I used to love this website but clearly it's been a downfall. My colleagues stopped using Research Gate and this place is now flooded with numerous phishing messages and scams made with AI. I reported to Research Gate but they didn't do anything but told me they could not determine if they were scams. Pathetic
@Peter Breuer If you check my attachments carefully, you could see those accounts were all sending very general and non related contents like “I am fansinsted by your research” where clearly nothing specific was asked for. They all have profile pictures of attractive women. It also looks like they were targeting specific people of demographic here. There were such phishings and scams on other platform like Linkedin and Facebook. But they trained their systems to recognize those fake accounts. However Research Gate would not bother doing the same thing.
Indeed, when you ask a question on the platform, the answers are filled with a lot of AI-generated information, and they are answered in the unusual and unprofessional markdown format, which is easy to recognize as AI-generated
Six months ago I received two similar expressions of interest in my work and then when I responded to them I received virtually identical and clearly AI generated requests to answer more questions and requesting to talk offline on WhatsApp. Both from attractive Chinese women with very limited profiles on RG. Just as with Facebook fake comments, it’s social engineering to initiate a relationship that can then be exploited
I just got a request for a full text from yet another attractive young Chinese woman with an MBA (far removed from my field) and a sketchy RG profile. I always give the benefit of the doubt with the first message, but we’ll see if I get a follow up now. Interestingly, she is following quite a few scientists at my institution, all in very different fields (and none related to business).
Good discussion. Just happened to me too. Young Asian woman with minimal RG profile. The initial question about my work was pretty reasonable, but almost certainly AI generated. Insisted on messaging through WhatsApp rather than email. Wonder why? Also wonder what the end game of the scam is though?
One 'Haruko Sakuragi' is spamming Japan-based reaserchers with the same script.
It happen to me recently. This woman claiming to Bianca Murtphy reached and aapare
Dear Michael Guest The profile of this Haruko Sakuragi person is in the meantime discontinued.
Best regards.
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