RMT spam fixes need to happen sooner then later

I really can't stand the horrid wall of spam I face each time I change areas. :( No one can actually use the channels for a "legit" purpose. (Asking questions, for help, a long walk in the forest...) Please fix this. I can honestly say of all the games I have played (and there have been many) this is by far the WORST spam I have ever encountered, and yes; I am including WOW and any other MMO of which you could possibly think. Trying to black list them all isn't fixing the game community and immersion they are killing.

It's getting better all the free time is running out. I only see one per city per day now. Plus all the the bans they are handing out.

I think they should dig deeper and find all the people who are purchasing the services. Then wipe there account clean and let them start over. Let them decide if they want to keep playing or not.

While the gill spammers/shouters are a big pain in the nether regions, and while I realize this is a bit off topic... The real problem here are the bots/hacks that allow these a-holes to plague the game. Where do you think the Gil sellers get their currency from?

Bots that farm the games resources and then put them up for a fraction of what they are worth are ruining the games economy both initially by driving the prices down to where normal players can't compete and on the back end by supplying bogus sellers with those interested in exploits as potential victims.

Nearly every mmo has had this or a similar problem and several have successfully dealt with it, this has to get handled before it ruins a wonderful game like FFARR.

No way to profit off the game will lead to less or no shouting about it by these guys. While I want better black list features in the chat menu too, black listing is not a solution.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/s...rchid=12069507

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Everquest 1 or 2

Spam filtering and reporting

ASS_HAtt_99 Buy Everquest Platinum and powerleveling @ www.eqpl......

Right Click Report As SPAM >>> Added to Blacklist

as enough ppl report e'm their MUZZULED by the server with a Linked Message (IE 100-200 PPL Vote the tell yell etc AS SPAM )

Incoming tell from ASS_HAT_RTM96 : (Spam?) Click to read or (Ignore this person)
then the CSR's will sooner or latter EJECT them ..

but in the mean time the serve learns to read Gold sellers and other aspects that make the message suspected as SPAM 500---Whole Dammed Server voted this Ass R'Tard I a spammer.

FFXI you don't see many tells or etc for spam gil etc.

on FFXIV in some places its out right retarded... in the forest , Taking a Bath in your Mog house or Inn ? What I got Spam URGGHHH is no place safe ???

If their was a FFXIV weather NPC in FFXI Juno 75% Chance of Gil Seller Spam In The Black Shroud nearing Bent Brach with A chance of Light showers. followed by a cool breeze sunny

and 3-10 spam gil seller tells as you go back to do you 20 lvl job quests etc in NEW/OLD Gridanaia Followed by 5 shouts of Spam gil sellers x5 with 20 lines of trash with Clenched fist of Anger. <<<WHY?>>>

Vote The Sons o' Bitchers Spammers sooner or later the Server level on em will hit critical and no tells yells , /say only <MUZZELED> Account is too , any toon is flagged for log review.

found to be a gil seller they have a Bull's-eye that even a Blind Bard couldn't Miss.

As others have said, a simple right click to report RMT/spam feature that automatically blists would be nice. Whether it can be done with their coding, I don't know. Other games have it, but other games have different coding. Unfortunately we can't stop people from going to these sites, and some even getting hacked in the process. My blist is full of names, and as long as I stick to mainly one city, I usually only have to add another 5-10 names a day. I have taken to deleting (deleted) ones and checking the older names to see if they are online before removing them to make room. I feel for those that just got the game this week with the resumption of digital sales, they will have so much spam it isn't funny.

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Originally Posted by Ordain

For all of you saying nothing has or is being done. Then turn your eyes to this post/

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-%28Sep.-12%29

They also seemed to add a shout filter, but they RMTs just re-wrote their scripts. So they are trying to fix the situation. You can't act like other mmos don't have this issue to a degree.

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Never had an issue with WoW cause I had a spam blocking mod

I'm having a hard time not laughing hysterically about how little SE is doing about this and how incredibly easy and cheap it would be to obliterate most of the spammers in less than a day at the cost of 5 employees going from city to city on their respective servers listing and banning the spammers.

ewww the cost of 5 people going onto servers for a day would break the bank for SE!!!!

after they burn through 5 servers worth of spammers move to 5 new servers and repeat the process.

when the account costs exceed the amount of gil being sold the spammers will pack up shop and move to a friendlier game.

/shout should not be a default chat option.

i think that the easiest way to find the spammers is to look into the blacklists and which name pop up in a lot of player's blacklists. An issue that I find is that they have gone from using /shout to sending me private /tell.

I just stopped reporting. You see, after reporting at least 20 people and seeing as they're still in my black list (deleted people show as (Deleted)) I decided it's just waste of time.

Block IP addresses, yes please. It doesn't even have to be forever, just block ip addresses that are being using by RMT spammers for a 12 to 24 time period. While this can be extreme, screw it. It'll shut them up for a while, if there are multiple accounts coming from the same IP over and over ... they WILL be cut off for a period of time. Everytime they are allowed back in, BAM they will get cut off again when they start up.

Or Maybe if totally blocking IPs is too extreme, then make it so that flagged accounts coming from said IP addresses can not use chat methods at all or at a severely reduced speed.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Greetings,

We would like to apologize for the inconveniences that RMT spam has been causing. We are diligently investigating any incoming reports or sightings of RMT shouts and banning them as soon as possible. In addition, we are working on speeding up the investigation flow.

We understand that the current RMT shout/spam reporting procedure can be improved so we are working our hardest to implement a system that is faster and easier to report/block violators. With that said, we sincerely appreciate the assistance from those of you who have been submitting reports as we work towards improving the system.
snip.

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have you added right click name "add to blacklist"?

do any GM's actually go onto the servers? since its impossible to enter any city without the shouts spinning the chat by without 30-50 people blacklisted.

why are spammers for gil sites remaining on the blacklist weeks after they were added and no sign they have been deleted for infractions of the TOS?

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Originally Posted by CatofNineTails

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Can't say much about their work on the "right-click b-list add", don't know why GM's haven't proactively addressed the issue.

However as far as the character's remaining, 1st of all SE's system to recover a compromised account is stupid, but because it is stupid it takes far too long for people to recover their accounts and this also is directly related to taking far too long to remove accounts that were just deliberate violations of the ToS. Many of the spam accounts were stolen and pending to be recovered by the legitimate account holder, and SE went quiet on that issue on Sept. 10th, regardless of the additional compromises since. It takes them 30 minutes, your IP address, and your last log-out, to realize if your account was stolen, then there is a minimum 9 business day limbo where nothing happens at all before the recovery process is initialized, even though it was verified within 30 minutes of Day 1 (well after being on hold for 2 hours). During that period of Limbo the accounts that were nothing but direct violations of the ToS and NOT stolen still float around.

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Originally Posted by Talshara_Blade

Block IP addresses, yes please. It doesn't even have to be forever, just block ip addresses that are being using by RMT spammers for a 12 to 24 time period. While this can be extreme, screw it. It'll shut them up for a while, if there are multiple accounts coming from the same IP over and over ... they WILL be cut off for a period of time. Everytime they are allowed back in, BAM they will get cut off again when they start up.

Or Maybe if totally blocking IPs is too extreme, then make it so that flagged accounts coming from said IP addresses can not use chat methods at all or at a severely reduced speed.

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This SHOULD actually happen, granted who knows because SE's stance so far is to pretty much do nothing and relate no information. This would even put the situation where compromised accounts are traced back through the IP of the violators instead of just punishing the legitimate account holders.

In all honesty this would not be an issue if people would have the recommended Security Token, use Secure Passwords, and not answer the spams in the 1st place.

Until people take their own account security seriously this will always be a problem.

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Originally Posted by cloverkitty

In all honesty this would not be an issue if people would have the recommended Security Token, use Secure Passwords, and not answer the spams in the 1st place.

Until people take their own account security seriously this will always be a problem.

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really? don't remember needing to answer spam to get the chat window rolling by every time i enter a city.

wont say what happened to people who's accounts have been compromised since the number is a bit large for any one answer fitting.

Thankfully I see several names I've reported on Aegis go from *AL:AKSJDL:KJ* To (Deleted) They seem to be working but it's obviously a bit touch and go.

I like to fantasize that the RMT spammers and accounts sometimes hack each others accounts, steal all their gil and items, then delete the chars and make new ones to spam, and that is what the (deleted) are... RMTs hacked by other RMTs. It is a nice daydream for sure :)

this needs to be bumped every single hour till a fix is in place

Obviously this has not been addressed. They are usually from just a handful of websites, you can clearly tell who they are if you just spend some time going about the main towns. SE needs to hire some admins. Just suspend their account everytime they SPAM. I highly doubt they will pay the price of the game for each spam they make.

Is it really so hard to just not let this bother you?

Nobody talks in shout anyway.

Pro-tip, make a new chat tab, dont put shout or tells in it. Only use Shout or tell tab when you need to shout or tell.

Sick to death of spam messages interrupting my game play.
This is not rocket science and other games have fixed this.

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Originally Posted by Alphy

Obviously this has not been addressed. They are usually from just a handful of websites, you can clearly tell who they are if you just spend some time going about the main towns. SE needs to hire some admins. Just suspend their account everytime they SPAM. I highly doubt they will pay the price of the game for each spam they make.

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If they are using hacked accounts they don't care if they get banned.

Interesting thing though, I play on Behemoth and for quite some time you were not able to create characters. I was still getting spammed with all these new names with the same messages.
Made me think perhaps they had hacked the chat servers.
Blacklisting should be account wide. If I don't want to talk to someone I don't want to talk to all of his characters new or old and on any server. This includes any character of mine.

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Originally Posted by Talshara_Blade

Block IP addresses, yes please. It doesn't even have to be forever, just block ip addresses that are being using by RMT spammers for a 12 to 24 time period. While this can be extreme, screw it. It'll shut them up for a while, if there are multiple accounts coming from the same IP over and over ... they WILL be cut off for a period of time. Everytime they are allowed back in, BAM they will get cut off again when they start up.

Or Maybe if totally blocking IPs is too extreme, then make it so that flagged accounts coming from said IP addresses can not use chat methods at all or at a severely reduced speed.

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Wont work as they are probably using tunneling. The IPs would be the same as many players using the tunneling services to reduce their ping times.
Thy could however ban IPs outside the game server countries as this would not effect the tunnels.

im playing a couple weeks and already used 60/200 blacklist slots , i need a bigger list long term to keep those spamming scammers away from my chat

The thing that scares me about these gil spammers, is that they are starting to sell larger and larger chunks of gil, saw one of them spamming that they were selling 2.1 mil if SE doesn't get a handle on this now, they will break the economy just as bad as FFXI

I've posted this in several other threads that have popped up. Sorry for the "spam" posting but I thought it was valuable information and should have been given by the devs themselves in a Dev Tracking post.

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They have a process, for them it gets the best results. It makes dealing with these things easier for them at this time. If you create your own process it delays the results you would like. While attaching a photo is smart it does not help them in on their end. You got to remember that they get hundreds of these and if each one is different than the last it make sorting through it that much harder.

If they can group things by world and area and time via the process they have they might be able to deal with more instances of RMT quicker than if they have to exit out of their program, look through a screen shot, gather the info that way, then go back in and try and generate a report.

I know the process right now is frustrating but it is working and things are being dealt with. They are trying to refine this process to make it easier on the reporter and the one receiving the report. Remember this is just as frustrating for them as it is for you. you are just one person having the issue, they are dealing with everyone having everybody's issue.

From a Game Watch interview:

Source Link

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Talking about shouts, there are lots of Real Money Trade (RMT) related shouts in town, are you planning something to address this?

Right now we are permanent banning them at really fast pace, that’s one, and also we are updating the chat filters daily. We’re making it hit the chat filter first so it doesn’t get to the other players. RMTs are fighting back against this and they are making it more code like......

yes. Specially when you play on NA server, there are messages in which I can’t even understand what it is. There are lots of irritating message flying around.

Yes. They are putting in greek characters, and stuff like that, we are continuing to take those down.

So it’s kind of like Google’s spam filter, we shouldn’t be hearing much of these shouts over time?

Yes exactly. We are updating the chat filter in extreme speed.

It’s not completely gone but the amount sure feels like it’s getting less, so chat filter huh, that’s an interesting idea.

By making it where they can’t even say it. Also when noticing them to permanent ban them, we are working on these thoroughly. Since we’re doing thoroughly, it’s to a point they of harassment. We receive over few hundred reports in one day, and the GM instantly investigates and goes into position to address the matter. As mentioned before we are dealing with them.

So although right now it’s repetitive, the effect is getting greater?

Right now there is a lot going on in America. On the NA forums there is even a thread asking to sell the appearance changing potion with real money which is familiar in F2P. Looking at that kind of thread, I think to myself for RMTs they can’t do any business with increase of F2P MMOs. If world becomes a world where you can buy gold and experience points with real money, there is no way for RMTs to profit from. New big MMO titles using subscription model is FFXIV ARR and TESO so now I understand why they are desperate. Only thing left for us to do is to exterminate them.

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Notice how the messages are getting stranger and stranger? Its because they are getting more and more desperate.

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This is still a problem. For a few days after the response to this thread I went down to about 1 new blist add a day for a few days. Now I'm back to 3-5 a day. Of the 74 on my blist, only 3 have been deleted.

If you cant keep up with banning these people, at least lift the cap on our blacklists.

Hate to bump this again but after my 8th addition to my blist today its a bit more then a minor issue and reporting seems to be worthless.

Hire more GMs.

Spamming a post to stop spammers, curious...

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Originally Posted by ZakarnRosewood

Spamming a post to stop spammers, curious...

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Why not? I'm up to 10 new additions to my blacklist today, its fing annoying so sorry if bumping this annoys you or SE, don't care. Fix it.

What is the excuse for not having a right click ignore/report feature in game?

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Originally Posted by Dahkoht

What is the excuse for not having a right click ignore/report feature in game?

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The official response was that the playerbase is too stupid and might accidentally blist ppl they didnt intend to.

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Originally Posted by Ninjaii

The official response was that the playerbase is too stupid and might accidentally blist ppl they didnt intend to.

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That really wasn't the official response.

today im getting flooded by spam PMs , i bet they have my nickname stored on a spamlist , i want being able to change my name now to reduce the spams a bit , also need a bigger black list as i already reached 70/200 by playing about 3 weeks

as a paying customer i expect this to be taken care of ASAP

Today I zoned into Limsa Lominsa 3 times. Each time I instantly received a tell from a gilseller. Not just after a few seconds; instantly. Each time. They have figured out how to bot /tells to people as they enter a zone.

Bumping because if we don't keep reminding SE, they WILL leave it up to you to deal with. They've done it in the past. Now they are putting our names and a time stamp in the tells. They are getting better at what they do, SE has shown no improvement on their side.

Today's RMT report: One banned RMT sent me a tell within one minute of logging in. I didn't even leave the Inn yet.

Then greeted with the daily wall of spam and another 4 additions to blist, and today's were extra annoying just to get on there!

This is not what I want to do every day when I log in SE. As a crafter, it would be nice if the shout channel was actually useful for doing business. Half the people I know just filter shout now, if many others are as well, how are we to communicate?

Yeah, I'm up to about 70 or so on the Blist, and that is after I have removed several "deleted" names. If I reach the cap of 200, I will simply quit and find something less irritating to play. It's really that simple. It isn't slowing down. Anything or everything SE says they are doing to stop this clearly isn't working at all. Every day it becomes more and more frequent.

What I don't understand is how it is even possible to launch a game in 2013 so blatantly unprepared for this. All new games have RMT Spam in the beginning, but I've only seen one that was this bad, and it had a considerably lower budget. SE should know better..... or as the conspiracy theorists say.. Maybe they do, and simply don't care.

200 is the deadline

Nothing will happen to botters and spammers. Your cries will fall on deaf ears and this is why. Square loves to talk about how many simultaneous connections they have and how many active accounts. If they start removing botter accounts those numbers will drop. They did nothing in 1.0 and I don't see it changing in 2.0. Just blacklist the botters and move on. Don't expect SE to fix it because they won't until it starts negatively impacting their PR MORE than the numbers of simultaneous connections.

136 people on my Blacklist, after pruning a few (Deleted) names. Every day I add 10-ish more. I'm now getting 3-5 spammers in my /tells every day. :-\