Keeping Kablam Safe

Kablam has been a tool, an experiment & over all a fun project to work on over the years - but with all great projects, come some of the more grim underbellies of the internet.

Today, our dev team took action on 'fake' or 'spam' accounts, coming from some specific parts of the world that were able to create accounts/profiles on Kablam, but were (thankfully) blocked from posting.

Today we suspended & took action on 30,000+ spammy or suspicious accounts on the platform, freeing up user handles, profiles and other aspects of an account. We've also put in place tighter controls to detect/block this behavior during the signup process.

How did Kablam do this?

We deployed AI onto our user databases (there are multiple) to look at certain behavioral traits, habits and other techniques used on account creation & further behaviors inside the accounts that could be perceived as suspicious or automated. I'm not going to go into any further specifics/security around this but we have pretty robust techniques and logging mechanisms coded into our backend from early development to aid in events like this. Security is always cat & mouse, and I anticipate further enhancements to be made as spammers and bot manufacturers update their techniques, and software inherently gets smarter over time. This isn't a simple 'put in a CAPTCHA and forget about it' (although we did re-implement an updated CAPTCHA tool).

Was content made public? is my account at risk?

No. to both; This is stopping spammy content cropping up, while no system is 100% secure, we're pretty confident in our security processes.

Could my account accidentally get flagged?

No tool is 100% fool proof, and can get things wrong from time to time (especially with AI), though a number of thresholds have to be crossed for our system to take action on an account. If your account has been 'restricted', seen a reduction in Gamerscore or is suspended - please contact support for a review.

Does Kablam Gamerscore take into account spam behavior? does the AI take into account my Gamerscore?

Yes - to both. Kablam human moderators also have authority to make changes to individual account Gamerscores as they see fit.

How does Gamerscore affect Kablam?

As a Gamerscore decreases, services & features lock until behavior improves. This can range from integrating a tool (Xbox) through to commenting on articles/publishing a story. Gamerscores will gradually increase over time if no repeat offenses occur. Positive behavior (confirming an email account, contributing.etc) will also improve a gamer score account.

Does Kablam disclose the algorithm/technique to Gamerscores?

No.