to change your password in your Preferences.
If you encounter one of these comments on your own work or someone else's, please report them to the Policy & Abuse committee. To do so:
Select the "Thread" button on the scammer's comment. This will take you to the specific comment page.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Policy Questions & Abuse Reports.
In the "Brief summary of Terms of Service violation" field, enter "Spambot".
In the "Description of the content you are reporting" field, enter "This is a spambot, their username is USERNAME."
Reporting in this fashion helps us auto-sort your report so that it can be handled as soon as a Policy & Abuse volunteer is available. To help us address reports about these types of bots as fast as possible, please only submit one report per account, and don't include multiple accounts in the same report.
We also encourage you to share this post and help spread the word about how to protect yourself from scammers and reduce spam on AO3.
For more information about spambots on AO3, you can review our News Post on the topic.
A wave of spambot guest comments claiming to be AO3 volunteers has recently been made across the site. They claim that there has been a data breach and that fraudulent password reset emails have been sent out. In addition, the harassment spambots are now accusing users of being sex offenders.
These claims are not true. These comments are not being made by real AO3 volunteers or users, and AO3 has not experienced a data breach.
These comments copy existing AO3 usernames in order to make their accusations seem more legitimate. They may also try to lure people onto other platforms, similar to the art commission scam.
AO3 volunteers will never communicate with you through guest comments on your work. All important communications from AO3 about your account will be sent via email. More general announcements will be posted on our official social media accounts or published as news posts on AO3 or OTW.org.
If you want to make sure you're doing everything possible to protect yourself and your accounts, our Policy & Abuse volunteers published a news post earlier this year with advice about internet safety best practices: Protect Your AO3 Account.
As always, we recommend that you do not click on any suspicious links or give your contact information to scammers. Instead, simply mark the comments as spam or report them so that Policy & Abuse can remove other comments left by these spambots.
If you aren't sure how to mark guest comments as spam, learn how to handle them below the cut!
As these comments have so far all been from guests, our advice is to flag them as spam to better filter them out. To do that, simply follow the instructions below:
If the comment is on your own work:
Go directly to the comment on your work, either by clicking on the link in your email or in your AO3 inbox.
Click on the "Spam" button to mark the guest comment as spam and remove it from your work.
Note: The "Spam" button only appears when viewing a guest comment directly on your work. This is because the AO3 comment inbox is merely a copy of the work's comments – deleting a comment from your AO3 inbox does not delete the comment from the work itself.
If you see comments like these on someone else's work:
Feel free to let the creator know the comment is from a bot, and that they should mark it as spam.
You can also report the comments as botspam via the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.
If you are reporting multiple guest comments, please submit only one report, and include all comment links in your report description. (You can get the direct link to any comment by clicking the "Thread" button on the comment, and then copying the URL of that page.)
If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!
Keep an eye out people- there really seems to be a sudden uptick of reposting bots using PHM fandom tags, which are stealing people's art and either straight up reposting it with scammy links, or running it through AI, then reposting with scammy links.
Some seem to use what looks like links to other parts of a comic, but is, once again, simply spam. Keep your wits about you and report, report, report!
This is in relation to a recent uptick in comments on AO3. Sadly not nice comments... not even real comments. Just stupid, brainless AI generated spam comments. It's very strange just how many fellow writers have been receiving things like this over the last two days...
Exhibit A:
(I mean, I give it props for recognising the "morally questionable and offensive" aspects... it was on my Marazhai POV fic after all (IYKYK)! But that's about as much accuracy as you get with these... FYI this fic is two chapters long, not five.)
This is just a small shout out to anyone new to the fandom (or writing and AO3 in general). Do not let yourself be troubled, discouraged or beaten down by these kinds of comments.
Exhibit B:
(This was on a one-shot fic - so much for patience! And it was an M/F pairing so... *shrugs*)
If you're getting these kinds of comments, it automatically means that you're 10,000 times more creative and special than the people behind this (ie people who have nothing better to do than make spam bots to make people feel bad about things they aren't even doing). Why? Because you've had the guts to put your work up on the internet for other people to read. Not easy for a lot of people to do. But trust me, you have more creativity in your little fingernail than these people could conceive of.
So I urge you... don't be discouraged by things like this...
Exhibit C
(Honestly, some people got way WAAAAAYYYY meaner versions of this particular comment).
I would hate to think that new writers starting out are being driven away because of spam from AI bots. The signs become obvious when you know what to look for.
If you see a comment that's needlessly mean-spirited but doesn't actually directly reference anything within your fic (not names, characters, events or even what fandom it's related to)... ignore it, it's a spam bot. Watch out for comments that reference things you don't even have in your fic... it's a stupid spam bot. Watch out for comments that ask you to contact them on alternate platforms like Discord to discuss their ideas for "how your art can be turning into a comic"... it's a scam spam bot. Watch out for comments that claim you're using AI to write your fic without providing any proof... it's an ironic spam bot.
Please reblog this for anyone who might not know what to look for. If you're not sure about a comment, don't be afraid to ask about it. Writer friends, please feel free to add examples so people can see what to look out for (and get a laugh at some of the outrageous things we get sent).
And keep writing! Write, create, be happy, give a hearty middle finger to spam bots and bullying assholes with nothing better to do with their time.
