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Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Hanoi vandal

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The "Hanoi vandal",
aka Lam Thuy Van
Wikilifespan2007–present
ISPFPT Telecom, Viettel Group
Known IPssee below for list
Physical locationHanoi, Vietnam, changing to the Philippines in October 2016
InstructionsIPs suspected of being used by the Hanoi Vandal should be reported to AIV. When reporting, please link to this long-term abuse report. When the active abuse has been taken care of, please update this report with the latest information.
StatusActive
Shortcut

When reporting please link this page in the report.

Current status and updates

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Status: Vandal is ACTIVE

Basic information

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The Hanoi vandal is a sneaky, IP-hopping, disruptive editor who has been introducing false information into music related articles for several years. Based in Hanoi (and sometimes geolocating to Nam Dinh or Korea via Korea Telecom), the Hanoi Vandal has been active since at least May 2007.

The name "Hanoi vandal" is a descriptive nickname, used because this person had not been known to have registered an account until May 2014 when Lam Thuy Van (talk · contribs) was created and soon blocked indefinitely. Richmond Reanzares (talk · contribs) was created in June 2017. Richmond Roldan Reanzares (talk · contribs) was created in August 2017.

The person used Philippines IPs in October 2016.

After disruption of Steps pop group topics, a handful of new usernames were blocked in 2024, starting at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Steptacular12 and continuing to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lam Thuy Van. A large variety of IPs was identified. The range of Special:Contributions/14.177.0.0/16 was involved, and Special:Contributions/2402:800:610D:0:0:0:0:0/48 was blocked.

Targeted areas, pages, themes

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Favorite targets of the vandal include the following artists and/or their works: The Carpenters, Elton John, the Eagles, John Miles, Eric Carmen, Il Divo, the Bee Gees, Gary Moore, Air Supply, Green Day, Sarah Brightman, ABBA, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Queen, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charlotte Church, Meat Loaf, Diane Warren, Linkin Park, Heart, Boston, Warrant, X Japan, REO Speedwagon, Metallica, Guns 'n Roses, Prince, Avril Lavigne, Europe, Taylor Swift, Steps

Habitual behavior

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The vandal's hallmarks include:

  • Falsely crediting collaborations between popular music artists, with a preference for those popular during the 1970s
  • Altering the recorded lengths of songs without any references
  • Altering playlists, sometimes adding or replacing tracks with ones that don't exist on the album or set list, favoring live and compilation ("best of" type) albums.
  • "Cross-referencing" their vandalism into multiple articles
  • Category warring - Changing, adding and removing categories
  • Altering/repeatedly removing templates ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5])
  • Failing to communicate with fellow editors, absolutely, with no attempt at even basic edit summaries
  • Uses any particular IP for a very short time, usually within a day or two, but rarely more than a week, then hops to a new IP, or even a new range, very quickly.
  • On several occasions the vandal has been observed operating more than one IP address simultaneously, hopping back and forth from one to another seemingly at will.
  • The vandalism is sneaky and is designed to be overlooked, although at times the vandal has taken to bolder, more blatant nonsense, such as his persistent assertion that John Miles is a member of the Eagles.
  • The vandal often mixes completely legit changes in with more suspicious ones within an individual edit, in an attempt to sneak the vandalism through undetected.
  • The vandal often makes several consecutive single edits that are 100% constructive, sometimes correcting misinformation that he himself has introduced months ago. These periods of constructive editing are usually short-lived and the vandal soon returns to add more false information and other nonsense.
  • The Hanoi Vandal does not edit any articles outside the realm of popular music.

Cases

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Other notes

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Confirmed and suspected accounts

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Note: This list is incomplete and could be just the "tip of the iceberg". Any fair amount of time spent investigating the contributions of the IPs listed below invariably reveals more IPs belonging to the vandal. There could easily be hundreds more.

Involved accounts

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Involved IPs

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2013

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2012

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2011

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2010

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2009

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2008

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2007

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Notes

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  1. ^ Includes one edit from 2015 that may not be the vandal
  2. ^ Includes eight edits from 2016 that may not be the vandal
  3. ^ This was an unusual case: The rare 42.113... range IP address (there have been only two other cases of the 42 range being used by the vandal) was used for unusually long time, nearly a week and was still active when finally blocked. Even more strange was the switching repeatedly back and forth between 42.113.99.32 and 1.55.16.46. This is the first known example of the vandal doing this.
  4. ^ Geolocating in Korea, but is certainly HV. The vandal has done this before in 2010. The contributions of this IP best show the transformation from introducing bogus tracks into album track listings, to the engagement in category genre wars.
  5. ^ The one that linked 2012 to the massive list of 2010 IPs
  6. ^ Confirmed IP that geolocates in Korea. Editing within a time gap the known IP's were not editing. Common edits with known Hanoi IPs. Several edits in '09 also
  7. ^ This IP links the vandal to the Alvin and the Chipmunks spree
  8. ^ The talk page of this IP includes a list of suspected sockpuppets that I have not yet personally sifted through
  9. ^ +1 edit in 2010
  10. ^ The earliest Eagles vandalism
  11. ^ includes one from 2010
  12. ^ Used again for 2 edits in 2010
  13. ^ Earliest known edits
  14. ^ Includes an edit from 2006 that may not be the vandal


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