- Kabir Vaghela (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
- Suspected sockpuppets
On August 1, Richa101091 created a draft article Draft:Prime Focus Technologies. On August 11, it was moved into mainspace by Kdzrules [1]. It was moved to the odd title, "Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), a title Richa101091 has previously created it at and had it speedy deleted at. This was doen to avoid page protection at Prime Focus Technologies, but I find it unlikely two independent users would pick such a title on their own - they are either socks or meatpuppets. Note, that the Prime Focus Technologies was locked down to do recreation by socks of Eli786 (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Eli786/Archive) - I don't see any actual evidence these two are socks of Eli, although it is not impossible.
In addition to PFT, Richa101091 and Kdzrules have overlapped editing on Prime Focus Limited - parent company of PFT; Namit Malhotra - an important PF person; Merzin Tavaria - another PF person; and Daler Mehndi - an unrelated singer. No way that is coincidence with so few edits by each. Either they are the same person, or are working for the same PR firm.
Request CU to confirm if these two are actual socks, or just meatpuppets, & possibly also to determine if they are related to Eli786. ThaddeusB (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Also, they both uploaded the same picture to File:Namit Malhotra.jpg (kdz's upload was deleted on licensing concerns). Neither uses edit summaries (previous Eli786 socks generally did.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:43, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
- Hi, me and Kevin are friends. We are learning on ways to use and improve Wikipedia. There may be edits on similar articles as we try and improve the pages that either of us have created or edited. This is a learning process for us. We never realized there can be an issue due to this. Richa101091 (talk) 13:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
User:Rupali Lohiya created page Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP yesterday, it was deleted under CSD A7. Next day User:VidhiJ recreated the same page. After I tagged it for CSD again, the user repeatedly removed the speedy tag until receiving final warning. As soon as final warning was received sockpuppeteer User:Richa101091 suddenly started editing the article. This caused me to check the talk page and contribs of Richa101091, talk page was full of CSD notices for film companies, and contribs were only to film company articles. Requesting check user to find any sleeper accounts and confirm accounts are related. -War wizard90 (talk) 07:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- And now I just found this as well: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kdzrules/Archive where Richa101091 was previously suspected/warned for being a sock. -War wizard90 (talk) 07:19, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Added User:TirthaV for similar behavior, SPA editing on Emmay Entertainment and dispute the AfD for that article. -War wizard90 (talk) 00:17, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Clerk endorsed - Rupali Lohiya and VidhiJ both created articles about "Emmay Entertainment" (Emmay Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. and Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP). VidhiJ has no other edits, and there is also TirthaV who has no other edits except to Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP. Those may be connected, although I'm not sure about their connection to Richa101091. Vanjagenije (talk) 14:08, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted - These are
Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely) at minimum, maybe even likely. I'd like to hear another CU say they see 8 accounts in total that they think they are the same, and if not to drop me a mail. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 07:02, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In progress - Thanks Callanecc, i'll look a little later. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 16:32, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll say it now before I list a ton of results, this is not going to be easy to decipher on the CU side. Absolutely rely on behavior. If it says something different, I'd rather you take the behavior than my result. Any reviewing CU, please use get edits, it's how I came to my conclusion.
- Group 1 -
Confirmed - Emmay entertainment articles primarily:
- Group 2 -
Possible To each other:
- Group 3 - Main Aur Mr. Riight -
Confirmed:
- Every group/account listed is
Possible to each other unless otherwise noted.
- SilviaFern (talk · contribs)
Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely) Group 1
- AayushyaB (talk · contribs) & CatchUpSunil (talk · contribs)
Confirmed
- PoojaPathare in group 1 appears to have a behavioral connection to Deepii1234 in Group 2
- ThisIsFinal (talk · contribs) appears to have a behavioral connection to Richa101091 of group 1 & EMWikiEdits who I mention below
- While Groups 1 & 3 have technical differences, I wouldn't be surprised if it were close collaborative meatpuppetry*
- EMWikiEdits (talk · contribs) is indicates close collaborative meatpuppetry* with group 2, rather than sockpuppetry.
- *(as in in the same room)
- @Callanecc: so your aware of the mess made here. Also i'm dropping some stuff on CU wiki in case this comes up again. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 05:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks, glad you ended up with this one. :P Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I've blocked and tagged all of group 1. I didn't find much behavioral evidence to link the two accounts together in group 2. Behaviorally, I think Deepii1234 is related to group 1, as the account has the same style of focusing his/her edits on one article and a similar, clunky writing style: Rupali Lohiya, Deepii1234 I've blocked Praseetha.w as a sock of Cinemawaali and issued a warning to Cinemawaali. Behaviorally, I don't think they're related to the main group. I've blocked SilviaFern as a sock of the main group, as it showed a similar interest in promoting Prime Focus Technologies: Kdzrules, SilviaFern I've blocked AayushyaB as a sock of CatchUpSunil and issued a warning to the master. There isn't much behavioral evidence to tie them to group 1. I've tagged EMWikiEdits as a behavioral sock of the main group. The account contested the deletion of other articles, like this sock and it tried to clean up the article, just like the master account. I've blocked ThisIsFinal as a sock of the main group for posting the same edit summary (Sectioning added) as EMWikiEdits Alright, I think that wraps up this mess. Mike V • Talk 02:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
Recreated Emmay entertainment article.
@DeltaQuad:Since this one account is a WP:DUCK of the other's I didn't request CheckUser, but since you were heavily involved in the last case, I wanted to notify you in case you wanted to do anything on the CU side. -War wizard90 (talk) 06:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Clerk note: All his edits are deleted, so I can't see them, but if he really recreated Emmay entertainment article, than
Looks like a duck to me. Vanjagenije (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
Reposted the Emmay Entertainment article at Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP - See Special:Diff/653897814 -War wizard90 (talk) 01:32, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- After reviewing other contribs of SocialSunil, I believe these other SPA (Indian film companies, fimls, and related actors, which is always the target of these socks) accounts are also related, going to request CU to confirm.
All of these accounts edited the same article Emraan Hashmi:
More notes: ZmeuraCapsuni also edited on Mr. X (film) on March 28th, and that same day Shahzebali798 added Mr. X to the filmography section of the Emraan Hashmi articles as seen here: Special:Diff/653994914.
More possible linked socks that have edited Mr. X (film):
Users DB135 and Golden5220 have both edited Mr. X (film), Roy (film), Dolly Ki Doli, and Badlapur (film), more socks editing on Badlapur (film):
I randomly picked 1 name from each group and put it into the Editor Interaction Analyzer for these results: [1] to further link all these accounts. This led me to check the page history of Bang Bang! which Prithviraj2002, Shwayze, and Samyamoy (note username similar to above "Jay Samyamoy") have all edited, and brings into question the following accounts:
Here is another Editor Interaction analysis to link the Sockmaster (Richa101091) which shows Samyamoy and Richa101091 have 10 similar pages edited, Samyamoy and Golden5220 have edited 3 pages in common, and all 3 of those accounts have edited on Kick (2014 film): [2] Suspicious accounts editing on Kick (2014 film) include:
A 3rd Editor Interaction analysis to further link these accounts: [3]
Here we go again, I am adding the following user to the investigation:
Unfortunately, if I keep going through more contributions, I undoubtedly could find many more. Hopefully CU can dredge up some more sleepers from this, also check out the User Compare report, which is very telling and shows just how far-reaching this sock farm may be, 142 distinct pages have been edited by at least two of the above accounts. -War wizard90 (talk) 02:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- @Vanjagenije: I respectfully have to disagree that the behavioral link between these accounts is enough for check user. I was not looking at similarity in actual edits, because the nature of the meat farm. You have to look at the behavior of their contributions. Am I the only one who finds it suspicious that there are so many editors with redlinks who come in and do 5-10 edits a month on nothing but Indian-film related articles? Such an extremely specific field. To me it seems highly likely that hundrends of accounts are being created, logged into, used for several edits, and then logged out and onto another sock to avoid detection (another behavior confirmed by the user contributions). Not to mention that we have already seen several confirmed socks in the past. There are also several similarities in many of the usernames, the use of "sunil or suneel" (i.e. CathUpSunil - confirmed, SocialSunil, Suneel gujrati), and the use of "J, Jai, or Jay" (i.e. VidhiJ - confirmed, JaiHoHeisenberg, Jay Hiwase). Also, the fact that some of the users I listed as socks were either already accused of socks of other in the past, accused of being a sock based on behavior, or listed as a sock on another SPI concurrent to this one, has to be more than a coincidence. I think we are just picking off a few socks at a time, rather than getting to the real root of the problem. I will continue to look for behavioral connections in order to get more support for checkuser in the future, but I think it would be a shame not to look into this and let them pass by because it appears to be a big problem. I know the decision is ultimately up to the clerks and CU's, so I won't push any further on this SPI, but if we don't I think we are letting one slip by, just my humble opinion. -War wizard90 (talk) 05:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
- I remember the accounts ScrewHue and Prackashrawat being tied into the case for the account TheDevNegi, and I similarly recall that the only way we got the &^%! sock to stop recreating the article was to protect it form recreation - I'm not proud of this per se, but I put a 24 month protection on it since the in between message from the previous protections seemed to be lost on the account holder(s). If these are in fact all tied to each other in gigantic sock/meat farm then I would strongly advise putting permanent pending changes protection on the articles they edit to ensure that both fronts on the war against the socks are sealed. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I don’t know why I should be a sockpuppet just because I do edits on the same topic like the others. I mainly work on the German Wikipedia and I do edits here when I see that something is wrong. Do my edits hurt anyone? It's not fun anymore. And I'm definitely not a sockpuppet. And no one can proof that I am one of them. --Shwayze sing♪ 09:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- For what it's worth, Shwayze does have quite a few edits on the German Wikipedia, which isn't true of any of the other accounts, but has also edited on 50 of the 149 articles listed in the User Compare report, which could be a big coincidence. Also all of their edits on the German Wikipedia (and a few other languages) have all been the same SPA editing for these same types of articles, and the fact that another user is convinced that they are a sock of User:Shez 15, makes me think this one is still worth looking into. -War wizard90 (talk) 03:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I was notified of this sock farm by the opener of this SPI. This seems like an infestation and paid editing for promoting Roshan's appearance. The editing pattern of Richa101091 shockingly similar to 1Majid and the others. Definitely a farm that needs to be burnt down. —Indian:BIO [ ChitChat ] 06:44, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- —DoRD (talk) 16:03, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
Recreated Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP Special:Diff/668462037 -War wizard90 (talk) 22:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Clerk endorsed - There were many socks previously, so a sleepers check may be needed. Vanjagenije (talk) 10:19, 28 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- On March 7, 2015, DeltaQuad ran a CU and found that Kenjalc was
Possible to another account and the two were possible to other groups. The other account was blocked based on behavior (I assume); Kenjalc was not blocked. I believe Mike V did the behavioral evaluation (this was before he was a checkuser). Since that time, we have more technical data on Kenjalc and the behavioral evidence that he recreated Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP. The last CU was run by DoRD on April 15, 2015, and he found a group of
Confirmed socks, a few of which I used today as data points. With that in mind ...
- Group 1 - The following accounts are
Technically indistinguishable:
- Group 2 - The following accounts are
Technically indistinguishable and
Likely to Group 1:
- Group 3 - The following accounts are
Technically indistinguishable and
Likely to Groups 1 and 2:
- Group 4 - The following accounts are
Technically indistinguishable and
Likely to Group 3:
- Despite the technical data, before blocking any account, I would do a behavioral evaluation. Here's some behavioral evidence I found while running the CU:
- TweetSunil created the Aisa Yeh Jahaan, a movie, the title of which is the same name as a confirmed sock. SocialPriya, Everymedia123, and Kenjalc edited the same article.
- Pernia01 made one edit to Pernia Qureshi, which was also edited by Randomsdutta, Randomyhoda, and confirmed sock Shreni86.
- Ashwinigaikar created movie articles in which the plots have juvenile questions in them in addition to statements. Hemangi Lkar also did that in the main article he edited, Second Hand Husband.
- --Bbb23 (talk) 15:15, 28 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Administrator note The behavioral evidence seems clear enough to me to tie all of the groups together. Given that some of the implicated accounts have been previously verified against the listed master, I'm also tagging all of the new ones. —Darkwind (talk) 04:42, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
obvious sock of Richa101091 the Prime Focus fan, started editing Prime Focus Limited a few days after master was notified SPI was underway [3] Brianhe (talk) 23:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Comment: It would be great if we could get a sleeper check against this account as well. -War wizard90 (talk) 01:10, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
WP:DUCK attempting to get Prime Focus Technologies article reintroduced.
Two users edited now-deleted Prime Focus drafts with evasive caps and punct variations. User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia.
Discussed at WP:COIN, opened SPI at request of FreeRangeFrog Brianhe (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC) Brianhe (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
- @Bbb23: I must have missed your question when I returned from a short wikibreak. At this point I don't remember what led me to this investigation instead of the other, sorry. — Brianhe (talk) 14:42, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Checkuser note: Could a clerk please move this to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Richa101091? Kdzrules was already attached to that SPI, and it will be better to keep it all in one place. Note I have not made any checks on these accounts, they can be sorted better when they're together with the other socks. Risker (talk) 02:50, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Clerk note: @Risker: But, Kdzrules is older than Richa101091. Shouldn't it be opposite way (Richa101091 merged here)? Vanjagenije (talk) 18:46, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
CheckUser requested and endorsed by clerk - The evidence above is enough to check the first three alleged socks against each other (Shrutikedia is
Stale). Vanjagenije (talk) 18:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Checkuser note: I will check the accounts against each other, but I will also check against some of the confirmed, non-stale puppets at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Richa101091. At some point I can merge that case to here.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- The merge should be delayed until the outcome of the behavioral analysis as Kabir Vaghela (talk · contribs · count) (see below) is older than Kdzrules.
- Group 1 - The following are
Confirmed to each other and to one or more previous puppets:
- Group 2 – The following are
Confirmed to each other and technically confirmed to one or more previous puppets. However,
Behavioural evidence needs evaluation to determine if they’re related to Group 1:
- Two notes about Kabir Vaghela. First, the account is older than the master. Second, the account created EveryMedia Technologies. One of the company's "clients" is Prime Focus, an article that was created and edited by Richa101091 and Kdzrules. Also, the name of the article matches a confirmed puppet, Everymedia123 (talk · contribs · count).
- Group 3 – The following are
Confirmed to each other, and although technically confirmed to one or more puppets,
Behavioural evidence needs evaluation to determine if they’re related to Groups 1 or 2:
Group 4 – The following are
Confirmed to each other, and although technically confirmed to one or more puppets,
Behavioural evidence needs evaluation to determine if they’re related to Groups 1, 2 or 3:
Administrator note This is a horrendously complex case, with numerous accounts listed at several SPI pages, and CheckUser connecting together several groups of accounts, but leaving open the question of whether the groups are connected to one another. The filer says "User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia." Those two accounts were clearly either the same person or else two people working for the same company, but Shrutikedia had not edited for almost five years when Pratkipedia first edited, so it is scarcely sockpuppetry, and in any case Shrutikedia has not edited for over six years now, so there's no point pursuing that one. All the other accounts listed here have clearly been used by editors who have been abusing multiple accounts, so I have blocked those that were not already blocked. At present, I don't have time to put in the work needed to decide whether all the groups are one sockpuppeteer or several, so I am leaving the case open. I may come back to it when I have more time, or someone else may be kind enough to do the job. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Clerk note: They are all technically and behaviorally connected. It is very hard to say whether it is one person or several of them working together. I propose to merge the Richa101091 case into this case and to rename it to Kabir Vaghela (the oldest account), i.e. to join them all together. Even if they are not the same person, I think it is better to have all of them at one place. Vanjagenije (talk) 11:28, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, that seems to me the best thing to do. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
-
- Could somebody clue me in, is this user banned or just blocked? I found a page marked as the former [8] but no evidence that it is so. — Brianhe (talk) 23:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh darn, my mistake -- I was looking at the source code, it was in an if block. Never mind. Feel free to strike today's comments. Brianhe (talk) 23:24, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
My involvement started when I removed an obvious copyrighted image from Shraddha Kapoor page[[9]], User:SpacemanSpiff filled me in that the originator is a known sock. On the now deleted commons it was claimed it was the persons own work on this (File:Shraddha Kapoor for Noblesse.jpg)[[10]] it was given to us by the owner which would be suggestive that they are connected. The sceond photo is more telling about their good faith or lack there of "Because it is been given to us by Shraddha Kapoor her-self" Hell in a Bucket (talk) 12:36, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
- What a mess.
Confirmed the following:
- Actually wasn't that bad. I blocked all the accounts that had edited Commons, which also involved putting some obvious copyvios in their rightful round file. Courcelles (talk) 12:26, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Paging SpacemanSpiff, just for a check of what needs doing to clean up here, since he is familiar with this SPI. Courcelles (talk) 12:29, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the ping Courcelles, but I just came across the sock farm when I tagged the image for deletion at Commons (there didn't seem to be much out there, so I figured waiting for a possible SPI here might be better), I'll tag the socks, don't know if much else can be done at this point. —SpacemanSpiff 12:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I think I might have spoken too soon, this appears to be accounts used by Everymedia Marketing who specialize in "social gaming and marketing". I'll take it to COIN, Courcelles, Hell in a Bucket. Closing this SPI now. —SpacemanSpiff 12:47, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Suspected sockpuppets
These accounts exist for no other purpose than recreating the salted Prime Focus Technologies as Prime focus technologies and associated Patrick Macdonald-King.
Additional behavioral evidence at WP:COIN#Patrick Macdonald-King ( permlink). Brianhe (talk) 13:15, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
- Just noting that Google eight ball tells me that Prime focus technologies is related to EveryMedia Technologies which is the agency whose clients the sock farm has been working on. Last SPI resulted in a basket full of socks that were not identified earlier, and that's likely to be the case now. —SpacemanSpiff 14:58, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All listed accounts are
Confirmed matches to each other. At best, speaking in technical terms, this batch appears to be
Possible. I'd probably just go with behavioral evidence to link the accounts with the accounts in the archive. No sleepers/other accounts found this time. Elockid(Boo!) 15:37, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I've blocked the accounts referencing the SPI and have tagged them as confirmed to the main master. Behaviorally there's no difference as they are writing client articles in similar format, but there's the strong possibility that there are multiple editors involved (reason for the possible on the technical side) from the same PR company, so we should perhaps rename the SPI from Kabir Vaghela to Everymedia as that is what the accounts are all about. —SpacemanSpiff 16:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Suspected sockpuppets
[edit]WP:DUCK per editing history. All SPAs for an Indian film company and/or executive. One of them "disclosed" paid editing in a hard-to-find location [11]. Note habitual reference to subject by first name alone in edit summary [12] and in edits like [13]. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Filmfanatic500 is
Stale. HenryWilkinson94 and VeryRealEditor are
Likely to each other and
Unrelated to Kabir Vaghela. Blocked the two non-stale puppets without tags. Closing.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:33, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]