Possible anti-RMT idea?

[myahele]

Not sure how these will work in a mmo, but what if they implemented those weird confirmation numbers you have to enter to prove you are a person?

Though I think the best immediate/short term solution it to limit how many character's you can make. As it stands you can make 32 characters max.

I can understand people having alts as mules and such. But is it necessary to have 32?

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Myahele,

...those weird confirmation numbers you have to enter to prove you are a person?

A sophisticated CAPCHA requirement pinned to each character's login
might slow down the bot's process enough that the bot owner would
have to enter the CAPTCHA requirement each time he cycles a spambot
in and out of the game. CAPCHA's aren't foolproof. Sophisticated
hacks can circumvent a CAPTCHA requirement, particularly where
spambot owners are diddling with the data stream in the first place.

I'm not saying not to do it. It comes with the caveat that
spambot softwares may circumvent it via code injection.

We need to keep in mind that RMT criminals are cycling over
1000 spambot accounts per server per day (according to
Reddit), and constantly creating new paying accounts using
cheap stolen credit card numbers. They do all this in software
with minimum human intervention.

STEP-1. Square Enix leadership needs to recognize the
magnitude of the server-side network security threat.
And this is not being done.

[Miakisu]

I suggested that in another thread we have SE GM's just take a look at when very large sums of money are transferred between players. Flag up when a couple hundred thousand to million (or whatever number they want) to assist with catching cheaters.

[Avenger]

OP is suggesting the honeypot idea (also used vs. malware, e-mail spam, etc.) and SE should certainly do it if they aren't already!

I am also leaning toward the whitelist or communications prefs approach:

Friends can: [√]tell [√]invite [√]invite to alliance [√] invite to FC ...
or
Allow /tell from: [√]friends [√]party [√]fc [√]linkshell ... [√]whitelist [ ]spammers [ ]anyone
...

The main disadvantage is it would probably kill off random global /tell, which is a nice feature if it's to/from real players and not RMT spambots.