Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi,
Adamantoise continues to be bombarded by spambots.

The particular Level-1 Archer New Gridiana spambot (previously
reported) has been persistent since on or before Jan 8.
All efforts, to persuade the gamemasters to stop and block this bot, have failed.
-- Normal Report RMT Advert - Failed
-- Report harassment - Failed
-- Report Cheating (yes, using a bot is cheating) - Failed
-- Reporting the bot in this very message thread - Failed

Whois and INTERNIC searches reveals this bot belongs to the largest,
most insidious, gold farming criminal organization in the world.

At least one of the persistent Lvl-50 THM battle-bots, uses name
similar to this particular spam-bot.

Any suggestion, on how to persuade the gamemasters to
mitigate this insidious spambot, will be most graciously welcome.

[Hayward]

There absolutely has to be a way to find these folks' true IP addresses (whether they're in China, Eastern Europe, or wherever) and permanently ban them.

[SCUBA_Instr]

There absolutely has to be a way to find these folks' true IP addresses (whether they're in China, Eastern Europe, or wherever) and permanently ban them.

Hi Hayward.
Yes, all sorts of information can be found...
http://whois.domaintools.com/
From there, just type in the URL that the spam-bot demands you go to.

If, for example, you do a search-engine search for
the spam company that starts with the letter "x"
using search arguments like "x" criminal background, or "x" cyber-crime, etc.
there are roughly 50,000 websites describing the cyber-crime
background of this unstoppable* spam-bot owner.

Courteous and polite efforts, to inform the GM staff
of spambot owners' criminal backgrounds, have all
failed, as far as I can tell.

*They can be stopped, if network security is taken seriously.

[Fumon]

i dont hate bots i hate ppl that need to cheat buying gils from them and it seen like ppl dont stop buying gils cus bots are multiplying every second they making a lot of money from lazy players. why i am in mor dhona and bots still harassing me there when they dont discover maps. nobody besides bots uses search and they can just go there and view everybody in every single map. why dont remove the sending gil option from mail? why somebody that is not my friend can send me private msgs (tells) my blacklist is full i have to unblock a bot to block another bot, cant even unlock all at once and have a lot blocked bots displaying the same name (deleted) while they still occupying room in blacklist. have 3 friends bots request sittinng on a corner of my screen. i do dungs, log in out and they still there. im so paranoid i always try to block anybody sending shouts cus bots always there. we can block 200 bots in less than a week so it means we gonna have to send 200 reports weekly

[Elim]

For awhile RMT spam calmed down on Gilgamesh, but the last few weeks I've been bombarded with spam. I have a tab just for /tells and it's normally filled with 20+ RMT tells. :/ I don't understand why it's so hard or wrong to put in a "tells from friends only" feature. A lot of people already put on /busy so it's not going to make that big of a difference to newbies trying to /tell vets.

I want to put on /busy but that's not an option for me. I'm in two raid groups now, and I coordinate one of them. That means I have 14 people(give or take depending on the time of the day) that want to hang out or talk to me about raiding or whatever throughout the time I'm logged on. Also IIRC when you have /busy on people can't invite you to a party, and I can't remember a day that I logged in without someone asking me to do something with them. Sometimes I log on and people simply invite me to a party and q for something without saying a single word. lol

[Nyalia]

Sometimes I log on and people simply invite me to a party and q for something without saying a single word. lol

Do they spam basic moves and get stuck running into walls sometimes? If so, your friends may have been replaced by persistent, unstoppable RMT dungeon bots.

Be careful. It could happen.

Also, are you a bot? Would you even know? Deep stuff dude. Real deep stuff.

[Elim]

Do they spam basic moves and get stuck running into walls sometimes? If so, your friends may have been replaced by persistent, unstoppable RMT dungeon bots.

Be careful. It could happen.

Also, are you a bot? Would you even know? Deep stuff dude. Real deep stuff.

Well some of my friends are pretty dumb(I <3 you guys), but they aren't bots.

As for being a bot and not knowing it... my mind is blown. I just can't handle how deep that was mannnnnn...

[Pterois]

Any level requirement or quest you put into place will not stop them, they already level to 50 going through blm quest. These people are not stupid, almost every single thing you put into place will be circumnavigated and half of these suggestions only burden the people trying to enjoy the game.

[Nyalia]

Stopping bots is hard, but I'd think it would be easy to stop RMT spam though. Limit the size of tells from people not on your friend list. Limit the number of tells you can send per second. Limit the number of people you can send tells to in a day based on level. Allow people to reduce/remove tells from non-friends/fc. Put a play-time requirement on the privilege of sending more than one tell. And so on, and so on, and so on. Sure, they can get around the limitations, but if you put limits on them that take time to circumvent, it reduces the amount of spam they can generate per account.

Also, make blacklisting be per account, not per character. Seriously, why hasn't this been done?

[Nyalia]

Sadly, you've done all you can. The next step is to transcend caring about it and go about your life.