Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[KisaiTenshi]

Thanks for your link. I'd like to say I fully understand, but I'm not sure I do. xD

For me, the problem is they aren't using those symbols to pad their urls. I'm saying they are straight out writing their urls cleanly and plainly for all to see and understand, because they are allowed. I guess my lack of knowledge hurts me, but I assumed with how swear words could get filtered out in XI with asterisks, even with spaces and stuff between the letters, the same could be done for reported urls. :/ I know my request was nothing new, but it is extremely frustrating to see these bots get away with blatantly advertising with no setbacks whatsoever.

Because they go from www.example.com to example.com to e x a m p l e . c o m to "$.com Google $=example" , so straight up blocking one doesn't block the other 3 examples, to say nothing of the cyrillic and greek substitutions. So you also have to consider шшш.example.℃0㎡ as well as "еxample.cоm" (the e and the o are cyrillic, but on your screen they look the same as latin)

[SonTensei]

Also SE should limit the number of /tells sent in a minute, or the people sent tells in a minute. Also should be limited the number of characters created per day and keep a week delay on process of deletion of characters, so that way it will prevent characters created -spam -deleted to avoid catch.

cap /tells per minute = okay good idea
cap number of characters created per day = no way, thats the easiest way to piss off new legitimate customers --- never will happen.
week delay on deletion of characters = why should this matter? avoid catch? really? couldnt they just flag the account rather than the character?

It is in SE's best interest to ban as many gil seller accounts as possible. those people need to buy new accounts which in turn sells more copies of the game for SE and they make money on it!!!!

If you ban the buyer who's to say they just dont quit and then you lose the sub fee = buyers rarely get banned

[AlphaFox]

cap /tells per minute = okay good idea
cap number of characters created per day = no way, thats the easiest way to piss off new legitimate customers --- never will happen.
week delay on deletion of characters = why should this matter? avoid catch? really? couldnt they just flag the account rather than the character?

Why would anyone need to make multiple characters a day? I can understand 1, maybe 2 but you make it sound like making 5+ a day is common for a lot of people. =/

[Amiaze]

It is in SE's best interest to ban as many gil seller accounts as possible. those people need to buy new accounts which in turn sells more copies of the game for SE and they make money on it!!!!

According to their updates, they do ban the accounts.

Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 35
・Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

Still, it makes me wonder how these people are getting into the game if their accounts have been suspended...unless they're running multiple bots at once that don't get logged out when an account is suspended?

[AlphaFox]

Still, it makes me wonder how these people are getting into the game if their accounts have been suspended...unless they're running multiple bots at once that don't get logged out when an account is suspended?

Sadly as people keep buying gil, that gives them money to buy new accounts. Think of it like this. If one person buys gil (and I dont know the prices of the gil per $) that pays for them to make 8 more RMT spammers on 8 different servers getting the cheapest account possible and even if they are not able to load the game up 8 times on one computer or however they do it, it still pays to replace the account with just one sale. If buyers stop, eventually RMT will give up cus they are not making money but sadly that is not going to happen unless buyers are openly seen being banned. Posting bans on a forum post that I would say a majority of people ingame never see or visit instills no threat to them.

[HighMarshal]

I have gotten RMT spam with a brand new character, in the initial cutscene on the boat going to Limsa before I even have control of the character that I just created.

[Teleste]

Yes RMT must be addressed. Immediately. Thank you SE

[SonTensei]

According to their updates, they do ban the accounts.

I dont think they ban many buyers. In fact I ran in a merc LS alot during 2.x and customers would come up with 10 million, 50 million even to the point of one customer said "hold on before we run i need to talk to my friend"... this guy never got banned yet. after MONTHS! if they banned buyers those people probably wouldnt buy a new game and start over, they'd quit and SE would lose $ from Subscription fees...
They do ban the sellers/farmers and make a profit doing so, Those companies get accounts banned, then make new accounts buying new copies of the game. So if they ban 10k accounts per month and sell the game over for say 30 bucks, they are essentially generating an additional $300k in sales per month or 3.6 million per year... its in SE best interest to let sellers sell man

[416to305]

It's not that hard, there just needs to be an option to "Block /tell's from players under level 10" or let you pick a level. And I agree with the last poster, unless the RMT is really messing up the game economy, then it's in their best interest to let it happen. If a player is at 50, been playing for months then tries to buy gil and gets banned, do you think they will start over again? They probably will say screw that, and never touch the game, resulting in $12.99 less per month now.

[Teryaani]

I dont think they ban many buyers.

I suspect you're right about this. Unless someone is conspicuous in their behavior (i.e. talking about it in game or somewhere that can be associated back to them), I'd guess they have somewhere near 0% chance of getting a ban.

one customer said "hold on before we run i need to talk to my friend"... this guy never got banned yet. after MONTHS!

WOW. I take it he never actually said he was buying right? He just used that "friend" euphemism to get around that?

They do ban the sellers/farmers and make a profit doing so, Those companies get accounts banned, then make new accounts buying new copies of the game. So if they ban 10k accounts per month and sell the game over for say 30 bucks, they are essentially generating an additional $300k in sales per month or 3.6 million per year... its in SE best interest to let sellers sell man

I think that's part of the reason that so much of what they do involves compromised accounts to keep their costs down.

On an only tangentially related note, the spam advertising/friend request strategy seems like a self-defeating strategy to me in the long run. It calls attention to them and based on the messages I receive, none seem like they would be coherent enough for the average user to actually act on.