Gil Spammers

[Anathaer]

Isn't there a way to stop them from IMing you? Some even gone as far now as to send a friend request as well so it takes longer to blacklist them. Why can't there be an option added that for example you can block IM's from under lvl 20. Most spammers don't level beyond that it would be good fix.

[Bacent]

Because they use bots to create the characters, and then they could just get said botting program to 20+

You know they set up bots to harvet high selling materia, and from gathering points, so they'd be able to get them to 20 in no time. I just put my status to busy (Unable to get any tells), and have a bunch of my friends in a linkshell to contact me

[Kataz]

The bots that spam aren't the same bots that farm. Even though its a bot doing the work, a level 20 or 50 or whatever level bot they get it to is still a valuable asset to the gil sellers. They don't risk losing their leveled bot just to spam their websites, all the spam is from level 1 characters. SE could approach this in two ways - 1: Allow players to set a /tell level threshold, be it level 2, level 5, or level 49. That should be up to the player. 2: If the spammers DO just level their bots up to defeat a threshold (Which I doubt they would, especially a player chosen threshold that could be anything between 2 and 49), SE would then have to attack the core of the problem; the fact that bots are farming and find a way to detect the activity.

On the other hand, I do like the "busy" status idea. I was not aware that busy status blocked tells. It is not quite an ideal solution since I would still like to get tells from people on my friends list who may not think to contact me through a LS. I'll have to play with busy status. When another player tries to send you a tell while in busy, do they get a system reply saying that I am busy and not accepting tells similar to how some duties give such replies? Or would it appear to the other player that I am simply ignoring their tell?

[phook_mi]

Both of you are right tho, blocking IM's under 20 could help a lot. It would slow them down so there would be less tells/FR from them.
Another thing would be nice is have a "GOLD SPAMMER" report button.

[Anathaer]

Yes I agree, there isn't even a button to report them. Which there should be. Thanks for the explenation though lol. I never even knew busy could be set, let alone that it stops whispers. I got important friends in linkshell too

[Kataz]

Actually, if SE would just get some GM's to play the game, bots are fairly easy to find...

http://i.imgur.com/WGTgM1j.jpg

[Zebyxus]

I could also offer my blacklist macro which also denies any friend requests they send (for the bots that do that)

/friendlist deny <r>
/blist add <r>

You will get an error if you use it without the friend request, but that's only because there will be no request pending.

Aside from that, we're going to just have to grin and bear with it until SE develops a solution to at least ease the problem (because let's face it, it's not something that can be solved easily)

[Kaylie]

what i would like is an automatic character lock which locks down players who have been black listed 5 times as well sent the same /tell 5 times while keeping a full report of those tells

doing this would give SE a much easier time quarantining these pests and its much safer than an insta ban as they will be able to investigate if theyre stolen accounts or dummies who had a big mouth as well as prevent them spamming freely.

[Nashred]

Man they are getting bad again.. This is the worse I have ever seen.. I really dont understand how they cant be blocked within minutes. Someone sending out that many tells in that amount of time = banned.. Someone ending up on 200 black list = banned.. Or just stop giving out the free accounts or have some sort of verification for free accounts.

[AeolusHawk]

I think the biggest problem is the 200 limit on blacklists. I get a gil spammer every 5-10 minutes on my server. I have to delete the oldest blist person just to add the newest. I'm never able to keep them all on the blacklist because of the 200 limit. We need to increase the limit to 500 or more for our blacklist.