Can't we do anything about Spammers
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2010-11-21 17:39 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're about 5 years behind the curve, if not more. Game developers have been tracking and investigating this stuff for well over a half decade-- and the techniques you mention were old and limited even back then. RMT has grown into a multimillion- HUNDREDS of millions by some accounts- despite that.|
Originally Posted by Rosen_ice
You don't tackle the problem by banning / deleting the trial accounts that do the spamming...you tackle it by getting rid of the level 50's they have which are feeding the money.
All the devs need to do is go to the websites and purchase a couple dollars worth of influence. Once the money is sent to them, they go and start tracking it back through the characters to see where it is coming from (along with looking into patterns of people who are playing with those farmers *they probably have little groups which they opperate with, maybe even supergroups on obscure servers*) Then, they keep doing this and after a while they run out of the high characters they have which are feeding all the massive amounts of influence. The devs have the power and tools needed to tackle the problem... they just need to put someone on it. |
1) There are ways to launder things-- to obfuscate the source and to even make you think it came from somewhere else. Tracing isn't easy. All the limits put on the trial accounts is simply an effort to eliminate the biggest and easiest ways to address the issue.
2) The same thing that makes them able to prohibit RMT is the same thing that makes them unable to "Just Buy Inf"- those sites have their own TOS, and entering into an agreement with them (by buying inf) when they had no intent to honor it opens them up to fraud complaints too.
3) Investigation takes time and money. Let's set up a sting operation, buy inf, go online, meet the guy. Trace the logs back to where he got the money... through all the already-deleted accounts, market transactions (a favorite thing to do is to list an item on the market and then buy it, so there's no direct "transfer." Sell some legit stuff too, and it makes it even harder to trace), double-depth transactions (never have your 50's automatically transfer to the bag-man- do it through multiple fronts).
Pretend that you go through this and you've got maybe 4 names that you're 75% sure are farmers. Odds are one is an innocent caught up in the racket. You talk to legal, you get peer review, you decide to ban all 4 and deal with the fallout, then you deal with the CSR calls as you try to make things right for the one innocent. How many man-hours do you think that wasted? At what pay scale?
It adds up fast.
4) What makes you think there are level 50's behind this. We have wentworths. With a little patience, I've had multiple alts easily making 150mil/day EACH-- just buying and reselling & following some of Nethergoat's informative market guides. Did that for about a week before I got bored, but someone doing this as a job doesn't need to run a single mission.
That also means that when one of THOSE accounts are banned, they have less downtime getting set up again. There's less time lost leveling.
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Er, /macro Spam petition Spam ?|
Originally Posted by Red Valkyrja
Quinch, could you be so kind as to post that macro?
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The macro itself just pops up the petition window, you have to copypaste the text yourself, but it does remove the need to type stuff out manually.
Was away for the holidays, but felt the need to respond. I personally would not use an INF farmer. I am pretty fond of CoX, and do not want to get banned. The point I was trying to make, but didn't because I was in a hurry, is that the economy stinks, and I think a large part of that is because of the inf still being purchased in this game.
Yes there are ways around any thing, but I agree it is stupid to attempt them. I don't think all of the inf they sell is from just playing/farming the game though. I would be t a large bit of it comes from stuff they sell in the AE. Nothing can be done about it though, unless we stop purchasing high value items there, then we would be passing on the things we enjoy and that would suck more. 
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Couple of days ago I was in Atlas Park at WW's. Spammer in full glory wearing the most hideous of outfits. Talked to GOD and lo and behold, he disappeared within 5 mins as I sat perched on the stage watching. Felt good to know I was heard by GOD.
Gold Spammers make me nuts.
Here's my 2 cents:
1) /ignore doesn't work. The spammers change their names every day. I'll be darned if I am going to spend my time ignoring toons for behaviour that shouldn't be occurring in the first place. Its treating the symptom, not the disease.
2) I don't hate the RMT's, just their constant spams IN THE GAME.
3) They're targeting the new users in AP on the bigger servers.
4) I've heard people defend them. Its not logical, but they do.
5) They also advertise power levelling. This means they have lvl 50 toons out there and are using the trial accounts ONLY TO ADVERTISE. These people aren't 'playing' the game. They are exploiting it.
6) I'm not sure what sort of turnaround time the Devs have, but EVERY SINGLE TIME I have logged on there is at least two, sometimes four spammers in the AP AH. This seems to indicate one of two things - the Devs are unwilling to put forth an effort to stamp these c0ckroaches out, or they are unable to do so. Either one is unpleasant.
Regards,
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Solution:|
Originally Posted by Doc_Altruistic
Gold Spammers make me nuts.
Here's my 2 cents: 1) /ignore doesn't work. The spammers change their names every day. I'll be darned if I am going to spend my time ignoring toons for behaviour that shouldn't be occurring in the first place. Its treating the symptom, not the disease. 2) I don't hate the RMT's, just their constant spams IN THE GAME. 3) They're targeting the new users in AP on the bigger servers. 4) I've heard people defend them. Its not logical, but they do. 5) They also advertise power levelling. This means they have lvl 50 toons out there and are using the trial accounts ONLY TO ADVERTISE. These people aren't 'playing' the game. They are exploiting it. 6) I'm not sure what sort of turnaround time the Devs have, but EVERY SINGLE TIME I have logged on there is at least two, sometimes four spammers in the AP AH. This seems to indicate one of two things - the Devs are unwilling to put forth an effort to stamp these c0ckroaches out, or they are unable to do so. Either one is unpleasant. Regards, |
Don't play on Freedom.
No, I'm not joking (much.) That's the only place I've seen gold spammers in WW. Pinn, Vict, Guardian, everywhere else - not a single one in sight. Hop on Freedom to pay for that base's rent and check the market - Inf spammer.
Yeah it seems I have noticed a huge jump in what I will call the "local tell" spams. Back in the day, we would get the normal junk email spam, delete it and move on. Now, the spamers are becoming much more aggressive and just sending local tells to announce their doings. As some others have said, I just ignore it and move on. Now if they target me directly with a tell, then it's a different ballgame. Sort of like someone putting fliers under your windshield wipers saying you can make up to $10,000 per month working from home. Unfortunately, its part of the territory. Report them and they will be back just like a bad rash. It's okay, we know we will never go for their scams. We're smarter than that. If someone sends you an email saying you are the winner of the Nigerian Lottery and all you need to do is send in $500 to get $10 Million, well you know what to do. Delete, delete and delete. 
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The only problems with that are:|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Solution:
Don't play on Freedom. No, I'm not joking (much.) That's the only place I've seen gold spammers in WW. Pinn, Vict, Guardian, everywhere else - not a single one in sight. Hop on Freedom to pay for that base's rent and check the market - Inf spammer. |
- its not a solution, its avoiding the problem. Why should I avoid the server where my SG is located? Its an annoyance to me, not a fix.
- the spammers will adapt and follow.
Good idea, MB, but I'd like a magic bullet. (<--unlikely, but I can wish...)
Here's my solution: once identified as a gold spammer and reported the devs route all tells from that toon to an unseen chat window. Basically it gets rerouted so they can see their own chat msgs, but it never makes it to the 'live' chat windows. They can advertise all they want, but no-one will see it.
Evil, eh?
As I understand it, if enough people use /ignore spammer in a relatively short period of time, the account gets kick off the server and suspended until a review.
Whenever, I see one its an immediate /ignorespammer.
Mainly I see local comments in Wents, but my wife got an old fashion 'junk' E-mail earlier today. First one for a long time.
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Y'know I don't think I have seen any form of Inf spam (email, tell, local, broadcast, you name it) on Liberty in ages. In fact it's been so long that when I first saw this thread I thought it had to be a major necro post. Amazing they would focus so much of their business onto a single server.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Solution:
Don't play on Freedom. No, I'm not joking (much.) That's the only place I've seen gold spammers in WW. Pinn, Vict, Guardian, everywhere else - not a single one in sight. Hop on Freedom to pay for that base's rent and check the market - Inf spammer. |
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*nod*|
Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
Y'know I don't think I have seen any form of Inf spam (email, tell, local, broadcast, you name it) on Liberty in ages. In fact it's been so long that when I first saw this thread I thought it had to be a major necro post. Amazing they would focus so much of their business onto a single server.
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I don't recall seeing any on Virtue even. I may have missed them, I'm completely open to that, but the only place I see them at all is on Freedom.
Given how rarely I play on Freedom (for multiple reasons,) I thought these guys were a COH urban legend.
My Crazy 88 character has seen them in Atlas on Virtue.
I've seen them on Infinity in Atlas WW also.
I've seen them reported them and moved on.
Complaining about them in b-cast is clogging up b-cast with junk (especially since now many of them don't even use b-cast).
Coming here to complain about them is nice and helps to relieve stress, but is not that productive.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
*nod*
I don't recall seeing any on Virtue even. I may have missed them, I'm completely open to that, but the only place I see them at all is on Freedom. |
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Originally Posted by Jetpack
My Crazy 88 character has seen them in Atlas on Virtue.
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Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
I've seen them reported them and moved on.
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Seen one in Virtue. A player was trying to irritate the spammer by repeatedly casting a Thermal power on the spammer and yelling at him in Local (or Broadcast, forget which). Frankly, the chump trying to aggravate the spammer annoyed me more than the spammer itself. My in-game email no longer fills up with spam; I can ignore the rest.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
Theres a pair of them working the Freedom AH right now.
The only times I've ever seen them back on Protector is when Freedom is in the red on login. Seriously, just ignorespammer them. And, obviously tell your friends to ignorespammer them too. That's what global channels are for, eh?
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Put 'em in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on 'em!
| Can't we do anything about Spammers |
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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That's a good idea, thanks for the tip.
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Originally Posted by Quinch
A quick tip, I've created a macro for /petition Spam. When I see one of them {which is frequently, since I've taken to bulk crafting} all I do is hit the macro, copypaste the spam text into the petition box {complete with the character name}, tick the "harrassment and conduct" checkbox and send it off. The whole process takes less than ten seconds and they're usually gone within a couple of minutes.
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Little problem with your theory : the spammers I see in AP pretty much spam about the same sites they did 2 years ago.
| So expect another month or so of spam until they give up realising that what they thought would be a gold mine turns into a money pit. |
I found one broadcasting in Triumph the other night, the first in about a year. I copy/pasted the broadcast and reported it. I got an email from NCS thanking me.
�Many things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.�
I just use /ignorespammer. It adds them to my ignore list and reports them at the same time. Easy peasy.
--NT
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Been seeing them in atlas WW, AE and Statue on Union EU Server for the last couple of weeks. They jump into your face and then start spamming a macro advertising their services sometimes 3 or 4 times in a few seconds.
Every time i see one i copy paste the local chat and also get their global name and paste that in for NC. Then i "ignore as spammer" just to make sure. The last 2 or 3 i've had a thanks for reporting this from NC and also seen the spammer have the "countdown" shortly after sending the petition so somethings working.
Also seeing a lot of garbage names with lvl50 farmers in Atlas AE which are similar to the global names i've been reporting but obviously i can't prove they're RMT accounts so i don't report them. When you see 8 "random letter" variations, all with the same powersets/set bonuses etc going in and out of the AE portal, all with random costumes from the random button on the editor it doesn't look like a family or friends playing together. Also wouldn't be an SG playing together cause none of them are in one. So it seems very fishy to me but i could be wrong, so if it is indeed a family playing together i apologize now.
Just gets to be frustrating at times but as some have said the /ignore feature is wonderful
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