Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

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

Yes, you're exactly right.
To go on with my gaming life, I'm able to report spammers quickly and return to gaming quickly.
More and more gamers, on our server, are just leaving the Busy flag on continuously. When we
change the flag to do trades, or accept party invites, a flood of RMT spam messages quickly
fill the chat box.

I believe that responsible gamers should not acquiesce to the RMT criminal organizations;
those of us who enjoy the game should do all possible to impress upon the
gamemaster staff to protect it from the criminals who seek to destroy it.

Spambot softwares are becoming more nefarious than ever before, with more
sophisticated code injection techniques. Concerned players should impress upon the
Square Enix Company board of directors, the need to mitigate this serious network
security problem.

Thanks

[Nyalia]

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I just don't think there is anything more you can do beyond what you've already done. Given the number of threads on this forum about the issue, I'm pretty sure SE is quite aware of how we feel about it. The only thing I've gotten out of posting in a thread like this was a warning that I'd be banned from the forums and the game if I didn't change my attitude toward SE regarding their treatment of spam bots. And so, I have changed my attitude - gone from getting angry about it to simply not caring. It's far less likely to get me banned.

While I can suggest the same for you, it's up to you how you want to spend your FFXIV time. If you want to spend it angry and up in arms about something that you honestly are justified being angry about, go right ahead. Just be aware that saying negative or critical things about SE on the forums is literally against the ToS (well, the Forum Guidelines, which are just as enforced if not more so). I don't think anything you've said here so far can get you in trouble (you're a lot less angry than I was), but I still recommend being familiar with the Forum Guidelines if you aren't already: http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...la=1&tag=forum

[SCUBA_Instr]

Thank you, Nyalia.

I've posted unkind remarks about the giant RMT industries,
PC World describes how the largest RMT company
engages in cybercrime, malware, viruses, and theft.

In the end, the only thing good gamers can do is the
"Report Harassment" and "Report RMT Advert" functions built into
the game.

Nyalia, I know that being angry won't accomplish anything. So I report the
RMT spambots, put the busy flag back on, and resume good gaming.

For the most part, friends, fellow FC members, and myself have
all but written off the /tell chat. We use the busy flag and a linkshell
in lieu of the /tell.

A more positive icon is needed for busy; the "angry fish head" (or whatever it's called)
icon seems to convey a slightly negative or indifferent attitude.

[kidvideo]

A more positive icon is needed for busy; the "angry fish head" (or whatever it's called)
icon seems to convey a slightly negative or indifferent attitude.

/Disagree.

It should be SE's goal for players to not need to set their status to Busy due to their diligent efforts to combat the RMT epidemic.

/rofl! I can't even type that without laughing.

[HeroSamson]

As I said before to stop the RMT would be super easy.

Turn off/on option for friends invites.
Leave the /tell option instead of removing it then general option and shut it off and add another option that allows you only to send private messages to friends-Linkshell members-free company.

This cuts them off the only issue is that they would start spamming shouts but SE should just use a filter for shouts like FFXI that are deemed spam.

Then what would the RMT do? pretty much silenced but then again SE don't wanna lose subscribers which are probably a lot of RMT.

As long as they dont sell gil they cant get in trouble so they will continue to spam regardless of selling it or not.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi HeroSamson,

... SE don't wanna lose subscribers which are probably a lot of RMT....

CCP Games proved that it's to a gaming company's
advantage to purge undesirable client accounts.
The CCP Games security staff not only assessed
the massive damage that RMT was doing to
Eve Online, they also assessed the impact on CPU
overhead and bandwidth.

Accordingly CCP Games launched Operation Unholy Rage banning over 6200 paying accounts.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/08...er-6200-accou/

Their benefit was immediate by freeing up CPU resources
and ridding the game of thousands of RMT bot accounts.
CCP Games is setting the example that the rest of the
gaming industry should follow.

[Nyalia]

The issue with the current "busy" status is that it actually restricts certain aspects of gameplay that have nothing to do with tells. For instance, you automatically respond "no" to all ready checks and you are unable to directly trade with other players while it is up.

The biggest problem with RMT reporting is that, from what I've heard, this is almost exclusively an EN issue. Or, rather, a non-JP issue. It is not a global issue, and it is not an issue on the servers that the developers play on. Because of this, there is less of an incentive for the SE developers to programatically provide us more tools to fight RMT. I'm sure everyone reading this already knows what those tools are:

1. One-click spam reporting, available from the context menu you get when you click on a name, which automatically sends a report and blacklists the offender as well. This would vastly increase the reporting of RMT spam.
   
2. Blacklisting someone blacklists their entire account, not just the one character they are currently using. If they delete the character and create a new one, their new character will still be blacklisted. (This one I really want, and not just for RMTs - there are rude and disruptive players who have made alts and I'm tired of blisting the same player time after time.)
   
3. Allow players to turn tells on/off, or just tells from people not on their friend list. This would be a really nice stop-gap, but SE has incentive not to do this because it does isolate new players, preventing them from communicating with others and thus presenting a more exclusive rather than inclusive experience.
   
4. Allow the blacklisting of someone who sent you a friend request, and have the blacklist function automatically deny the friend request.
   
5. Create a complex series of filters that will detect spam between non-friends and block it, sending a warning back to the user.
   
6. Prevent the sending of tells to people who are not on your friends list if the tell contains a website address.
   
7. Place a limit on the number of people who are not on your friends list that you can send tells to in a given period of time. And/or place a limit on the number of tells you can send in a second. I don't know how rapidly spam-bots send their tells, but I'd expect it to be pretty rapidly. There is no proper use of the tell feature that sends tells to 100 people in a minute.
   
8. Require the completion of a quest to unlock the /tell feature, but rather than making it something simple to code around, you have to answer randomly generated questions? Basically, make it an "in character" capcha, where you are asked stuff like, "could you go ask that at the docks who stares out at the water what his name is? When you know, send me a /tell" or "Could you run down to the markets for me and ask ____ what the cheapest fruit on the market is? Let me know with a /tell when you find out." You have to go and talk to someone else far from the quest giver before you can send the tell and, if you send the wrong response, you have to restart the quest. Since the quest would involve moving around, RMTs couldn't just spam all known possible answers to the NPC. This would at least delay the ability for new bots to send tell spam. Of course it wouldn't eliminate it, but it would increase the time between character creation and spam pretty significantly, giving SE more time to ban their account.

However, I believe SE does not have sufficient incentive to spend the resources to do any of these things because this is a local problem and not a global problem. Instead, the people from SE who would address RMT are the local GMs/sysops/administrators/etc, who do not have the ability or authority to implement solutions that require code changes to the game, and who have limited authority in banning players to ensure only those who are actually breaking the rules are getting banned.

If I remember correctly, even using the ingame form to report RMT is not really supported. I remember reading somewhere that some webpage should be used to report RMT instead. However, to me, leaving the game, finding a website, and then filling out a report is prohibitively time consuming. By the time I get back to game, I'll have two more RMT tells to report. Heck, almost every time I've used the in-game form to report an RMT, by the time I had finished, I already had another RMT tell. I long since gave up reporting them because there are just so many. I get at least 30 tells a day from RMTs, and maintaining my blacklist every week is a real chore. Plus, I keep having to re-blacklist legitimate players who are rude, offensive, and disruptive because I inadvertently un-blacklist them while clearing my list of deleted or banned RMT bots.

At least for me, the problem of RMT spam has escalated recently, and it has gotten worse rather steadily since the day I started playing the game. Or at least, it feels that way. It doesn't matter how many RMT accounts have been banned or how much SE has done to combat this (and I'm sure it's been quite a bit), but it has not caused a noticeable decrease in the amount of spam I've received.

[Eye_Gore]

The issue with the current "busy" status is that it actually restricts certain aspects of gameplay that have nothing to do with tells. For instance, you automatically respond "no" to all ready checks and you are unable to directly trade with other players while it is up.

Could just un-check tells in the chat log filtering menu.

[Nyalia]

Could just un-check tells in the chat log filtering menu.

You could, but that wouldn't let anyone know that you did not receive their tell. Also, does that stop the tell noise?

[Eye_Gore]

You could, but that wouldn't let anyone know that you did not receive their tell. Also, does that stop the tell noise?

It does stop the noise as tells become disabled, or you could shut the noise off if you didn't want to disable tells. If you really need to communicate with someone and they are not within shout distance, you could use the mail system right?

Its not a perfect solution, but it wont disable other aspects.