RMT Enforcement - Something Interesting is happeneing

[Yeol]

@NefarioCall

I agree, It is easy to make Gil and don't know where to spend it.

Here is what I noticed people spend Gil on:
1- Buying clears.
2- Buying rare mounts and minions.
3- Buying crafted sets, food and potions for endgame.
4- Sell to Gil sellers.
5- Glamour.

If you are doing none of the above then Gil is useless to you

[Mysticales]

You forgot T5 Materia and buying mats to make more gil! Those large plots dont buy themselves!

[HaelseMikiro]

I am hoping the numbers are the real numbers and not an error. Such an error existing for so long would be difficult to explain away and look very poor. That said, I think SE is sophisticate enough to realize that an intentional policy of inflating numbers like that would ultimately backfire on them.

SE in general might be on top of things, but this is what shows up on the news ticker today:

Time Period: Nov. 24, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 25,682
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 293
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV


25k advertisers and 290 actual bots, I still have moderate confidence numbers aren't being inflated, but now I'm CERTAIN that whoever is writing these posts is goofing up. Please SE, fix this T.T

[Kosmos992k]

SE in general might be on top of things, but this is what shows up on the news ticker today:

Time Period: Nov. 24, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 25,682
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 293
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV


25k advertisers and 290 actual bots, I still have moderate confidence numbers aren't being inflated, but now I'm CERTAIN that whoever is writing these posts is goofing up. Please SE, fix this T.T

You think they mistakenly reverse the numbers of advertising vs other illicit activity?

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Its probably harder for them to find the accounts that are actually handing gil over from sales, than it is to find the accounts that people are reporting but the truckload for spamming say or party invites or w/e other form of advertisement is being done. So the differential between those two numbers, advertising and actual RMT/illicit activity, is not surprising.

[Texa]

I haven't really seen any bots on Famfrit lately. I haven't been on as much lately either because of Steam sales, but aside from that even when I've been afk in the main cities for a while without a party or anything no invites recently.

[XiXiQ]

The thing I noticed on Tonberry was no gil shouters/tellers at all. Since they brought in the report feature, suddenly there is one at the main aetheryte and one at the MB of every capital babbling constantly. They get reported and certainly don't last long. This is pretty classic honeypotting from the RMT lot, they want to see how long a bot will last, if there's a timetable for clearing out based on reports, and if SE is seriously coming down on them. They will also want to know how many of their bots are getting caught up by association. The war of escalation continues.

[StouterTaru]

But, most interesting to me is the way that the number of accounts banned for something other than advertising has shot up, and is increasing week on week.

I noticed last week that the grade 1/2 materia has been empty on my server. I'm guessing that they found a way to identify bot armies and take them out.

[Brian_]

The thing I noticed on Tonberry was no gil shouters/tellers at all. Since they brought in the report feature, suddenly there is one at the main aetheryte and one at the MB of every capital babbling constantly. They get reported and certainly don't last long. This is pretty classic honeypotting from the RMT lot, they want to see how long a bot will last, if there's a timetable for clearing out based on reports, and if SE is seriously coming down on them. They will also want to know how many of their bots are getting caught up by association. The war of escalation continues.

I've never gotten RMT tells on Tonberry before or after their changes to the report system. And the RMT bot spamming /say in capital cities existed way before the report system change.

On NA servers, RMT sellers are using party invites to advertise instead. On Tonberry, I have yet to receive a single random invite from a RMT advertiser. We just are not on their radar likely because we are technically a JP server.

[HaelseMikiro]

Here's the fresh ban hammer report:

Time Period: Dec. 15, 2016 to Dec. 21, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 17,594
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 8
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 394
・Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

SE seems to be very inconsistent the last 4-5 weeks on whether they want to put advertisers or farm bots on the top line of the report, making it more difficult for the few of us who keep tabs at a glance on anti-RMT efforts, but it seems they stick that larger number on top no matter what now?

Anyways, the point I'm looking at this week is.....HOW could they only find 8 bots the entire week among all the servers? Pretty sure I could stand in 1 place on any given server for 2 hours and come up with better results than that.