RMT: Time to start banning IP addresses

[Shirai]

what any RMT companies could do would probably look negligible.

You are severely underestimating what these guys are capable of.
This isn't a bunch of amateurs that is out to make a statement or make a little extra pocket money.

This is their living, their daily bread and they will do anything to keep their business going.
These guys are capable of programming bots to perform certain actions in this game, they are able to make a program that sends tells to thoudsands of online players, multiple times in a matter of minutes.
And you don't think them capable of doing something as simple as masking their IP addresses?

[KraggyKor]

I think dynamic IPs would be less of an issue. If someone happens to get a banned IP all they have to do is reset their modem. Although I think banning IPs is not really a solution because there is always ways around IP bans.

Um, no, resetting the modem fixes nothing, it simply exacerbates the problem because the user likely gets yet another IP address which also will get banned.

IP banning is a total FAIL when trying to deal with this, or most other problems trying to target specific end-users .. forums generally don't use IP banning to deal with trolls for the same reason, it rarely works.

[Sove92]

I think dynamic IPs would be less of an issue. If someone happens to get a banned IP all they have to do is reset their modem. Although I think banning IPs is not really a solution because there is always ways around IP bans.

Reseting the modem doesn't guarantee that a dynamic IP address changes, it's dependant on ISP's DHCP configuration. And it's like you said, it doesn't work, IP banning is so early half of last decade.

Best solution is still to give a /tell filter to player, filter based on friend list, FC, whitelist, combination of them or allow all.

[Kunihiro]

You are severely underestimating what these guys are capable of.
This isn't a bunch of amateurs that is out to make a statement or make a little extra pocket money.

This is their living, their daily bread and they will do anything to keep their business going.
These guys are capable of programming bots to perform certain actions in this game, they are able to make a program that sends tells to thoudsands of online players, multiple times in a matter of minutes.
And you don't think them capable of doing something as simple as masking their IP addresses?

No I don't think they're capable. It doesn't take much skill to make a bot.

[ReiszRie]

I think dynamic IPs would be less of an issue. If someone happens to get a banned IP all they have to do is reset their modem. Although I think banning IPs is not really a solution because there is always ways around IP bans.

and how is that a solution? I for one would be immensely pissed if I have to keep restarting my modem just to get into the game.

[Shirai]

No I don't think they're capable. It doesn't take much skill to make a bot.

And it takes even less skill to mask or spoof an IP address.

[ReiszRie]

No I don't think they're capable. It doesn't take much skill to make a bot.

Well, then you are certainly underestimating them.

[Kunihiro]

And it takes even less skill to mask or spoof an IP address.

The process of spoofing an IP consists of modifying the source IP in the packet header, a IP that is not the IP you're sending it from. So when the server proceeds to send a response packet to the sender, it doesn't go to the fake sender. You can't play the game only sending packets.

[ReiszRie]

The process of spoofing an IP consists of modifying the source IP in the packet header, a IP that is not the IP you're sending it from. So when the server proceeds to send a response packet to the sender, it doesn't go to the fake sender. You can't play the game only sending packets.

a simple proxy or VPN would do the job of masking your own IP.

[Ooshima]

I think dynamic IPs would be less of an issue. If someone happens to get a banned IP all they have to do is reset their modem. Although I think banning IPs is not really a solution because there is always ways around IP bans.

Not necessary though. It depends on how many IPs does the ISP has versus the amount of subscribers they have. Generally, ISPs will push the IP:Subscribers ratio as much as they could, so at times, especially peak times, resetting modem or attempting to reset IP via command prompt doesn't end up changing your IP.

Had such experiences before in other games as my country's ISPs are on dynamic. Tried resetting modem/using command prompt at times doesn't help. End up I have to write long explanations to the GMs in order to get my account unbanned.