Quote Originally Posted by DreadRabbit View Post
If they could just add a filter that stops any /tell with a list of the most common offending website ads that would stop a lot. I don't know about other servers, but on Zalera it seems to be three main websites that are constantly at it.

I need to take screenshots as those names probably aren't accurate, but just about every /tell I get is from the same circle of 3-4 gil selling sites. And the pvp one puts spaces between the letters to make it harder to track. It can't be that hard to code that sort of detecting filter, could it? (honest question).
It wouldn't be hard to code, but for it to work they'd need to continuously keep updating their list of blocked "words". Spammers get around this sort of thing by using weird characters in place of the real ones, like writing "www" as "ωщω" or writing ".com" as "• Ç Ω /\/\" and similar variants on their main name, anything that looks close enough for a reader to figure out what it was intended to say.

In order to be effective, a text block list would have to keep being updated with whichever new workaround version the spammers start using. It turns into a race between how fast they can change the text in their ads and how fast SE can update the blocking. So this sort of thing can slow the spam down each time it has to be updated, but then some will get through next time it's SE's turn to need updating for their block list. If maintained well, it can produce some significant improvement, but not a cure.

We used to see this sort of weird spelling in the spam here (apparently from gilsellers assuming the normal versions would be blocked), but lately they haven't even been bothering with that. SE apparently isn't blocking even the standard fully-spelled-out versions of the website names.