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I'm unsure if or how to deal with these copy&paste answers:

and

Since they are both low rep users, they have no "Close vote as duplicate" button, right? They also can't write a comment that they found a duplicate since they have less then 50 reputation.

I also feel that these are promotional answers from the same user with 2 different accounts because the formatting is obviously the same. He only changed the text slightly. For me, its a strange situation and I would appreciate some guidance.

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I've looked into this and it seems there were several accounts involved in promoting the same tools all over the site. They also went as far as asking a set-up question with one account just to post their answer with another.

Without going into further details, there also were older accounts that I uncovered, which were used for spamming for certain tools.

Thanks for reporting it!

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  • Glad you found them! May I ask if an "Adblock Plus" link was in those older answers too?
    – nixda
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 10:32
  • Not that I'm aware of, no. Most of it was just ad-/shareware from some shady download sites.
    – slhck Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 10:41
  • @slhck - This has not been the first time I have witness something like this. I often ( at least one a week ) see answers that find a random question ( several years or months old ) and then suggests a random website which provides a program and or tutorial. The question itself was answered, often times, an answer is accepted. These answers are always posted by users created within minutes of the account being created.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 11:22
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    @Ramhound Yeah, that's the kind of posts you should watch out for. Note that there's no problem with allowing new answers for questions hat have long been marked as answered—after all, there could be new solutions. But if you find something like this, look whether the user has posted similar answers already, or whether it is almost irrelevant to the question being asked. In case of doubt explain what's up and flag the post.
    – slhck Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 11:26
  • @slhck - I normally do. The answers I normally see either repeat the same information alrady supplied or very rarely new information is posted. I normally flag the answer, I try to avoid the spam flag, unless its like the recent 2014 World Cup spam. There are lots of "help" websites that have a single article which is a rehash of the same information, and the sole purpose to exist is for ad revenue.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 11:50

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