Afraid of RMTs need to end.

[whoopeeragon]

Reporting spammers with name, world, and copy & pasted the exact message they sent me via tell (including time stamp) and I have only seen a single blacklist entry change to (deleted) out of like 30+ names.

When they suspend accounts, they don't 'delete' the names so they can keep track of them. Read the following posts:

Hello, all! This is LGM Enkrateia here. I had posted this in another thread; however, the information does seem relevant.

As time goes on, we are getting more and more RMT reports including the information that the blacklist is already full of RMT, so more cannot be added. Some reports that include a bit more information note that only prior entries that have changed to "Deleted" are being removed to make room for new entries.

I wanted to provide a bit of information and insight to address these concerns, which will hopefully help keep you from filling up your blacklist with RMT names that are never removed.

Once an account is found guilty of RMT solicitation, it is suspended indefinitely. However, the characters on that account are not deleted, since the suspension of the account is sufficient to prevent further solicitation from the account. Deleting the characters is an additional step that is not taken, since it is unnecessary, time consuming, and could result in account damage or loss in the case of a suspension that needs to be lifted, such as in the case of a compromised account used for RMT solicitation.

The blacklist is recommended as a temporary resolution to alleviate the unwanted solicitation, and is not meant to be a permanent state you place these names into. Removing the names periodically should allow us time to complete our investigation, and free up room in your blacklist if another account is used to solicit RMT.

Lead Game Master Enkrateia

Thank you for the response, kidvideo. Hopefully, I can provide some explanation that may help by discussing three countermeasures.

The blacklist is a character-focused resolution, preventing messages and other interactions from that character. Advertisements from another character would require an additional blacklist entry to prevent, and possibly additional reports to the Game Masters, so that we can investigate additional accounts that may be engaging in RMT solicitation.

Suspension, when issued by a Game Master, is an action against a single account. This should remove that account from continued RMT solicitation; however, if a single group is using multiple accounts for RMT solicitation, additional reports would help us find those accounts and issue actions against them for RMT solicitation. Game Master countermeasures against RMT solicitation accounts tend to be more noticeable, since they are reactive in nature. To specifically address your reply, a suspension prevents the account in question from continuing their solicitations, and is a sufficient method of doing so.

Finally, the Special Task Force and Account Admin review these account actions to determine if an account should be terminated and work towards preventing future RMT solicitation. These countermeasures do not tend to be noticed because they are proactive and preventative, mitigating future RMT issues. Relating this to your reply, we are constantly working on improving the speed of resolution and effectiveness of actions against RMT behaviour, so that the experience of our customers is as positive as possible.

There have been many strict or severe suggestions made to prevent all RMT solicitation in the game. These ideas, however, need to be implemented while balancing game mechanics with trying to eliminate this type of harassment, and requires constant work, since changing tactics and methods mean coming up with different countermeasures. These solicitation concerns comprise a lot of the tickets we get from customers, and we treat them seriously since they are the most common concern reported to us.

I hope this provides a bit more insight for you.

Lead Game Master Enkrateia

[Kitfox]

Every time I add an RMT spammer to black list, I remove one name from the top of the list. Seems to work pretty well with a 20 name buffer.

[kidvideo]

Reporting spammers with name, world, and copy & pasted the exact message they sent me via tell (including time stamp) and I have only seen a single blacklist entry change to (deleted) out of like 30+ names.

It's incredibly difficult to report on a PS3. There's no copy & paste, & the process is too cumbersome with a controller. We need a “right-click to report” option.

[Delsus]

How do people buy gils without gettig caught?

It's mostly because it's not practical for SE to scan every account for a sudden increase in gil in real time, such a method would cause a lot of strain on servers, and even if the did they would have to be able to prove that the gil came from rmt sources.

RMT aren't stupid, they will have their spam bots on a separate account to the bank characters, the gil making bots separate to the bank characters etc when someone buys gil it would be traded from the bank characters, the spam bots get instantly banned (the obvious rmt) but the bots are actually harder to ban for rmt activites, all SE can see is that they are botting, the bot then sold some money and traded the proceeds. The bot then gets banned for cheating and using third party software. The money however is still around on a bank character, which then gets sold to a buyer.

If you look at this another way, I farm loads of gil and decide to help a friend out, trade 1m gil to them, that could look like rmt on SE's servers, should I get banned for helping a friend out, or my friend getting banned? That's how people buy without getting caught, it's impossible to differentiate between a legit player helping another player and someone transferring gil that has been bought.

This is also why SE are attacking the bots, they are the easy ones to ban.