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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">David,</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">If the sponsors you mention were aware of the tactics that HamAward are partaking in, then I doubt their sponsorship would last much longer.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">If you were sponsoring something and it was demonstrated that the people you were supporting were doing this, how would you feel?</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">1) Submitting spots to the dxcluster network using fake callsigns.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">2) Submitting spots to the dxcluster network via dxcluster systems which don’t exist.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">3) Falsifying IP addresses.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">4) Flooding the network with these spots, often many hundreds of times in the space of a few seconds.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">5) Uploading spots to the dxcluster network, making them appear they are being submitted via valid nodes when in fact, those nodes only accept spots via accounts protected by passwords and those spots have been submitted by a user who does not have a password, nor even an account on that node.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">Personally, I’d be withdrawing my support immediately and starting an investigation.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">Yes, you are entirely correct, the PZK award scheme is being run by HamAward and the two posts I linked to a short while ago were from members of HamAward so they’re fully aware of what’s happening, they’re members of this email group and are reading these emails right now.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">For what it's worth, I was the person who approached the HamClock developer and between us, we resolved all the issues we had.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">I’m not going to go out of my way to contact HamAward because we know they’re reading these posts and I’ve already made my feelings known. Stop faking spots, stop uploading spots in a fraudulent way. Continue to allow your users to use their self spot buttons but ensure that spots can be traced back to a legitimate source. I’ve already said in a previous post that I think what you’re doing with the award scheme is technically superb but please, do it in a legitimate way and we can all happily coexist.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">This isn’t going away, there are four award schemes currently active at HamAward with more scheduled throughout the year.</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: medium">73 Keith G6NHU</span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium"><br /></span></div>
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<div name="messageReplySection">On 27 Feb 2025 at 13:02 +0000, David Spoelstra via Dxspider-support <dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk>, wrote:<br />
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<div dir="ltr">I agree with Rudy.
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<div>If these are SES stations, then it will be easy to contact them and ask some questions. Maybe we can learn something that will help us in our endeavors. Are we 100% certain it's not a weird bug in *our* systems?</div>
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<div>Reminds me of HamClock. The torches and pitchforks came out and the initial reaction from the majority was "ban it". Instead I asked that someone who understood what was going on to contact the HamClock author and he was happy to work with us and I haven't heard anyone complain since. I don't remember who it was that contacted them, but thank you again for taking the time and allowing a HamClock to peacefully coexist with us.</div>
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<div>"Seek first to understand"</div>
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<div>BTW, it looks like the email address for the "The 95th anniversary of the PZK and centennial of the IARU" SES is <a href="mailto:sp6mi@pzk.org.pl">sp6mi@pzk.org.pl</a></div>
<div>It looks like their spotting services are coming from "HamAward" <a href="https://hamaward.cloud/">https://hamaward.cloud/</a></div>
<div>Their QRZ page: <a href="https://www.qrz.com/db/SN100IARU">https://www.qrz.com/db/SN100IARU</a> where it clearly says the page is powered by HamAward.</div>
<div>Maybe we should also talk to HamAward since they are now a big player backed by ICOM, MOMO Beam, WIMO, DX Engineering, and others. I don't think they are going away anytime soon.</div>
<div>This is also very interesting because HamAward is also the group spotting the WWA which I believe we have also had issues with.</div>
<div>Maybe, just like with HamClock, someone who can speak at a technical level about the issues could work with HamAward and maybe we could easily get all our issues resolved for now and future SES events sponsored by the big players.</div>
<div>Here's a form to contact them: <a href="https://hamaward.cloud/contacts">https://hamaward.cloud/contacts</a> I'm sure an email stating that they are about to have all their spots across the entire DXSpider Network banned might just get their attention...</div>
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<div>-David, N9KT</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 7:15 AM Rudy Bakalov via Dxspider-support <<a href="mailto:dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk" target="_blank">dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br /></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">These are really big words that need support rather than speculations and emotions.<br />
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Who outside of this reflector is complaining? What is their pain point?<br />
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What makes a spot legitimate beyond the obvious call and frequency accuracy? Does the world share and understand your definition of? Or you assume they do?<br />
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Flooded? What percentage of overall traffic are the alleged fraudulent spots?<br />
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Fraudulent? What makes these spots fraudulent beyond not meeting your expectations for their origin? Who’s been defrauded?<br />
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A lot of accusations solely based on logs, no interactions with end users or the alleged bad guys.<br />
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Rudy N2WQ<br />
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Sent using a tiny keyboard. Please excuse brevity, typos, or inappropriate autocorrect.<br />
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> On Feb 27, 2025, at 6:49 AM, Keith, G6NHU via Dxspider-support <<a href="mailto:dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk" target="_blank">dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br />
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> We all want the same thing, we want to give our users good, reliable, trusted spots, they want to provide spots for their users. Let’s get it sorted so they can do it legitimately without flooding the network with fraudulently injected spots.<br />
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> 73 Keith G6NHU<br />
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