Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

[Niwashi]

... 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.

A slight delay before their spam begins doesn't decrease the amount of it any. It doesn't give SE any more time to ban the account, because the requests to ban it don't start coming in until after the spam begins.

Also, does that stop the tell noise?

Noises for all types of chat log events (including /tell) are fully configurable. The only difference is that /tell has one of the sounds turned on by default.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

...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.

Yes, I've heard about that elusive webpage and searched for it with no success.

So, the question becomes, "Which of the 3 choices is best for reporting spam bots?"
-- Report RMT advert under the information tab
-- Report harassment under the contact us tab
-- Report cheating under the contact us tab

Arguably, RMT Spamming meets the criteria for all 3.

I'm inclined to construe that "Report harassment," gets read by someone,
or it should get read, but I have no way of knowing.

I sincerely wish that a game-master would log in to this message thread
with the best advice.

Thanks

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

Blacklisting someone blacklists their entire account

Best suggestion yet. Your suggestion is reinforced by the known fact
that spambot softwares constantly delete and re-create their own
spambots many times per minute.

I read somewhere, on a gaming news website, that the RMT generates over 1000 new
ffxiv bot accounts daily, using cheap stolen credit card accounts.

May I add to your suggestion?

There should be a high capacity global blacklist, whereby the first "victim" to get spammed, has the
option to add the spambot name to a global inter-server blacklist to which we can have
the option to subscribe to. Thus, we all benefit from the actions of the first person
to blacklist the spambot owner's entire 8-player account.

Last year I suggested a global blacklist on the ffxivrealm website and was
immediately shot down by a pseudo expert who argued that it would crash
the ffxiv source-code and all the servers.

[314159265358979323846264338327]

There's a 3rd party tool out there (which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) that allows you to block any and all RMT tells while having zero negative effect on legitimate communication. As it lets you set custom filters, you can also stop annoying spammy stuff, FC recruitment messages, etc.

But you know, omg 3rd party tool ban the cheater stopping RMT tells! /s

[Nakaruru]

i personally don't care if someone buys gil or not, but i do care that SE doesn't have a working filter to block tells that are non-stop, unsolicited harassment.

please devote more effort into a solution to block these tells.

[MageBlack]

I think this quote kinda sums up how these RMT people work VS the measures in place.

"The problem with making something Idiot proof is they always find a better idiot."

Meaning, no matter what measures get put in place, they will just work that much harder to find ways around it until the game is so locked down no one can play. Honestly, I play almost every day and in the last 6 months i think i could count on one hand the amount of RMT's i've seen / been spammed by, and my blacklist is under 10 people. Some of you guys must have some of the worst luck ever to have full black lists that you dont manage and constant streams of RMT bots spamming you.

I hope things get better for you.

[Niwashi]

I play almost every day and in the last 6 months i think i could count on one hand the amount of RMT's i've seen / been spammed by

Maybe there's an upside after all to the difficulty of creating new characters on Balmung. The gil-sellers must have as much trouble as everyone else creating characters there, but they're dependent on repeatedly creating lots of characters. Must be pretty hard to do on the really crowded servers.

[MageBlack]

-snip-

I totally get what you are saying. I wasnt trying to poo-poo any of the suggestions in this thread, i do think they are all good ones. I was just trying to understand why it seems like some people get 20+ spams a day while I get next to nothing. I know at one point though RMT was harvesting names straight out of the lodestone because it would let them know when people logged in. Maybe its because I don't respond to them or add any as friends. You stated you did once out of curiosity. It could be any sort of response like that flaggs your account as active so they will be more persistent? I know thats how spam email works, you open it or click a link out of curiosity, boom, you are hooped. I have always made it a point of not accepting a single friend request form someone i did not have prior interactions with.

I do hope they can help you guys out though.

Maybe there's an upside after all to the difficulty of creating new characters on Balmung. The gil-sellers must have as much trouble as everyone else creating characters there, but they're dependent on repeatedly creating lots of characters. Must be pretty hard to do on the really crowded servers.

You know what, this actually makes a lot of sense. I'll have to see how many other people on the heavily restricted servers have my luck.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi MageBlack,

You're cordially invited to the Adamantoise server.

As of about 2 hours ago, I was receiving about 2 / tell spams per minute.
RMT industries are engaging in saturating spamming of our server.

A quick look at the Search Player tab, with search argument
set to Level 1, the spammer list becomes painfully obvious

Typically, Level 1 GLD, ARC and Lancers with the familiar
nonsense names appear. Level 1 Pugilists, with similiar nonsense names
are the ones who never leave the moogle mail point, except now
they do it invisible or down in the floor. Each time you refresh
the Player Search (level 1) a slightly different set of spam bots
appear. Tonight, RMT is maintaining a an army of level 1 spam bots.

As soon as I remove the Busy flag, to join party, etc. a flood of spam
fills the chat box. It goes on and on and on, nonstop. Come see
for yourself.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hello,
A New Low from the real money trader criminals.

/Tell chat spam bots are getting personal now.

Some RMT spam bot owners are injecting victim's names into the
spam message. I just receive one, addressing me, by my
character name. No doubt the spambot softare is now retrieving
the names (not all are doing this yet) and injecting the those names
into their /tell chat harassment.

I forwarded a copy to the game masters under "Report Harassment."
Hours later, a quick check of the Search Players tab (for level 1)
revealed that the "getting personal" spam bot is still active.

I would post that message right here, save it would become a TOS violation if I did.

May I recommend, that the Square Enix staff talk to the CCP Software
Security staff? CCP seems to be ahead of the gaming industry for protecting
their servers and networks.