1000 characters = 25 -130 accounts.
Doesnt sound THAT high considering the number of accounts banned due to RMT ads was around 6000 in september.
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Exactly. I agree this site has gotten a little out of hand, but generally speaking it's better to target the buyers. That's why RMT bots etc. aren't always removed right away. They have software that allows them to track gil not only backwards to how it was generated but forwards to the eventual gil buyer. They'll let the RMT char exist and generate gil for a while and they'll track the gil until it's sold and ban the buyer(s) AND the sellers.
Fighting goldsellers is like fighting an ever-adapting virus. I don't envy any company that goes against a determined goldseller group who know they have a market.
The vast majority of accounts that this group has been creating characters on are stolen, hacked accounts.
Individual players need to take better care to protect their login info (for chrissakes, GET THE AUTHENTICATOR), people actually interested in buying gil need to realize that they are paying outright criminals, and Square-Enix needs to give us more tools to report them and shut them down quickly in-game.
V Responding to below posts V (I'm editing this post because I can't make new ones. Do daily posting restrictions really help this forum much? :P )
This is it -- and even if it's on a starter account, they can just delete the existing character. You should always assume that anyone spamming gold sales is on a hacked account, because creating accounts for this purpose ceased to be profitable for these people a very long time ago -- they simply get closed too fast, while at the same time, there are numerous ways to steal other peoples' info (keyloggers, malware, social engineering, etc.). They go onto an account, strip it of all assets to add to their 'inventory', use it to spam/distribute until it finally gets closed, then toss it out and replace it with another one they've stolen.
Other than that, Delsus, you're pretty much dead on. The registration codes they have for new accounts were obtained with stolen credit cards, which they obtain the same way as they do login info (that should tell you precisely what kind of people they are).
Just keep reporting them. If we remain vigilant, SE will be able to stay vigilant as well. Complaining on the forums may seem like a good idea, but it is really a waste of time. If you really want to make a real difference, report every RMT advertisement you see, and use the proper format. Include your world and the RMT's character name in the subject line, and include a copy of their advertisement in the body.
Edit: Also do what Mahri suggests :)
Yep, I hate it too. Unfortunately, it's necessary to keep the RMTs from becoming dominant. I'm still holding on to the hope that SE will eventually be able to drive most of them off by making it too inefficient to continue.
I would just be happy with an /anon function that hides my name in the search. That should help some with all those tells.
Well, if they hack an entry account then unless they delete the main character no you can't. RMT don't only hack accounts, the large "companies" probably have stacks of registration codes as well. As I said before bans don't work because they just make new accounts/hack more accounts when one get's banned.