gilsellers

I'm getting friend requests from gilsellers. I don't know if it bothers anyone else but I don't want to take the time out of my gameplay to decline a friend request everyday from these people. Its annoying!

How about changing your status to /busy? It cuts out the ads as well as the requests.

Doesn't that prevent your friends from sending you messages though?

new characters should not be able to send /tells to people not on their friends list,
they should also not be able to send friend requests to people. (but should be able to be friend requested)

its the only way to handle this.

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Originally Posted by Squa11_Leonhart

new characters should not be able to send /tells to people not on their friends list,
they should also not be able to send friend requests to people. (but should be able to be friend requested)

its the only way to handle this.

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Eden Eternal did that. And also you couldn't do that until lv30. (max was lv60 at that time)

Yeah something needs to be done about it, the frequency of the spam has definitely increased over the last week.

I quite agree. The problem with the bots now adding as friends is that you cannot immediately blacklist them until you decline the request. I do find it very annoying personally and I think some restrictions like being unable to /tell or add friends until a certain level would be good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ElenaLeffel

Doesn't that prevent your friends from sending you messages though?

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Probably. I wouldn't know, I don't have any friends. :sad:

Its getting far past time Square Enix got serious about the Gil-Selling epidemic and take steps to actually stop it. This new trend of a friend request blocking your adding someone to a blacklist is especially frustrating. There are a few solutions I can suggest:

Having once developed a mail server with integrated spam blocking I have a bit of knowledge on filtering spam. The most effective way to block this kind of spam would be to code some limit checks on Tells and Friend invites so that if someone sends more than 5 tells or friend invites to random people they don't have prior contatct with (Friends, FC, Linkshells, Party Members), give them a warning saying they can't send tells/invites for 60 seconds ... if they trigger 3 of those alert warnings in an hour, ban the IP for 24hrs from logging into the game. For legitimate users triggers like this will almost never go off .... but for the spammer, who wants to send messages off all the time to get his message out, measures like these quickly change it from a profitable idea to a not worth the hassle idea. This would drastically increase the expense that the gil-sellers would need to go to to sell their gil, making it not nearly as profitable and striking to their core business.

Also, the current method of banning the account doesn't work, you're just banning the poor sap who got hacked, doesn't harm the gil-spammer at all, they just move on to the next account. IP addresses are much harder to change, start banning spammers by their IP, and message any flagged account holders via email that they might have been hacked and to change their passwords, maybe disable their account till they do to prevent abuse, but don't outright ban the account, you're just punishing your paying customers.

Bots farming to sell mats and materia for mass amounts of gil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJ6Al7OTGg

Yes, there are rmt farming bots operating FC's now.