Spam

OpenStreetMap uses various disparate sites for documentation, comments, communication, etc, many of which are susceptible to spam. As they're all different, they will have differing ways of dealing with the problem. This page goes some way to documenting the easiest and correct way of removing, or reporting spam to be removed. Please do not provide links to spam on this page as it is not regularly reviewed.

Wiki pages

Anyone can help despam the wiki. Revert spam edits to existing pages using the "History" tab. A wiki page created solely for spam should be deleted by replacing the content with {{D}} or {{Delete|spam}} and saving with comment "spam". Beyond that, wiki administrators will block spam users.

See also: Template:Delete for details on template usage.

Forum

To report spam on the forum: Log in to the forum, then under each post there is a link for "Report". Click on that, then the post will be reported to the forum moderators.

There can be a problem of "profile" pages being left with spammy links on there, but currently the cases (which used to be listed on this wiki page) have all been dealt with.

Help forum

How-to: Please log in there and vote down / "report" the spam entry. If you have the needed rights you also could replace the spam text. Eventually moderators will delete the spam entry.

Spam / Vandalism in OSM data

For accusations of copyright infringement, imports, and serious Disputes and Vandalism in the OSM data the data working group should be mailed. See the "I've seen a problem; what should I do?" section of the Data Working Group page in the OSMF wiki. Also see this help site answer about What should I do about vandalism?.

Notes with spam content

Notes can be reported via the Report this note link.

If it's not serious enough to hide immediately, resolving the note will of course mean that it disappears from display on openstreetmap.org after a week.

User description and diary spam

Lots of spammers register and put their spam links on their user description, or post spam as diary entries and comments.

Such misuse can be reported with the Report this user link on the user page, Report this entry on diary entries and Report this comment on comments.

See also Spam/Report user with some queries finding large amounts of spam users.

SEO Spam

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Spam is the practise of adding map features which do not represent on the ground features but are instead intended to increase a business' web searchability.

Typical features of SEO Spam

• Often the Changeset Description and Description tag contain marketing hype. Marketing hype is not objectively verifiable and breaks one of OSM's key criteria of verifiability. Unverifiable claims should be deleted
• There is no feature at that location. Often the business is operating from home and not wishing to disclose its location, existing features such as roads or suburbs are modified, nodes are placed in parkland, nodes are ambiguously placed eg on the road or nodes placed at post offices when the address is a post office box
• No primary key such as office or shop, the data was never intended to appear on a map
• The User or business may have a history of such changesets
• no reply to changeset comments

Good Practice for SEOs

There can be a win win for SEOs and OSM, changesets which represent ground truth improve the map and are unlikely to be reverted

• the street name and number tags should be entered and match the 'contact us' on the business website and nodes should be placed centrally and unambiguously on the matching feature. If the business does not want to specify their location to that degree we can be justifiably suspicious
• changeset comments describe the changeset, not the business
• no advertising, everything objectively verifiable
• if a SEO uses the one User account for all edits, self identifying as a SEO, they can build a reputation for compliant changesets, SEOs with a good reputation are unlikely to have changesets reverted