Discussion: What to do about unwanted game e-mail
By
Acanous_Quietus,
Posted on: 2008-04-21 14:20 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Maybe add an SG Only and Friends Only choice box to allow only receiving mail from them.
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Please stop drinking the funny looking kool-aid and remove your tinfoil hat. It looks silly.
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Come on now, this is a discussion thread, lets not turn it into a flame war please. It was a rambling thought in my post, not an accusation.
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I cannot see how "Are some of these spammers NCSoft employees with little businesses on the side?" can be taken any other way than an accusation.
"Are some of these spammers NCSoft employees with little businesses on the side? That might make sense to me considering they'd have access to the game databases with character names right at their fingertips."
I can't see this statement in any other way than libelous.
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It is possible for adults to discuss game topics without resulting to snarkiness.
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It is also possible for adults to post without unsubstantiated accusations.
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If that was a joke, I apologize for taking it the wrong way. I don't know the poster well enough to know for sure =/
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What I said was a silly way to not calling you out, but you seem to have wanted to press the issue.
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My whole point is that it strikes me as odd that I created a few concept characters and had them logged on just long enough to get into the tutorial, then logged them off. They didn't get played after that because I already had too many other alts to juggle, but I liked the characters so kept them. Sure there's a chance one of these characters could have been spotted by a spammer.
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It was likely it was, or from one of the other publically available databases (as you say: virtueverse, City Information Terminal, Badge-Hunter, Paragonwiki, Group websites, etc). Face it, most characters names are out there. You will have even more once the City Vault becomes public. Then there is the fact that each server can have the same character names but have different people playing them. So Triumph has "Snow Globe" that might mean that Infinity might also have a "Snow Globe" that is owned by another player (actually it does). So they only need to compile the names and then run a script to spam them all in a short time.
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But I wasn't receiving spam mail back before I quit.
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This means nothing at all. You could have been spammed a few minutes after you logged off.
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Again, just to be perfectly clear, I am merely bouncing off ideas and contributing to this discussion. I'm not trying to argue with anyone, prove anyone wrong, or prove my points are more valid than anyone else's.
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I think you would be better served to keep baseless accusations to yourself. If you have proof (not wild conspiracy theories), then submit them. Otherwise, you just end up looking bad.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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The only problem with using the /ignore_spammer command I see is the continuous use of nonsensical names used by most spammers, that makes it often impossible to correctly ignore. For the email that has been flooding our accounts specifically could the Dev's please add an in-game email address (per server) that we can forward the emails to (IE Email Petitions; Pinnacle Spammers; Virtue Petitions, etc). The player base can then easily forward the email along to the support team for their review/actions. Or add a button to the current in-game email structure to forward the email as a petition.
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These are the only ways the spam can be effectively countered. Please make it happen.
Snow, simply because you have chosen to interpret my comment as an accusation does not mean it was one. As the poster of the remark, I am clarifying that it wasn't an accusation. If it were an accusation, I would have begun the statement with an "I believe that NCSoft employees have...." which I did not.
Most of what you've responded with has been helpful, save for the parts where you put a good amount of effort into making me feel like an idiot for sharing my thoughts. My interpretation of your posts has been that people are not allowed to contribute to a discussion unless every word they type and the interpretation of their posts meets your approval. Therefore I will bow out of this discussion thread.
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My interpretation of your posts has been that people are not allowed to contribute to a discussion unless every word they type and the interpretation of their posts meets your approval.
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Not at all, but you should be very careful of what you type. While you may not have said "I believe that NCSoft employees have...." you did imply that they may have.
Go ask someone you know outside the forums (Mentor, Teacher, Boss, Parent), what they would think about the following:
"Are some of these insider traders from the accounting department with little businesses on the side? That might make sense to me considering they'd have access to the books right at their fingertips."
It might not be blatantly stated as an accusation, but it still is one.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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My interpretation of your posts has been that people are not allowed to contribute to a discussion unless every word they type and the interpretation of their posts meets your approval.
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Not at all, but you should be very careful of what you type. While you may not have said "I believe that NCSoft employees have...." you did imply that they may have.
Go ask someone you know outside the forums (Mentor, Teacher, Boss, Parent), what they would think about the following:
"Are some of these insider traders from the accounting department with little businesses on the side? That might make sense to me considering they'd have access to the books right at their fingertips."
It might not be blatantly stated as an accusation, but it still is one.
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I'd have to agree with this sentiment. I read your initial post exactly the same way. At the very least you're casting aspersions on NCNC employees. That may not have been your intent, but that is certainly how your post reads.
I was receiving tells over and over today from some guy standing in outbreak! A level one alphabetic type name telling me and my husband on his account that we have been forcibly disconnected from the server for advertisment! I went to Outbreak and stood there while he continued sending these tells in the spawn spot after create a character. Just had to smack the guy around a bit!
Wish I could reach him in RL!!
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And only pay accounts can use the tell system
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If WoW had done that, I would of simply logged off and uninstalled the game right when I found that out, instead of seeing it to it's conculsion and deciding I "m3h" on WoW with the trial account.
As it was, being unable to answer questions I knew the answers to in broadcasts, etc, was annoying in the extreme. I say no to this.
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.
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...but when you look deeper it has too great a chance for abuse. People could report players that just tick them off ingame, possibly causing an unfair, unwarranted cacelation of their account. Yes, devs would try to review the emails...but in truth, there is only so much time in a day.
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No, the developers would not try to review the emails.
NCSoft has a support staff for just this kind of thing - and they check every petition out.
The only way I can think of that gets someone banned without review is a credit card doing a charge back against NCSoft, as then it is assumed to be Credit Card Theft. And then your account is banned irrevocably, as far as I know.
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.
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I'm praying they are removing email availability from trial accounts. That'd go a long way to stop the spammers, I'm sure.
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A simple yet brilliant solution.
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And that might be what they are doing - but they don't have the system set up to differentiate between trial and subscription yet (only the billing does, and that just tells the game "Active" or "Inactive".)
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.
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As for the DJs using the email system, what makes the in game email so special that requests /have/ to be sent using that method? In game tells already handle communication so why is in game email so vitally important? Also all the DJs have out of game emails that could handle requests as well, and far better than the in game email system as most normal email providers these days have spam blockers.
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Tells have one huge weakness - The Chat system. New tells make the system scroll to the bottom - there is no easy way to "bookmark" where you are at in them, and if you get enough, they start disappearing into the void. Emails don't force you to scroll, you can simply delete them as you do them, and don't disappear like tells do. The DJs frequently do stuff in game as they DJ - using the in game email lets them be active in game without having to go and switch back and forth between in-game and out-of-game.
Most importantly, using the in-game email gives the LISTENERS an easy way to request songs.
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.
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So again, I wonder exactly how spammers are getting ahold of character names when they aren't around to be logged in even occasionally.
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And some tha tare bored probably try /friend. Which not only tells you that they exists, but what side they are on ( as you cannot befriend an enemy.
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.
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Do not allow tells (or emails) from any player who has been flagged as a spammer via the /ignore_spammer command.
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The amount of human misery such a griefing tool would allow makes me salivate like a oil-company exec looking at their bonuses while having such understanding for the difficulties of the poor/lower/middle classes.
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.
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As for the DJs using the email system, what makes the in game email so special that requests /have/ to be sent using that method? In game tells already handle communication so why is in game email so vitally important? Also all the DJs have out of game emails that could handle requests as well, and far better than the in game email system as most normal email providers these days have spam blockers.
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Tells have one huge weakness - The Chat system. New tells make the system scroll to the bottom - there is no easy way to "bookmark" where you are at in them, and if you get enough, they start disappearing into the void. Emails don't force you to scroll, you can simply delete them as you do them, and don't disappear like tells do.
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I make a "Private messages" tab for all my characters for this reason. The only in game channel in that tab is private messages, it can store 1,000 messages before things are lost.
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The DJs frequently do stuff in game as they DJ - using the in game email lets them be active in game without having to go and switch back and forth between in-game and out-of-game.
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Ok, so which is it: Are they in game doing stuff, or switching back and forth between in-game and out-of-game? Curiously enough, I think they would have to switch out of game to change tracks, etc anyways.
This still doesn't negate out of game email, which can play a sound letting the DJ know.
Still trying to see a desperate need for the in game email.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
About time! One thing I hate about MMOs are all the spam, and pr0n spam? Never heard of that, and yeah I am glad this will be addressed! I am sick of sending like 20+ petitions a night because of them lol, I say pvp should be allowed so when we find the spammers we can camp them lol
I made the mistake of telling a spammer that I was reporting him some time ago, and ever since then they have been harassing my with multiple spam mails every day to punish me. I have reported them for this over and over and over again as both spamming and harrassment and nothing has ever been done about it. I gave up on reporting them a long time ago. Also, doesn't the ignore command apply to the character, not the user? They use a different toon every time, with names that are just random combonations of letters and numbers- obviously just made to spam then deleted to avoid getting caught. I never thought to use the ignore command for emails, but if it does apply to all characters made by that account then I'll use it. Still, it would be nice to see something get done about it for a change.
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I was receiving tells over and over today from some guy standing in outbreak! A level one alphabetic type name telling me and my husband on his account that we have been forcibly disconnected from the server for advertisment! I went to Outbreak and stood there while he continued sending these tells in the spawn spot after create a character. Just had to smack the guy around a bit!
Wish I could reach him in RL!!
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I don't get those... unless someone sent them that tell as a joke and their bot program screwed up and took it and started sending it out instead of their advertisment. Weird.
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I made the mistake of telling a spammer that I was reporting him some time ago, and ever since then they have been harassing my with multiple spam mails every day to punish me. I have reported them for this over and over and over again as both spamming and harrassment and nothing has ever been done about it. I gave up on reporting them a long time ago. Also, doesn't the ignore command apply to the character, not the user? They use a different toon every time, with names that are just random combonations of letters and numbers- obviously just made to spam then deleted to avoid getting caught. I never thought to use the ignore command for emails, but if it does apply to all characters made by that account then I'll use it. Still, it would be nice to see something get done about it for a change.
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Yes, ignore_spammer with flag the entire account, however as it's just a trial and they get a new one as soon as it's been banned (actually probably before), there's not much that can be done.
Really, I again say... It sucks, but they really need to put severe limitations on trial accounts. Sucks for the legitmate users, but I understood when I played a trial of World of Warcraft, so I'd like to hope the majority of legit players would understand and...
Doing /ignore_spammer doesnt do much on our end as they can change their names. They seem to write down our names cause I started playing on hide and I still ge emails and tells.
Hopefully when i12 comes out this is solved, no idea how long that will be, but if someone does /ignore_spammer, how about it popping up in request or as a system warning to everyone ??? This way, they also see it and now know that everyone is putting them on ignore.
I definetly think trial accounts should not have access to emails or tells.
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I definetly think trial accounts should not have access to emails or tells.
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E-Mails, no, but tells can be important for the people who are inviting their friends and teaming. Think if you couldn't send a tell to an online friend you had for a while from a chat room and when you try to send a tell or he tried to send one to you you see something like 'TRIAL ACCOUNT! CANNOT SEND OR RECEIVE TELLS!' That's BS... Bad idea for the tell thing, IMO.
With Love,
Me! <3
My Characters
Story Arcs Looking for Feedback:
Serving Vengeance:#419748 (For Villains/Vigilantes) (Drama/Mystery) (Viable Within Canon)
Dark Moon Rising: #13170 (For Heroes/Vigilantes) (Horror/Mystery) (Non-Canon)
I believe WoW has trial accounts set to not be able to send tells to anyone except people that have sent a tell to the toon.
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I wish there were some kind of checkbox that would auto-delete email from people that are not on my global or server friend list.
Lewis
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I think thats the answer to the problem
The Legendary Cosmological Prince Reigar 53rd Illusion Control/Storm Summoning/Primal Forces Mastery/Incarnate
It's a dark and story night. That means something bad is happening out there
I've got a solution to spammers. It starts with an "S" and ends in "litting their throats." 
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The only problem with using the /ignore_spammer command I see is the continuous use of nonsensical names used by most spammers, that makes it often impossible to correctly ignore. For the email that has been flooding our accounts specifically could the Dev's please add an in-game email address (per server) that we can forward the emails to (IE Email Petitions; Pinnacle Spammers; Virtue Petitions, etc). The player base can then easily forward the email along to the support team for their review/actions. Or add a button to the current in-game email structure to forward the email as a petition.
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This is an excellant idea. I don't recall ever posting until now and only because the spammers upset my enjoyment of the game so much. I understand, by rumor only, that blizzard has a court ordered injunction against spammers is that not an option for NC Soft?
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My whole point is that it strikes me as odd that I created a few concept characters and had them logged on just long enough to get into the tutorial, then logged them off.
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They have characters in the tutorial watching the zone-in point. Also have people watching Atlas/Galaxy for toons that skip the tutorial. If you make a toon while one of them is watching, chances are your name has been noted.
Sad fact.