We have noticed attempts by Chinese spammers to exploit Kerika, and we are taking some measures to reduce this hassle. We used to block these spammers one-by-one, but that is obviously time-consuming, especially when a bunch of them try the same trick, which is sending out dozens or hundreds of invitations to people to join them in their Kerika boards.

These spammers are using VPNs to appear as if they are from other countries, but there was a pattern to their use of Kerika: all the team invitations they sent out involve the same destination: qq.com, which is a major Chinese web portal operated by Tencent, primarily known for its instant messaging service, QQ.

While we support Chinese as a language, we don’t have any legitimate users in China since China blocks Google and so many other services. Which means that there will never be a legitimate use to add people from the qq.com domain to a Kerika board.

There’s a simple block we are introducing: we will keep a blacklist of domains, including qq.com, where the system will stop you from adding team members. This will help cut off Chinese spammers who are targeting other people from China.