Dear MakerWorld Support Team,
I am writing to bring to your immediate attention a serious issue affecting the integrity and reputation of the MakerWorld platform.
It has come to my notice that certain users are exploiting loopholes in the upload system to disseminate spam content, including explicit adult material, under the guise of 3D models. For example, the following link leads to content that is clearly inappropriate and violates community standards:
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. There are countless accounts on MakerWorld using the same pattern to upload pornographic or spam content—often with similar titles, descriptions, and keywords. This coordinated misuse seriously undermines the credibility and trustworthiness of the platform.
Such uploads not only contravene MakerWorld’s community guidelines but also tarnish the platform’s image as a hub for innovation and creativity in 3D printing. The presence of this content can deter genuine creators and users from engaging with the platform, fearing exposure to offensive material.
I urge the MakerWorld team to take the following actions:
- Immediate Removal: Delete the aforementioned content and any similar uploads that violate the platform’s guidelines.
- User Accountability: Investigate and take appropriate action against users responsible for such uploads, including potential suspension or banning of accounts involved in repeated offenses.
- Enhanced Monitoring: Implement stricter content moderation protocols to detect and prevent the upload of inappropriate material in the future.
- Community Reporting Mechanism: Strengthen the reporting system to allow users to flag inappropriate content more efficiently, ensuring swift action by the moderation team.
Maintaining a safe and respectful environment is crucial for the continued success and growth of MakerWorld. I trust that the team will address this matter with the urgency and seriousness it warrants.
Thank you for your attention to this pressing issue.
Best regards
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it seems that the account has been banned
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These models are no longer visible, it seems that they have been banned.
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I’ve seen a lot of similar spam here, mainly remedies for muscle growth and potency 
The advantage is that after reporting they are usually removed quickly.
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I do wonder what our models spend time in the “Verification Queue” for if not for verification. Seems like they’d have some sort of process to prevent these.
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There are endless ways the platform can be abused, from cheatng by one person having multiple accounts, bot accounts, and random accounts to do things like this.
@MakerWorld can bring all these to a halt by requiring all accounts to be bound to a moble phone number. The login requires entering a code that is sent to the phone number.
This requirement will immediately cut down the number of bogus accounts. The few violations here and there can be delt with quicker and with less resources. It will allow MW to spend a majority of their man-hours on improvements such as better algorithm for search and recommendation, better detection of boost and download trading, better detection of fake photos, and better verification as mentioned by Zammer3D above, etc.
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It wouldn’t really help. Scammers and AI Bots can use cell phone SMS (or voice, even) just as easily as they can use email or a forum post. This is already a thing. I get AI generated SMS Spam (unfortunately) fairly often (thank you Android for your spam filter).
It’s an arms race between the scammers and the hosters. The scammers have the edge, hosters can only react once a new risk is identified. There will always be some objectionable content that leaks for a while before it’s caught.
What’s more, Admins can’t read every post.
The process that works is the one that was followed here… forum users help police the system, notifying admins when they spot something that shouldn’t be there.
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Are you saying scammers can generate fake mobile phone numbers and those phone numbers can work without activation from a phone company and can receive codes sent by MW?
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Yes, think IP phone lines.
Also, think outside the country you live to others who have far less controls for this sort of thing. They can have local numbers forward to international numbers, the cost is nothing compared to the rewards. Those forwarding numbers are entirely automated.
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Yep. That’s why Nigerian Prince scams are still a thing. Even with their poor grammar and well established scam history. It costs next to nothing to spam a billion email addresses. Maybe only 0.0001% of the recipients respond. If they each get scammed for $100, provided I did my math right, that’s $100K in profit for the scammer.
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I thought one still has to pay a monthly fee to have VoIP services. When I said “activation” I meant having to pay a monthly fee.
Even if a scammer is willing to pay say 10 VoIP lines a month, I thought there is a way for a system to tell VoIP from regular PSTN.
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Some countries have some blocks of phone number for VoIP services, not all.
If the phone number is a forwarding phone number, that is irrelevant as they are no longer appearing as VoIP numbers.
If the VoIP number is from a different country and the forwarding services are purchased via a different country, there are even more layers to hide behind, as this is what they do.
Unless numbers are organised into known groups the average company cannot detect the difference. In the U.K. all phone lines are now IP based, even if you have a traditional phone line.
Using the U.K. as an example, and myself specifically.
- I have a VoIP phone line, an actual VoIP services, no traditional line involved, plugged directly into my router
- I have multiple lines
- I have a local phone number that masks to my VoIP service
- I have London number that forwards to one of my lines
- I have an assigned VoIP number I do not use.
- I have four non-geographic numbers that forward to my IP lines.
I assure you, despite VoIP numbers in the U.K. being issued from a known block, I do not use one from that block.
There is no way anyone could or would know I use VoIP.
I can route my VoIP service and my mask numbers through to my mobile and back again.
Layers on layers on layers.
I do not do this to hide, I am a basic user, the outcome however means I could.
I could grab a number today, route it through my service and dump it tomorrow. I could do this from my country or another.
I could hook up the VoIP to a mobile phone to further obfuscate my identity.
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But does one have to pay for the number? If yes, then it will increase the cost for the scammer. No one measure can completely stop scamming, but if the cost increases, there will be less people doing it.
Even though hardcore scammers will always find a way to try, their limited number allows more focused efforts, such as combining with IP address, or browser fingerprinting, etc to detect and ban. Once a phone number is banned, they will have to get a new one.
Unlike scamming the wider population like those cited by RocketSled, the profit margin by scamming MW reward points is not as great. They will have to calculate the ROI to see if the time and energy are worth it.
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Yes, sometimes you pay for the number, sometimes you do not, it depends on the service you purchase. These costs are nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The larger the scale of the operation, the less any costs incurred actually cost per con.
If the profit is greater than the effort, it is worth it, no matter how small. They tend to use impovished people from developing countries to do the leg work.
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Very true for large scale scamming in the wider world. We are talking about scamming MW for some reward points though. Most of uploaders here may not want to pay $30 a month to keep another VoIP line so they can download and print their own models, or to post a link like that is reported on this thread. Profit is not assured.
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You are assuming three things:
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VoIP is nowhere near as expensive as you suggest for a single line and far less expensive for many.
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You think this is small-scale or one or two people, but much of this is large groups.
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Profit is hard to come by.
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That’s not the assumption. To the contrary, I think cheating is more widespread than MW think it is. Scammers can be divided into hardcore one and casual ones. Most of the time when people talk about cheating or scamming, they assume that it’s done by hardcore scammers only, when the reality is that there are many casual scammers who don’t mind to cheat a little becasue it’s so easy to do. Because of they are large in number, they can scoop up more unearned rewards or cause more problems than the total of the hardcore ones.
The suggestion of binding account to a phone number is to add more frictions (money, time and energy) to the cheating process to reduce the number of casual scammers. The hardcore ones will stand out more instead of hiding in a sea of casual scammers and easier to deal with.
Anyway, I got a pop-up that says something like “you have replied to Malc 3 times, do you think it would be better to send him a private message?”. The system thinks we are fighting each other 
. So I wll not post any more on this. Our goals are the same, that is to make it harder to abuse the platform.
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