Combatting Gold Spammers on the Forums

Drengir

This might be the completely wrong forum for this, since this spamming was done in-game. But for some reason this is the only site still up and running (that bother me at least) so I will name and shame the account here anyways.
May Molag Bal take them!

@‌dchorvathk
Site is "GoldAH" or however they want to spell it. They throw in a bunch of symbols in the mail to 'throw the system off' or something.

ZOS_AmeliaR

Harva wrote: »

Why does it say "Invited by ZOS_AmeliaR" on the spammers profile?

Accounts created during beta will mostly show up as having been invited by @System. Active accounts from beta carried over into Live. Since Early Access, we've been using a slightly different invitation system, so those who were added during or after that time will show up as having been invited by a specific administrator.

These spammers were not hand-selected and individually invited, but rather had their accounts created in the same way all other players since Early Access did. Hope this helps clarify.

OnceWasPerfect

dewrewfg

Abuse

demonxzj sent you a message

is the most secure place to buy Elder Scrolls Gold.
This company has very good reputation, selling in-game currencies since 2005.
100% Handwork Guaranteed!
7/24 Customer Service!

Harva

Is it okay to post in game ones here with the screens. I just signed in for the first time in five days with three messages from spammers. Reported them in game as well.

cattarub17_ESO

yuytuiytut

ZOS_AmeliaR

Harva wrote: »

Is it okay to post in game ones here with the screens. I just signed in for the first time in five days with three messages from spammers. Reported them in game as well.

Please only use this thread for reporting gold spammers who have contacted you via our official forums. If you're receiving contacts from gold spammers in-game, using the in-game report functionality is sufficient (and more effective, as we're unable to assist with in-game issues like this on the forums).

gh05tm4ch1n3

gfbhdgsdf sent you a message

this guy sent me a message from eso community about buying some gold.

"This company has very good reputation, selling in-game currencies since 2005.
100% Handwork Guaranteed!
7/24 Customer Service! "

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/messages/18463#46270

obviously if these people had good reputation they wouldnt be doing shady things like messaging us through the site. AND for the buyers out there STOP IT! buying from them you ruin the game for others.

simon76

hyjtyutyuty has sent me goldseller spam via forum pn

Aenra

@jshdjshdjsa

By the way Amelia, since i know you read everything..:)
If anyone ever asks your opinion, tell them it can't be fixed like this. We already know where to go if we want to cheat our way out of working, so disabling PMs hardly does anything positive. On the contrary, it sends a --clear-- message to a looot of people that Zenimax really, honestly has no clue how to deal with this.

Though i suppose you may want to rephrase that last sentense.. Something with paradigm shifts in consumer mentality, they'd like that more am sure

Boxcarman

gfdgdgfr sent you a message

***
is the most secure place to buy Elder Scrolls Gold.
100K G = 17 USD Instant Delivery.
This company has very good reputation, selling in-game currencies since 2005.
100% Handwork Guaranteed!
7/24 Customer Service!
***

Hathei

dewrewfg and fgfdgdgfr sent me messages.

Chikara

yuytuiytut

And it was sent to my old beta forums handle.

Harva

ZOS_AmeliaR wrote: »

Harva wrote: »

Is it okay to post in game ones here with the screens. I just signed in for the first time in five days with three messages from spammers. Reported them in game as well.

Please only use this thread for reporting gold spammers who have contacted you via our official forums. If you're receiving contacts from gold spammers in-game, using the in-game report functionality is sufficient (and more effective, as we're unable to assist with in-game issues like this on the forums).

Makes sense, there's just not an option to add screens of a message when the screen to report in game takes over the message area. Bit of a flaw in that, sadly.

Worth a shot nonetheless, the more reports the better. I'm tired of dealing with these spammers.

Tipsy

Zohdi118 wrote: »

Sender: ESO Community <community@elderscrollsonline.com>
Sender: ESO Community <community=elderscrollsonline.com@vanillaforums.com>
Subject: [Elder Scrolls Online] sdsdasdsf sent you a message
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:47:40 +0000

ah this explains why that message was in my spam folder,while normal eso community messages are in my inbox.

MrPhooey

Account name: @‌ojvterneb

Spam by mail. Trying to sell gold and materials.

Kaco

@ekturziau and @kuoommenlnk send ingame spam mail selling gold and materials

GossiTheDog

Kaco wrote: »

@ekturziau and @kuoommenlnk send ingame spam mail selling gold and materials

This thread is for reporting forum spam. Not in game.

Dethati

ghreterter
another gold spammer on the official forums : /

rick.lemonb14_ESO

@mnelmskolrj is one. Got an email from it today.

OldSmeller

Does is surprise anybody else that the gold spammers and associated bots don't even bother to create decent names. It's always a gibberish combination of letters that sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to a legitimate player-base. They even are so blatant as to have entire guilds with nothing but gold farmers and spammers.

It's also worth note that the majority of the illicit services offered by these spammers are all linked to the same company. I would think that because they are most of them all working for the same entity that blacklisting their access to the servers would be easy. At the bare minimum names of spammers should be compared with the IP Addresses using those accounts to find a common point or area of origin.

With the general location of where the spammers are connecting from you could just put up captchas or some other gate to limit their ability to gain access.

OpalStar

from Rwgrbug @Mnelmskolrj for Goldah

cmgillilan

.

Almoace

The person that sent me a PM was: ghreterter

GossiTheDog

rick.lemonb14_ESO wrote: »

@mnelmskolrj is one. Got an email from it today.

How are the spammers sending messages when PMs are disabled?

Blaue_Elise

gfbhdgsdf sent you a message
werdsfedfwe sent you a message

maneatingmonkey

What I don't understand is that basically every report in this thread seems to imply that the majority of the spam emails contained the following message:

"is the most secure place to buy Elder Scrolls Gold.
100K G = 17 USD Instant Delivery.
This company has very good reputation, selling in-game currencies since 2005.
100% Handwork Guaranteed!
7/24 Customer Service!"

So instead of asking for names, why doesn't ZOS automatically generate a list of names of spammers who sent mail containing this message? Surely this would be a much more efficient method of catching gold spammers? ZOS must have some record of all this mail as it's stored on their own forum servers.

becauseno1

ghreterter sent you a message
is the most secure place to buy Elder Scrolls Gold.
100K G = 17 USD Instant Delivery.
This company has very good reputation, selling in-game currencies since 2005.
100% Handwork Guaranteed!
7/24 Customer Service!
April 29

MOD EDIT: removed links

GossiTheDog

maneatingmonkey wrote: »

So instead of asking for names, why doesn't ZOS automatically generate a list of names of spammers who sent mail containing this message? Surely this would be a much more efficient method of catching gold spammers? ZOS must have some record of all this mail as it's stored on their own forum servers.

The forums are outsourced through Vanillaforums.com - it's not ZOS managed.

Mevrain

hjhgjrtyrtyrt