Spammers in FactorDB

[wpolly]

As we know, lots of nonsensical composites are being added to the database every hour, overwhelming the factorisation workers and has pushed the total number of <120 digit composites up to 900K. I've noticed some trends among these abominations, and it looks like the spammer(s) are unaware of the stress they put on the database, and are merely abusing it in order to find primes.

Here are some common types of the useless composites they produce:

• Nonsense formulas such as a*b##+c or a^b-concat(a,b). It looks like they're using the "only show primes" option in the database search function, unaware of the fact that each query adds up to 500 new composites to the database.
• Substrings of some long decimal string (likely from the expansions of certain irrational numbers), as shown in this screenshot:
  
  It looks like they're skipping substrings that ends in 0,2,4,5,6 or 8, further confirming that their main purpose is to look for primes.
• (some known prime)+n where n goes up to 10^5 - the worst offender is probably (10^77*28-1)/9+n, for which I have seen n~90000. Like the first case, they are using the "only show primes" option to only search for primes without caring for the mess they left behind.
• Last and the worst, decimal strings containing certain "birthdays" and other random substrings. Whoever doing this was probably born on 29 August 1983.......

The database search function should really be fixed so that it does not produce unwanted composites.

[chris2be8]

Do any of the other substrings look like a telephone number, zip code, SSN, etc? Or a name when converted to ASCII?

It would be nice to be able to phone them and tell them what you really think of them (preferably at about 5am their time).

Chris

[wpolly]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

Do any of the other substrings look like a telephone number, zip code, SSN, etc? Or a name when converted to ASCII?

It would be nice to be able to phone them and tell them what you really think of them (preferably at about 5am their time).

Chris

I can identify two further birthdays (both in the 60s), presumably their parents....

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

It would be nice to be able to phone them and tell them what you really think of them (preferably at about 5am their time).

This brings to mind the following Paul Erdos anecdote:

When the name of a colleague in California came up at breakfast in New Jersey, Erdos remembered a mathematical result he wanted to share with him. He headed toward the phone and started to dial. His host interrupted him, pointing out that it was 5:00 A.M. on the West Coast. "Good," Erdos said, "that means he'll be home."

[DukeBG]

Somebody submitted about 11 thousand 300-digit PRPs that are most likely literally consectutive primes. Example.

From the ones I checked, only the last 7 digits are varying. With the average gap at that size 11000 * 300*ln(10) ≈ 7.6e6, thus I'm saying they're very likely just consectutive.

Sigh. I'ld wish there was a "notable" field for a number in FactorDB (essentially a text comment; autofilled for numbers in the tables, sequences and their factors, +/-1 for PRPs) and not notable numbers would be auto-purged after some time.

[DukeBG]

Originally Posted by DukeBG

Somebody submitted about 11 thousand 300-digit PRPs that are most likely literally consectutive primes. Example.

From the ones I checked, only the last 7 digits are varying. With the average gap at that size 11000 * 300*ln(10) ≈ 7.6e6, thus I'm saying they're very likely just consectutive.

Sigh. I'ld wish there was a "notable" field for a number in FactorDB (essentially a text comment; autofilled for numbers in the tables, sequences and their factors, +/-1 for PRPs) and not notable numbers would be auto-purged after some time.

Most of these thousands are now proven by certificates by the user "apcnc" (the one I linked – proven by anonymous).