Gold Spammer chat box exploit.

Kalwein_Ohyx

I got 2 of their names, dunno where to post it so do it here. The spam were in zone and in yell form .. mostly 10+ lines but i got these. It was every 3-4 sec.

Arwyn

t.steve1991ub17_ESO wrote: »

I did not think you could get trial accounts for this game. If you had to pay 80 dollars for early access I would think they would be losing money doing the spam thing. If not it means a lot of people are buying gold which is more disturbing.

Stolen Credit cards buying the game and already stolen accounts, its amazing how many people have keyloggers on their machines.

My understanding is that gold farmers stopped actually farming gold quite some time ago, stealing it was easier.

SMW1980b14a_ESO

How about disable ability to broadcast in zone until level 5. Make it a bit less trivial to violate the game. Would be harder to automate.

Also, when a spammer is verified by their support people, about about look for keywords in their spam, like the stupid website names and prevent a message with that from going out.

Restrict someone with no character over level 10 from talking in zone so often. It's amazing that there appears to be no flood protection.


I'd also imagine there would be less of a load on their ticketing system if there was another method (intelligent and separate from normal ticketing) to report these things. I'd hate to be whoever has to sift through and reply/deal with 200 reports on the same guy, for like 50 different farmers every few hours.

I bet this combined with the character deletion issues and the zoom bug early on created a huge mess of extra tickets to waste valuable time dealing with.

Svann

It makes you wonder when you put them on ignore and 10 min later they are back with a new name. What is the point of avoiding my ignore filter? They have to know that once I put them on ignore once I am NEVER going to buy anything from them. The only thing creating a new name does is irritate me.

Beldir73

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

It makes you wonder when you put them on ignore and 10 min later they are back with a new name. What is the point of avoiding my ignore filter? They have to know that once I put them on ignore once I am NEVER going to buy anything from them. The only thing creating a new name does is irritate me.

Fortunately, when you ignore them, it ignores the entire account. So even if they roll a new toon with a new name, they'll still be ignored.

SMW1980b14a_ESO

Beldir73 wrote: »

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

It makes you wonder when you put them on ignore and 10 min later they are back with a new name. What is the point of avoiding my ignore filter? They have to know that once I put them on ignore once I am NEVER going to buy anything from them. The only thing creating a new name does is irritate me.

Fortunately, when you ignore them, it ignores the entire account. So even if they roll a new toon with a new name, they'll still be ignored.

I was very surprised that was the case when I learned of it. The sheer number of spammers I've ignored in a short period of times astounds me at the number of accounts they seem to have.

Corithna

PointMaid wrote: »

I've been rooting around in forums trying to dig up any official responses to the gold spamming issues, and I haven't found a single one. There is plenty of player speculation about what is being done and how it is being handled, and tons of great ideas being mentioned by players, but no comment from ZOS.

So how about it? Are the developers hearing us and addressing the problem?

One thing I can guarantee you about is that they are reading these forums very carefully. The lack of response simply means they are still working on a solution prior to going public with the final version of what they decide to do. This is big one, and they are I'm quite certain working out a way to ensure it really does get fixed instead of just trying to band aid the filter system to fish out the 'bad' messages from the good ones. From a technical standpoint this can consist of gathering ip/mac address data for the local machine, router or local network systems, as well as the public address/mac address of modem hardware. This can be done for both the offending spam computer as well as the location from which such accounts are purchased.

Keep up the reports so that they can collect enough data to ensure they are getting the right equipment marked for perma ban. There is nothing worse then getting caught up in a net that is targeting the 'bad' guys when you're actually innocent. But it's a time consuming process with a lot of data to filter through. And there are many such offenders out there trying to make a quick buck at the expense of other companies success.

caryhammub17_ESO

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

It makes you wonder when you put them on ignore and 10 min later they are back with a new name. What is the point of avoiding my ignore filter? They have to know that once I put them on ignore once I am NEVER going to buy anything from them. The only thing creating a new name does is irritate me.

Thing is thanks to the megaserver they have multiple accounts, and characters to jump around instances, so they can spam mre people. You may get 1 in your instance he logs out the character, his buddy logs out his instance, and htey both log back in on alts trying to get a new instance.

That serves two purposes, 1, farming desks, bags barrels for provisioner supplies, and motif books to send to a non spammer to sell to make gold, make food to sell for gold, and 2 to get new people to spam your gold power level service to.

I personally use instance jumping on my alts for barrel farming, and motif searches before I log in my main, and before I log for the night.

SMW1980b14a_ESO

Corithna wrote: »

PointMaid wrote: »

I've been rooting around in forums trying to dig up any official responses to the gold spamming issues, and I haven't found a single one. There is plenty of player speculation about what is being done and how it is being handled, and tons of great ideas being mentioned by players, but no comment from ZOS.

So how about it? Are the developers hearing us and addressing the problem?

One thing I can guarantee you about is that they are reading these forums very carefully. The lack of response simply means they are still working on a solution prior to going public with the final version of what they decide to do. This is big one, and they are I'm quite certain working out a way to ensure it really does get fixed instead of just trying to band aid the filter system to fish out the 'bad' messages from the good ones. From a technical standpoint this can consist of gathering ip/mac address data for the local machine, router or local network systems, as well as the public address/mac address of modem hardware. This can be done for both the offending spam computer as well as the location from which such accounts are purchased.

Keep up the reports so that they can collect enough data to ensure they are getting the right equipment marked for perma ban. There is nothing worse then getting caught up in a net that is targeting the 'bad' guys when you're actually innocent. But it's a time consuming process with a lot of data to filter through. And there are many such offenders out there trying to make a quick buck at the expense of other companies success.

That's all find and dandy, and I assumed they were doing as much. What has annoyed me the most is that there seems to be nothing implemented, at all, to make doing this more difficult. Even very basic things don't exist like flood protection and obviously an even half-decent way of reporting them.

Work smart, not hard. All these silly problems that slipped through are just creating even more work and wasting more of their time.

Sakiri

Vyndetta wrote: »

Ignoring any player name does ignore the entire account. To verify, look at your ignore list.
Unfortunately, until Beth/Zen fix the chat box sizing, you'll need to deal with the font size in order to click on their names. Yes, it's annoying and I hate it, but I can't stand the spam!
We also need the report feature to ignore players for us automatically. Heck, just right clicking the name should give us an actual "Gold Spam" option for reporting that reports and ignores the player.

Don't need to fix the chat box sizing.

They can just restrict how much text you can input.

There is no reason you ever need 20 lines of text in one message unless you're spamming. EVER.

Curecraft

Not sure what the "exploit" is you're talking about but I've had no problems ignoring them.. I got so sick of doing it though that I just set up my own chat tabs, where I don't even have to look at General chat for anything - Zone chat is pretty pointless for doing anything other than wasting time anyway, and it's simple to just set up tabs for groups, guilds, whispers, or whatever else you actually need a worthwhile chat for while not using Skype / Vent / or whatever else.

I have to say it is pretty damn pathetic how people are doing this crap before the game's even fully released.. but what are you gonna do - I guess after a few people get scammed, they'll realize what a joke the stuff is... I hope.

Sakiri

true2moon_ESO wrote: »

yea and it only gets worse, they are not taking enough action on this. You have to make new chat tabs and turn off all chat except guild.

you figure they could put some basic filers on like (www.) or .com etc - but I guess that might be too advanced for their lead programmers or something.

Have you seen how the gold sellers do it in wow?

If there's a chat filter based on something, they just get past it with other crap.

\/\/\/\/\/\/goldsitedotcom.

Kiwi

the current reporting system is one huge plastic hassle
i totally cbf filling out paperwork and bs, im here to mash buttons and conquer the world, not playing report'o'bot

Valethar

If the chat interface wasn't so primitive it wouldn't be a problem. Whomever was responsible for the design clearly never looked at anything post '90s.

SMW1980b14a_ESO

Curecraft wrote: »

Not sure what the "exploit" is you're talking about but I've had no problems ignoring them.. I got so sick of doing it though that I just set up my own chat tabs, where I don't even have to look at General chat for anything - Zone chat is pretty pointless for doing anything other than wasting time anyway, and it's simple to just set up tabs for groups, guilds, whispers, or whatever else you actually need a worthwhile chat for while not using Skype / Vent / or whatever else.

I have to say it is pretty damn pathetic how people are doing this crap before the game's even fully released.. but what are you gonna do - I guess after a few people get scammed, they'll realize what a joke the stuff is... I hope.

As I said, some of them spam with so much crap in their message that it is not possible to even see their name to right click and ignore or report them - without wasting time altering your settings and reducing your font size to eye straining tiny.

caryhammub17_ESO

fix the scroll by line not message, then add right clicking name to give 2 new options, report and ignore gold spammer, report and ignore abusive behavior, it takes a screen shot and sends a log of the last XX number of lines of text automatically to the GM's.. how hard is it to code something like that ?

And frankly, the report needs to send xx lines of chat by default in all games everywhere.

Daverios

My money is on the gold farmers.

Any means ZOS comes up to deal with them will be very quickly circumvented. Any means ZOS comes up to deal with them will only hurt legitimate players, ie. taking away any easy sorce of coin a normal person might use.

Look at their track record, if blizzard could barley put a dent in them with all their resources and experience do you honestly expect the new kid on the block to be able to do a single darn thing?

Besides the problem is not nor has it ever been gold sellers, it has been gold buyers this whole time. Treat the disease not the symptom. If there is a demand for something, someone will always find a well to sell it for a profit. This is like the entire basis to our society and trying to 'combat' that is just lunacy and ridiculous. If people did not have to scrimp and save and sell their own mothers to make any coin in an MMO there would be very little demand and the problem would be minimal.

Seravi

Is there any way to turn off the chat box? If there is I am missing it. I was ready to quit this morning from all the spam. I really find the chat box annoying right now with all the spam. I like to offer help to questions when I can but the spam is taking over the chat and I would love to just turn off the chat box if possible.There was some type of hack spam this morning as well. I thought I got a screen of it but I didn't..ugh....

otomodachi

SMW1980b14a_ESO wrote: »

Corithna wrote: »

PointMaid wrote: »

I've been rooting around in forums trying to dig up any official responses to the gold spamming issues, and I haven't found a single one. There is plenty of player speculation about what is being done and how it is being handled, and tons of great ideas being mentioned by players, but no comment from ZOS.

So how about it? Are the developers hearing us and addressing the problem?

One thing I can guarantee you about is that they are reading these forums very carefully. The lack of response simply means they are still working on a solution prior to going public with the final version of what they decide to do. This is big one, and they are I'm quite certain working out a way to ensure it really does get fixed instead of just trying to band aid the filter system to fish out the 'bad' messages from the good ones. From a technical standpoint this can consist of gathering ip/mac address data for the local machine, router or local network systems, as well as the public address/mac address of modem hardware. This can be done for both the offending spam computer as well as the location from which such accounts are purchased.

Keep up the reports so that they can collect enough data to ensure they are getting the right equipment marked for perma ban. There is nothing worse then getting caught up in a net that is targeting the 'bad' guys when you're actually innocent. But it's a time consuming process with a lot of data to filter through. And there are many such offenders out there trying to make a quick buck at the expense of other companies success.

That's all find and dandy, and I assumed they were doing as much. What has annoyed me the most is that there seems to be nothing implemented, at all, to make doing this more difficult. Even very basic things don't exist like flood protection and obviously an even half-decent way of reporting them.

Work smart, not hard. All these silly problems that slipped through are just creating even more work and wasting more of their time.

I think both of you have good points and agree with both of you! Also, I feel like the level of communication coming to me from ZO isn't what I had wanted. It's possible I'm not looking in the right places, but whatever the reason I hope something changes.

EDIT: I just wanna add that this problem can be circumvented pretty well with add-ons, it just involves like two minutes of learning to use it. It's not a huge deal, but since a plethora of players are about to pick up it'd be awesome to have a fix to the actual issue of character length in chats so we can ALSO avoid the spam of ppl asking what to do. Just saying.

7788b14_ESO

So does that mean that they (gold sellers) can access the chat functions like ignore and others to get your account name to spam mail to your account? So chat gives everyone access to your account name?

Sakiri

7788b14_ESO wrote: »

So does that mean that they (gold sellers) can access the chat functions like ignore and others to get your account name to spam mail to your account? So chat gives everyone access to your account name?

When you /ignore someone, it ignores them by account name, not character name.

Valethar

7788b14_ESO wrote: »

So does that mean that they (gold sellers) can access the chat functions like ignore and others to get your account name to spam mail to your account? So chat gives everyone access to your account name?

It does indeed. When you ignore someone, it gives the @handle of the person you ignored. All they need to do is click ignore on everyone in chat and compile a list of @handles, and you're now on the email spam list.

Having said that, I'm not 100% certain they can use the @handle to send mail in ESO. I haven't tried it myself, but it is possible in other games, so it's not unreasonable to think it may be here as well. We'll have to wait and see if it actually becomes a problem, and what steps ZOS takes to counter it.

caryhammub17_ESO

First question is can you add a friend without the other person confirming friend addition ?

second question, is there a mass mail friends list function in mail systme, or will there be when it is brought back online ?

If answer to 1 is no, you can friend anyone without confirmation, it is easier to friend everyone you see, and if 2 is also yes, well, we have a problem now don't we..

devestaterdawnb14_ESO

Ya know this is a mega sever. It should be really easy and simple for a GM to sit in a zone where the spam is heavy and just ban accounts. If there is no profit in it they will stop.

BrassRazoo

I do not even bother with chat at the moment because of this.
I couldn't ignore them after trying to resize the box.
Then a helpful player mentioned the Font size change.
This worked, but there were so many I gave up doing it as it is not exactly a quick and easy task.
I really hope this gets fixed as basically this is now a Solo game for me as it is not worth trying to communicate while this much spam is on.
Most people will miss your chat and it gets so disjointed in between the walls of spam.
If fells very lonely at the moment.