Discussion: Zero Tolerance RMT Tells and Spam

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in reply to virago's message how about instead of just a rmt button how about making it more helpful by making it a spammer button so it can cover ALL spammers, i'm getting spammed for more than just RMT, getting danged tired of those tells saying please join team long enough for getting a higher bodycount in mission. but don't intend to let you enter mish without getting kicked from team.
UGH those people tick me off but i believe those are the ones who farm for illegit purposes.

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Unless they are continually asking you - even after you say no - then it isn't spamming.

If they keep on spamming you with it, however, then it is HARASSMENT. Like the already existing radio button in the petition window.

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Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net

Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.

So, here's a top ten question that hasn't been answered yet. As of this morning, I received a most interested email in my box. apparently, the spammers have now moved to email. /ignore_spammer doesn't really work so well on someone who logs in, creates a mass-email, and then logs off after deleting the account, logs in with a new user name, and so on.

The admin/support believes that the information has already been addressed. and have referred me back to this thread, stating that it's already taken care of.

All I'm curious to know is, most of the other MMORPGs have a designated 'spam-box' that you can just forward junk email to, at no charge, and I'm wondering if CoH/CoV has a similar box, so they can have physical PROOF of the issue.

-Warbunny

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[ QUOTE ]
So, here's a top ten question that hasn't been answered yet. As of this morning, I received a most interested email in my box. apparently, the spammers have now moved to email. /ignore_spammer doesn't really work so well on someone who logs in, creates a mass-email, and then logs off after deleting the account, logs in with a new user name, and so on.

The admin/support believes that the information has already been addressed. and have referred me back to this thread, stating that it's already taken care of.

All I'm curious to know is, most of the other MMORPGs have a designated 'spam-box' that you can just forward junk email to, at no charge, and I'm wondering if CoH/CoV has a similar box, so they can have physical PROOF of the issue.

-Warbunny

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I wouldn't say the issue has been resolved by any stretch of the imagination, but we've been told they're working on a way to reduce in game email spam.

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I'm curious why there is a mass e-mail capability anymore? I mean, the have GMOTD for in-game announcements, they've never used mass e-mail - so why have it?

How can 1 player e-mail people I've never logged in on in months? I was not on that toon, I haven't been on that toon - but I still got an e-mail or six...

Obviously there is either a global or wildcard e-mail thing, remove that. Make e-mail from server-player to server-player. No globals, no cross-server, etc.

Better yet, REMOVE e-mail from the game. Sure the 10 people that actually use it might be upset, but the 100,000 that get spams will be happy.

-r0y

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"Look how many pages of crap are in this thread already!" -r0y to all threads on these forums.

What I do not get is how they are actually making money off of this game. Influence/infamy is so easy to get in this game now it is not even (and I kind of like it this way) funny.

Levels are not so hard to obtain on your own (they still take awhile, but not so long that one should feel like they need to actually *pay* for a Power Level) that people should resort to paying these [Censored]. So what gives, are these guys *really* making that much money that they simply will not go away?

I think we are not looking in all the right places to prevent this. I think if you are found out that you actually paid one of these creeps, not only should the spammers be banned from the game, but I think the spammer's client should be banned as well. It would detour anyone from wanting to even mess with these guys in the first place.

Just a thought.

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<QR>

This is my last outcry.

I won't likely post about this anymore as I am just sick and tired of these jerks. I no longer bother with using /ignore_spammer, I no longer bother filling out a petition, In short, I just no longer bother...

I just no longer want to take 10 minutes every time I log in each character to basically what amounts to "sweep for spyware" every time I want to play one of my characters. I've had it.

This may give the Devs a false sense that the problem is lessening, I want to emphatically say, IT IS NOT.

But, as I said, I am just so sick of this crap that I just dont give a rat's you-know-what. about this. They will either fix this problem before I leave, or after. They just need to decide how many people they are going to let get pissed off enough to quit before something is actually done about it.

That is my take on this, and like I said, I just don't care anymore.

Yours truly, a disgruntled and fed up player/paying customer.

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"All that crap is grey to me, no XP." - Positron 5/15/05 8:36am . . . The world stopped and silence ensued except for the sound of a crying infant off in the distance.

"Everyone needs to chill the hell out." - BackAlleyBrawler 11/13/08 3:26pm . . . Geeks around the world stopped and blinked.

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I'm curious why there is a mass e-mail capability anymore? I mean, the have GMOTD for in-game announcements, they've never used mass e-mail - so why have it?

How can 1 player e-mail people I've never logged in on in months? I was not on that toon, I haven't been on that toon - but I still got an e-mail or six...

Obviously there is either a global or wildcard e-mail thing, remove that. Make e-mail from server-player to server-player. No globals, no cross-server, etc.

Better yet, REMOVE e-mail from the game. Sure the 10 people that actually use it might be upset, but the 100,000 that get spams will be happy.

-r0y

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there is no in game mass E-mail function.

There are however external applications that can send a script to a chat window

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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

Granted it's annoying, but no more so than some n00b pestering you for a PL.

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Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit

In your experience, maybe it's not lessening. Sorry that's the case for you. But in mine, it's all but gone. I got my first /tell last night, the first one in like 3 weeks. Your experience is not universal.

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Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed

I average 3-4 tells a night (2 hours), and have characters wil 3-8 in game e-mails when I log into them. Some of those characters I log into multiple times a week, some have been absent for months. This is across all the servers. Every single one of them.

I use an out of game macro program to /ignore_spammer the /tells. I just delete the emails because there is no way (and no point) to /ignore_spammer.

/ignore_spammer only targets that character and does NOT ignore the account. So, even if I ignore one of the characters 5 minutes later I am getting another tell from the same account.

I've given up on /petitions because I would not be able to actually PLAY THE GAME if I petitioned every instance of this. It is getting out of hand.

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Its tough to prevent RMT tells/in-game emails because of the way spammers get their "message" out.

They sign up for free 14-day (or however long) trials. Use random account names and random toon names, then log on to those lvl 1 toons, paste their advertisements into tells/emails, and start spamming.

Banning those accounts isn't ultimately a solution, because they can keep creating new ones for free. There's no way to stop that though, because a lot of new players join after enjoying a trial, so the trials can't be yanked.

I've suggested in the past using some kind of content filtering for the in-game chat/IM/email systems, but even that would be really tough without someone to maintain an up-to-date blacklist and characteristic profile for RMT-related spam... and that's a full time job right there. Just look at commercial anti-spam products... there's a LOT of info to maintain in order to be and remain an effective solution.

So ultimately, the RMT issue is the same as with any spam issue for any messaging system. It exists, and its not going away, but hopefully its days are numbered.

I personally have gotten sick of petitioning EVERY SINGLE tell I get for RMT, but I still /ignore_spammer them. Its better than doing nothing, and if I do it, that means that there is some other player out there who won't have to because the account (throw-away account though it is) will be banned before they can vomit out much spam to other players.

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I agree; there is no torture cruel enough to repay these people.

My worst problems are the in-game tells. I play very late at night /early a.m. Central. Some nights, I'll get seven or eight of these things. I /ignore_spammer and report each and every time, as annoying as it is.

The problem is, though, I have to stop the team so I can make the report (thus inconveniencing several others) and it doesn't seem to help. The only thing that seems to work is /hide, and I don't want to be forced to /hide just because some Chinese gold farmer is being a snert.

My biggest concern is one which others have voiced, which is, people are getting so sick of having to stop playing to report it that they're ceasing to report. As such, I'm afraid it'll seem as if the spamming's going down. Let me tell you that it's not.

I don't want to see the in-game e-mail removed, though. It can be a very useful tool for a supergroup, if nothing else. The spam in-box sounds like a great idea, as does the add to the profanity filter that won't allow certain website addresses to pass. After all, the one thing they -can't- afford to change, for marketing purposes, is the name of their websites.

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Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so! -Elastigirl

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A Liberty-based bastion, seven years strong.

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After all, the one thing they -can't- afford to change, for marketing purposes, is the name of their websites.

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I used to think that filtering the URL of the site would be enough, and I think it would still have some impact, but there's a trick that a lot of spammers use (not just MMO RMT spammers) to get around string/text filters. They can add spaces or characters to a name/URL and still make it understandable, either intuitively as in my first example below [NOTE: I am using a made-up URL to prevent the RMT spammers from getting any more exposure] or by adding a simple sentence the describes whatever character they're using so break up the string.

For instance, a site called

"www.ibspammer.com"

could be spelled out in a tell/email as

"w w w . i b s p a m m e r . c o m"

and they could leave it to the recipient to figure it out (most web users who want to look into an RMT site will know to spell that URL out in a browser address bar without spaces just by looking at it.)

They could also do something like the following

"www.ibspa-mmer.com (pls remove the - when typing into your browser)".

This might confuse the less adept web surfer or one who has a hard time reading english, but most players could easily figure out what a spammer is trying to say here. An extra character like the one in this example could be put anywhere in the string... and it doesn't have to be a hyphen. It could be literally any character and therefore easily defeat a string/text based filter, by just changing the part of the URL that the extra character is placed or the character used.

The problem w/ spammers is that money motivates them, and apparently there are people lazy enough to pay someone real money to give them in-game currency which is very easily attained on one's own just by PLAYING THE GAME.

My hope would be that the CoX population at large would know better, and educate those who might be considering using the "services" of an RMT spammer, because nothing drives away spammers like a dry well, but I know that the spammers wouldn't be pushing so hard if there players weren't biting the worms on the spam hooks, as it were.

The best way to filter out spam in any messaging system is to take a multi-layered approach. The problem with that is that multi-layered protection (including string/text filtering, behavior/characteristics/heuristics, AI smart and fast enough to analyze every message in real time, etc... as in lots of the enterprise-class commercially available anti-spam solutions) is expensive and has to be not only trained, but maintained.

I'm not saying its impossible, but its not an easy task. On the upside, there are fewer ways for spammers to get their message across in CoX than there are in commercial messaging platforms. They can't send emails or tells as graphics, so that eliminates a big hole, and there's a limited number of character sets they can use, not to mention there cannot be any attachments of any kind in in-game email, so that helps as well.

Figured I'd end my post at least a somewhat positive note.

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As a techie, I have my own fun at the spammers' expense.

We all know which sites are the biggest offenders. So I went online, tracked down which registrar handles the domains, who hosts their websites, and who hosts their email.

Then I let all three companies know that the site is linked to a spamming campaign (and I have the screenshots to prove it), and request an investigation into the matter.

Two weeks later, I follow up on it (and provide additional evidence if necessary).

This is the 'polite' way of me messing with them.

Of course, the 'not-so-polite' way is me tracking down the email addresses of the sites' owners, and putting them on the Spammer Hall of Shame page on my website, which is HEAVILY trafficked (and trolled, and spidered, probably for folks looking to spam).

And yes, I also cheerfully handed ALL of this information over to PlayNC's support team (as well as where I got it so they'd know I wasn't making it up) and told them if they needed additional help, I'd be happy to provide it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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The real issue really is lazy people.

I got 8 million on one DA run, took me about two hours. I think anyone who uses these services needs to be perma-banned from the game.

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The Case Against Hardcase- arc id: 438272

Clowning Around- arc id: 408447

Down the Rabbit Hole- arc id: 193055

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The problem w/ spammers is that money motivates them, and apparently there are people lazy enough to pay someone real money to give them in-game currency which is very easily attained on one's own just by PLAYING THE GAME.

My hope would be that the CoX population at large would know better, and educate those who might be considering using the "services" of an RMT spammer, because nothing drives away spammers like a dry well, but I know that the spammers wouldn't be pushing so hard if there players weren't biting the worms on the spam hooks, as it were.

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QFT. As this thread demonstrates, the game population in general does know better, but as mind-boggling as it is, there are people out there who are indeed that lazy. If we want to find a permanent solution, it will have to deal with the demand. But unfortunately, that is easier said than done, because of simple human nature. Wherever there are groups of people, there will be bad people among the good.

As for reporting spammers, I use the /ignore_spammer command if I get a tell, but I don't usually send a follow-up petition. Wasn't the whole point of /ignore_spammer to be a more efficient way of reporting them without having to stop whatever you're doing and open the petition window?

But /ignore_spammer seems to be working well to stop the tells. It's been a long time since I've gotten a RMT tell. Problem is, they're using the in-game e-mail system now. For that, I think a simple "report spam" button on the e-mail window could do for e-mails what /ignore_spammer does for tells. But that still has its problems, too. By the time someone sees the spam e-mail to report it, the account it came from could already be long gone.

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Currently published Mission Architect arcs:
Arc ID# 70466: From the Abyss.
Arc ID# 403174: The Serpent's Revenge.
Arc ID# 534236: The Clockwork Angel.

that's my thoughts as well.

But, here's the thing.

All of these 'throwaway accounts' have to come from SOMEWHERE. There has to be a history on them. What IP address was used to connect, what NCSoft account was created to house them, what GAME TRIAL CODE was used to register.

If NCSOFT was to work hand-in-hand with fileplanet or gamespot or whatever other agency is providing the trial codes/download software, they could easily take all the information already present in their systems, and zero in on the sources.

of course there's the possibility that these PL/goldfarm sites are actually recruiting noobish players so send the spam, possibly even paying them. A "distributed promotional campaign" so to speak.

Personally, my view is, not only should a spammer's account get shut off, but their IP address and their method of payment should also be locked out, never to darken NCSoft's door again.

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"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."

(a) Remove e-mail, or, better yet, remove e-mail access from trial accounts.
(b) Throttle trial accounts so they can only send $FOO tells per $BAR interval, unless the tells are sent to a member of their global friends list, SG, etc. Throttling would apply to public channels to prevent the abuse of broadcast / etc by the RMT agents.

Until NCSoft takes these steps, the problem will persist. Whether NCSoft sees the use of development time for these goals as being financially worthwhile is another matter entirely. Undoubtedly, if and when they make changes, players will complain about the restrictions. C'est la vie. As it stands, I can't get worked up over the issue: The volume of spam I receive in CoX is trivial compared to what I see in EVE and WoW. Given the size of the playerbase, I suppose it's relatively poor target for RMT agencies, dark blessing though that may be.

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Of course there are many ways to obtain influence in the mass quantities that the spammers purportedly are sitting on and are trying to sell. For my money though, it seems to me that an obvious place to start to investigate the originators of the spam campaign is to review the daily kill boards and work from there. There are several characters on Virtue (I only play there so I cannot speak for the other servers) that regularly show up there with fantastically high numbers of kills/damage dealt.

I am not saying that all of these characters/accounts are guilty of participating in spamming/farming for RMT but I would bet money that 1-3 months of data from these daily kill boards would contain at least some of the characters/accounts that are. It would be worthwhile, IMO, for the powers that be to gather this data and work through it. It seems to be a way to make a relatively short list of accounts that are potentially participating in these enterprises. It should also be relatively easy to identify the non-offenders.

I would also bet money that several Fire/Kins are involved. I have suspicions based on my in game experience of who some of them are but I won't post them here.

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[ QUOTE ]
remove e-mail access from trial accounts.

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THERE it is, right there.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

...on a side note...

Duuuude... I want your avitar to have my babies!

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

Or just allow users to check a box saying "recieve only e-mails from global/server/SG friends" heck, maybe even an option for tells, too. "Receive tells from players with XX months of playtime" or paid account, etc.

Then if a 14-day (or under 3-month) n00b sends me a tell or e-mail, it'll get blocked.

Sure, after 3-months and paying for the account they could try it, and get reported and the account cancelled...

-r0y

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"Look how many pages of crap are in this thread already!" -r0y to all threads on these forums.

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remove e-mail access from trial accounts.

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THERE it is, right there.

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I recently tries a trial of LOTRO and they have it set up that you can not send tells to other players until you have a full account. Maybe we could do both.

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Shadowy Presence - Absolutely, positively worse than playing a Kheldian... --Myrmydon

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Or just allow users to check a box saying "recieve only e-mails from global/server/SG friends" heck... "

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That much I might agree with. I've gotten two in-game spam emails now on top of the tells. Any way to make it stop would be greatly appreciated.

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[ QUOTE ]
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remove e-mail access from trial accounts.

[/ QUOTE ]

THERE it is, right there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to chime in and let you all know that we are well aware of the angst unwanted solicitations cause. We see the report s of the accounts being banned for engaging in such behavior (which the use of the /ignore_spammer command streamlines for our Support, so thank you to those who make use of it).

Currently, one of the hurdles in addressing e-mail spam, such as the suggestion quoted above, is the fact that the game doesn't know if you are on a Trial or Regular account. That's all taken care of by the log-in process and previously the game hasn't had a need to know about that. We're working to change that, as well as a few other things with log-in, but as it involves a lot of moving parts, it's not a "quick fix," unfortunately.

Long story short - we hear you and hate the spammers as much as you do. Thanks for your patience as we work to put more roadblocks up against them.

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Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

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