How to eliminate Real money gil sale spammers

how does it take too much time to report? takes like 15 seconds to do.

highlight and copy(with CTRL+C) the content of the RMT ad. name, message and all. open up the Support Desk in-game. and look at the FAQ. click the one about RMT ads. click Ask Question. enter 'Your World Name' RMT. so for me is Exodus RMT. then just paste the content in the field below. send the report. throughout the whole day you couldn't possibly spend more then 2minutes reporting RMT ads.




@Square Enix
or
@Camate
or
@Hvinire

OR WHOEVER


it would be a good idea to have two separate types of blacklists. so when we flood our blacklist with RMT names. then go to clear it out. we don't accidentally remove people we want to be there.


just need a simple option in the context menu. one that only shows for a /tell. have it report the previous /tell received. and automatically add that name to a blacklist. the blacklist doesn't need to be automatically cleared when you make the ban. but it would be a plus :D

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

1. Characters on brand new accounts cannot send a PM or use Shout until level 15.

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Nice, let's give people the impression in their first 15 levels that the game is just a solo fest. Because I'm pretty sure a lot of people who don't have friends playing probably already feel that way. This suggestion will only make them feel even more strongly about that.


Disclaimer: I do not personally feel like this is a solo fest, but those first few levels are sort of tutorial -ish and I know back in the beginning a lot of people complained. People probably still do.

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Originally Posted by MurakumoMillennium

• Create bait character(s).
• Bait character(s) receive RMT tell.
• Ban RMT account.

It really are no hard for find and stop RMT that advertise through tells...

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This is fantastic idea for real lol :D

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Originally Posted by Arkista

If you login at a different IP SE locks you from signing in and you can't play at all.

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They HAD it ... I think. I believe I read they had something like that during beta but it was removed sometime before release. Ill have to try it when the PS4 is released or something to make sure (easier to move to a friends). Regardless, it worked great for Rift (though not perfect)! Either SE isnt doing this anymore or not doing it right, because RMT has never been this bad for me.

RMT is terrible for a pay to play game.

If you could add 300 more spaces to the blacklist that would be nice.

Also is there a way to just block private messages from players that's not on your friendslist or fc/ls? That would be nice too.

That still exists. Only way around it is to have a security token. Otherwise you need to change your password to access your account from the new location.

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

Right, because there's no way that would be abused by griefers.

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As stated before by others with a number of say 100 black lists on one user an auto ban would be effective. I'm not talking one B-list here. This isn't a suggestion for another "dungeon kick" abuse tool, or party ready abuse, this would be an effective way of gauging and eliminating RMT. And I hate to say if you are a regular player who is on 100 peoples b-list I personally don't want to hear from you either.

Edit (Additional Comments):

This feature could even be an opt-in filter. If you are concerned about really needing to hear from people who are excessively black listed this could be a viable solution.

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Originally Posted by MurakumoMillennium

• Create bait character(s).
• Bait character(s) receive RMT tell.
• Ban RMT account.

It really are no hard for find and stop RMT that advertise through tells...

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http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m961tmUFcj1r3qnxf.gif

The problem is that, even if they implement severe chat restrictions, RMTs will always find a new way to spam us. I'm not talking just about them spamming in cities and the likes, but with more annoying things like flooding the PF list, and whatever else they could come with. We can't end up with more restrictions everywhere, it would be more annoying to play than to be spammed... and there's no guarantee that they wouldn't find a way to bypass them.

As someone said, if we really want to get them out of the game we need to kill what's making them come and waste resources here: the buyers. If you detect that a player suddendly gets a large ammount of money over a short period of time, and said money didn't come from selling several things with his/her retainers, it should be marked for investigation (there should be a server specific database with automatically updated prices for every item, to compare them with what people sell and flag any suspicious transaction... oh wait, it already exists: the item transaction log). Once said investigation concludes, if that money/item came from a suspicious source (i.e. it was originated from a bot, and was passed along by barely played/spamming characters), the player should be banned for good.

On another note, I agree that there should be a separate black list for spammers, even if it still had its limits. It would prevent us from deleting anyone that we added to said list because of trolling/griefing/whatever. Also, there should be an option to automatically fill the RMT report (report spam) upon right clicking a name. Even if doing so manually is easy and requires just a couple of minutes, it makes us stop doing whatever we're doing at the moment. I've not reported many RMT tells because I was actually busy doing something else in-game and I couldn't spare those minutes (combat, leves, accepting the Duty Finder pop-up and entering a duty, organizing my FC, etc.).

I know there's a blacklist macro,
which is simply;

Code:

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/blist add <r>

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You can put quotes around <r> but I think the parser accepts it either way.
Blacklist someone with two buttons presses

1. activates macro
2. confirm blacklist action

Is there a macro to fill out a report?
like

Code:

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/support [para]...

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Obviously it's not /support since that only opens up the Support Desk interface and doesn't go any further than that.

Code:

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/supportdesk, /support
USAGE: /supportdesk
Opens and closes the Support Desk interface.

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Originally Posted by Yshnal

annoying things like flooding the PF list, and whatever else they could come with. We can't end up with more restrictions everywhere, it would be more annoying to play than to be spammed... and there's no guarantee that they wouldn't find a way to bypass them.

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Good point. That is one possible work around but now we see it and can add that to the list of restrictions.

Simply put the buyers are not going away and the sellers are not going away so the only solution is restriction of communications between the two. To be honest I don't personally care if they use Mog Mail to do their transactions and communicate if they really want to continue doing the practice of RMT and breaking TOS. I just don't want to see or hear it any more. Then it becomes SE's problem and I don't have to play unpaid RMT moderator any longer. Maybe they can add an achievement 1500 RMT reports and you get a new mount.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

how does it take too much time to report? takes like 15 seconds to do.

highlight and copy(with CTRL+C) the content of the RMT ad. name, message and all. open up the Support Desk in-game. and look at the FAQ. click the one about RMT ads. click Ask Question. enter 'Your World Name' RMT. so for me is Exodus RMT. then just paste the content in the field below. send the report. throughout the whole day you couldn't possibly spend more then 2minutes reporting RMT ads.

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While it doesn't take a long time to do it does for people who are already use to other games where you simply click the spammers name and hit "Report for Spam." You don't have to blacklist them, you don't have to open a ticket to report them. Personally I keep A nifty copy/paste thing myself but I don't expect everyone to and I they should streamline it a little bit more. I have multiple accounts I reported months ago still on my list.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

it would be a good idea to have two separate types of blacklists. so when we flood our blacklist with RMT names. then go to clear it out. we don't accidentally remove people we want to be there.

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If we can't get the right click option then this would be an awesome thing to implement.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

how does it take too much time to report? takes like 15 seconds to do.

highlight and copy(with CTRL+C) the content of the RMT ad. name, message and all. open up the Support Desk in-game. and look at the FAQ. click the one about RMT ads. click Ask Question. enter 'Your World Name' RMT. so for me is Exodus RMT. then just paste the content in the field below. send the report. throughout the whole day you couldn't possibly spend more then 2minutes reporting RMT ads.




@Square Enix
or
@Camate
or
@Hvinire

OR WHOEVER


it would be a good idea to have two separate types of blacklists. so when we flood our blacklist with RMT names. then go to clear it out. we don't accidentally remove people we want to be there.


just need a simple option in the context menu. one that only shows for a /tell. have it report the previous /tell received. and automatically add that name to a blacklist. the blacklist doesn't need to be automatically cleared when you make the ban. but it would be a plus :D

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sry, too long, i used to report, i do not do it any more.

reporting should be an entry under "add to blacklist" when you click on a player's name in the log, selecting "Report RMT" should bring up a "Do you want to report, Y/N?" dialog box and you hit yes or no.

Any more than that is too much.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

... you couldn't possibly spend more then 2minutes reporting RMT ads.

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Firstly, you are right the act of reporting takes 30 seconds. Plus the time required to stop everything you are in the middle of doing / enjoying to report an RMT. And then if you happen to be a PS3 user like some and don't have a keyboard what do you do then? Or you have one of those tiny controller keyboards and can't interface well with the chat. Simply put if they were going to launch on console this feature much like the cross bar seems like a smart idea. Server names, character names, etc should auto populate not require someone to type them in, this is simple programming for a company like SE.

And, it is not just the act of reporting one. In many cases you get 3 to 4 in a row by different RMTs. An auto report with lockout would not only be quicker 2 seconds to report, it would not interfere with game play, make it easier for console users, and save others the aggravation of RMT harassment. And it doesn't matter if it is only 2 minutes a day, it takes away from the immersive game world, is unwanted and violates SE's own TOS.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

sry, too long, i used to report, i do not do it any more.

reporting should be an entry under "add to blacklist" when you click on a player's name in the log, selecting "Report RMT" should bring up a "Do you want to report, Y/N?" dialog box and you hit yes or no.

Any more than that is too much.

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Truth.

They might not have streamlined it for a reason.
Which is why I was wondering why the in-game macro for it just stops at the point of simply opening Support Desk.

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Originally Posted by lackofwords

Truth.

They might not have streamlined it for a reason.
Which is why I was wondering why the in-game macro for it just stops at the point of simply opening Support Desk.

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Perhaps, but not streamlining it means it's not being used. They can consider that if they wish.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

I'm very sure my suggestions would have little to no impact on legit players, but do a lot to diminish the bot spamming everyone is subjected to.

You're the one that has to prove it would somehow hurt the pre-lv 15 gameplay experience, not me.




Secondly, my suggestion doesn't have any impact on people able to use the local chat to talk to someone in their immediate area. It doesn't stop them from using party chat either.

There is absolutely, positively no legit reason for a pre level 15 character to need to send a PM to anyone not willing to first add them to a friend list.

None, zilch, notta.

Maybe you're a gold farming spammer and that is the real reason you're so adamantly opposed?

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Gotta love OP's "logical arguments".

Let's use the same line of argument with things that are as clear as day to see if the logic stands.

I'm very sure drowning have little to no causation of death that follows. If you believe otherwise, you prove to me that drowning does cause death.

As for your second claim that there's no legit reason for using /tells before lv15, I suggest you check the dictionary for legit.

Oh wait I know! I must be a gil farmer for disagreeing with you! Woots!

I've been getting the same body of tell spam since the launch of the game. The only thing that changes is the start and end characters randomized.

Just monitor people's black lists. When the same characters show up many people's blist, investigate and ban if RMT.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

Let's look at this realistically to see why your solution is no solution at all.

*snip*
Your solution interrupts gameplay even more. I have to actually go to the Lodestone and type up a report
[/B]

You need to decide what is more important; new players needing to add people to a friend list before they can PM other players, or the paying players to be constantly harassed in-game by bots enticing them with offers to steal their accounts.

In my opinion....

New player needing to add someone to a friend list before they can send a PM: Irritation level 3.

Every player getting spammed by bots constantly: Irritation level 100.

*snip*

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Let's look at this realistically to see why your solution is no solution at all.


There really wasn't a solution posted other than the fact they are still trying to combat RMT by using current methods and evolving said methods as much as possible.

I report in game, no need to go to lodestone... Server name and character name in the support ticket is much easier than going into the lodestone and doing research. Far from effective.

Also, you can typically delete all but the last few Blisted names on the Blist. There is a system in place, but they aren't exactly going to tell us how everything works. That would be counter productive.

A note on the requirement to become friends before gaining the ability to sent /tells:
Every player getting spammed by bots' friend requests constantly: Irritation level 100.

But I digress, there is a /tell spam issue regardless.

What they need to add is a report/block function by right clicking the players name in chat. Automatically blacklist/report with a simple click.

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Originally Posted by Zplinter

A possible solution would be to instead of targeting the seller, target the receiver. Have a script in the background that scans a player wealth and compares it to the last scanned value and it there is a large change (in the millions) then a sub routine is invoked to check for market board sales. I the players retainers have no market sales to compare to the "sudden" wealth then the system locks the account pending SE review and or the player explain how they "magically" have such wealth.
Once players realize that buying gil targets them by the system the willingness to buy gil decreases, then the market for the gill sellers dries up and they move on to another easier to sell in game. Database scripting should not have that much overhead.

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That doesn't work. I can sell you a copper ore for 2 million gil through the trade window. All that says is that basically you're an idiot for paying that much and 2 million gil changed hands. The problem is always the source because once their supply of gil is gone you can't buy it. It also doesn't help when items and services (FC housing, level 50 crafted gear, primal clears, etc.) are priced at astronomical levels generating a need for that high amount of money. In the 4 years I played WoW I saw maybe 3 gold sellers tells because the system was better to take out the source and gold was not the driving source of currency.

Not allow to wisp more than 10 (or 20) complete strangers (people who are not in your LS, Guild or friend and who does not wisp you first) per hour and per account.
I don't see any legit activity where you need to wisp more than 10/20 complete strangers per hour.

Put limit on world chan too, even if it's not for gold selling, guild spamming is annoying.

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

In a general sense, we would like to avoid restricting the ability for new players to communicate with others, so we don't currently have any plans to make changes along the suggested lines. However, we will continue to evolve as we take measures against RMT and in-game spam, and likewise continue to ask for your help in reporting these violations.

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Perhaps that 'avoid restricting communication' attitude would best be directed somewhere else. Oh, say....instances.

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

likewise continue to ask for your help in reporting these violations.

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If you can't be bothered to make it easy for us why would you think we'd bother?

MAKE RIGHT-CLICK/BLOCK ALSO REPORT and maybe I'll start reporting again, like others have said in response to you I gave up because it's just a PITA to report it the way to demand we do right now.

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Originally Posted by Pence

Perhaps that 'avoid restricting communication' attitude would best be directed somewhere else. Oh, say....instances.

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Indeed, the irony of this justification for taking no action is unbelievable.

There has to be some way on the back end of the chat server to track the frequency of /tells within a short time period.

Once a certain threshold has been passed, disable /tells for a short time. Like 1-5 minutes. If the threshold is past again within the next x amount of minutes disable /tells for a greater amount of time 5-10 minutes, once broken again perma-ban.

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

Right, because there's no way that would be abused by griefers.

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You just have to punish griefers.

1. RMT tagging leads to temporary communication limitations.
2. If RMT tagging was found to be non-legitimate, punish the abuser.

You only have to punish a few abusers until people no longer take action.

Reporting is more hassle than it is worth. I want to play the game not sit there filling out endless forms with details that you already have.

To me it seems very easy to identify RMT spamm: Every time someone blacklists a person add it to a temporary list on the server. Then just filter it to people being blacklisted a lot in a short period of time : RMT ( even if it's not RMT, it still should be investigated)

I'm getting fed-up of reporting them, my blacklist is always full, i'm lucky to get 2 deleted at most per week, also got fed up of reporting bots, only to still see them months later...

I like the idea to restrict /tells per zone, this should be implemented.
Or give us an option to hide us from the full search and/or specific zones.

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Originally Posted by EZ5902

I'm getting fed-up of reporting them, my blacklist is always full, i'm lucky to get 2 deleted at most per week, also got fed up of reporting bots, only to still see them months later...

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If your blist is full, delete the first several entries. When an entry in your blist is marked as "deleted" that does NOT mean that SE has banned them. It means that they deleted their own account. When SE bans an account the account is not marked deleted. If your blist is full, chances are VERY high that more than half of them are banned accounts, and that if you unmark them you will not receive any tells from them.

SE is typically very vast about banning gil spam accounts. However, gil spammers are also very fast about creating new accounts. They only have to spam their adds once or twice on a given account for it to be considered successful advertising.

^
This.

I've said it several times already, just purge your blacklist. And please, please stop saying it's too tedious to do.
Most of you are playing this for several hours per day, performing repetative rotations over and over, for hours on end but spending 15 minutes to delete blacklist entries is too much work?
That shit is really putting some forehead shaped dents into my desk.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

If your blist is full, delete the first several entries. When an entry in your blist is marked as "deleted" that does NOT mean that SE has banned them. It means that they deleted their own account.

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Yes, i know but they still exist, therefore, they stay on.

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Originally Posted by Shirai

^
This.

I've said it several times already, just purge your blacklist. And please, please stop saying it's too tedious to do.
Most of you are playing this for several hours per day, performing repetative rotations over and over, for hours on end but spending 15 minutes to delete blacklist entries is too much work?
That shit is really putting some forehead shaped dents into my desk.

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You have to still take it into consideration, instead of chalking it up as people being lazy.
There are better ways to handle it, rather than just having people manually scrub their list each time.

For one, if SE didn't request the cease and desist of the FFXIV mod community, we probably would have had a chat parser by now similar to FFXI Windower.
This would have just cleaned up any RMT text in any chat log. People would also just simply update or modify the regex list if any new spam comes up.
In principle, it's the same way how AdBlocker handles blocking ads, while stilling allowing meaning content to reach you.

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Originally Posted by EZ5902

Yes, i know but they still exist, therefore, they stay on.

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Yes, they still exist. In the netherrealm called banned, unable to recreate characters who's names will never bother you again.

Delete them.

I propose we have the option to take the gil spammer to the wolves den. Then we can finally get the justice we deserve and fight back at RMT terrorism.

'MURICA

All SE needs to do is look in the player finder on a daily basis, see the line up of fftgg ddtttfff, hjggt jhhhggtt, aasst yytttrrrr named level 50 players and start the ban hammer accordingly. There is no mistaking those guys as gil farmers.....
Is that too much to ask?
On a side note my tell list is so long from blisting these assholes that I often mistakenly send a tell to them by accident since they were the last to send me spam..bloody irritating!!

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Originally Posted by Nova_Dresden

That doesn't work. I can sell you a copper ore for 2 million gil through the trade window. All that says is that basically you're an idiot for paying that much and 2 million gil changed hands. The problem is always the source because once their supply of gil is gone you can't buy it. It also doesn't help when items and services (FC housing, level 50 crafted gear, primal clears, etc.) are priced at astronomical levels generating a need for that high amount of money. In the 4 years I played WoW I saw maybe 3 gold sellers tells because the system was better to take out the source and gold was not the driving source of currency.

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They system in place is clearly not efficiently working. This is not the first of these threads, nor I suspect the last.
Your example is something that again can be track by the sql transaction table history

Gil selling and the inflated item cost (with the expection of land/house which is a static value set by SE in relation to the amount of gil in each worlds system), is a chicken and the egg concept. Prices are high because either the item is rare/hard to make/etc and has a value higher that players are willing to spend their gil on. Primal Clear is that expensive because people are willing to pay for a carry. BUT all these prices are inflated do to the fact that right now you can buy all the gil you feel like from an RMT and the odds on you getting banned for it are low compared to the risk of the buy. If the gil in the economies was what SE expected at the start based on quest rewards, leve payouts and fates, then prices for everything would be lower as the amount of gil in game would be corospondingly lower. Why do you think the FC house cost so much? it is remove all that gil from the economy.

Your example of WoW is only based on your experience, I played Wow for 7 years and yes I got some spam in game, more spam in email out of game. What you are probably not aware of is that Blizzard is very aggressive behind the scenes in monitoring gold.I have had several Guild members go poof for gold buying (granted less then got poofed for using "glide" and or botting). Also remember WoW is a lot more mature economy, the cost of a basic mount today is cheap compared to vanillia. This is still a new economy and one that the Devs are still tweaking.

If Se wants the economy to be relatively stable as WoWs then they need to have the same proactive monitoring of both ends of the exchange.

The Devs will have gil sinks to dry up the inflated amounts of gil in the system, but that will not work until you remove BOTH the sellers and the buyers.

A gil spammer account is created every second. There has to be a better way to deal with it then to add to blacklist and then delete it from blacklist later. Then get spammed by a gil spammer with a similar name which makes you think that you removed them from blacklist just to get re-spammed.

RMT activities never bothered me. The spamming is annoying though.