Gold Spammer Infestation

Azzuria · April 2014

I understand that the Devs have banned a whole grip of gold spammer accounts, but it's getting to the point that I spend the first 5 minutes -every time I log in- reporting and ignoring gold spammers. Today I reached my maximum ignore limit.

Two things. Devs, can you ensure that accounts banned for spamming / gold selling get removed from ignore lists? It will free up space to add more of the annoying buggers while you aggregate more accounts to ban. Next, please be more pro-active about banning these accounts and / or IP addresses.

No solution is going to net them all, this is understood, but switching between accounts to manage my overflowing bank ( another subject! ), it's just down right grating to see the channel flooded with spam.

Freeing up space on the ignore list or enlarging it and being more proactive about removing the gold sellers from the world would go a very long way toward allowing a more genial community.

Thanks for letting me rant.

demendred · April 2014

Or, if you cannot remove them, at least have it where if the account is deleted, it says 'deleted' where the name was. So then you can take it off your ignore list.

Coggage · April 2014

Azzuria wrote: »

I understand that the Devs have banned a whole grip of gold spammer accounts, but it's getting to the point that I spend the first 5 minutes -every time I log in- reporting and ignoring gold spammers. Today I reached my maximum ignore limit.

Hmmm, yet another anti-spam thread, as if we haven't got lots and lots of those. Think smart - get an anti-spam addon.

My favourite is X4DLibAntiSpam from esoui.com, which gets regular updates (sometimes 2 or 3 times per day) for the spam filter pattern recognition system. You can add your own custom words to the filter (E.G. wtt, wts, wtb, foreign words for "guild") and - this is very clever - it actually blocks chat instead of using the /ignore function.

IF a gold-spammer gets through, I do my bit and /report it, then input a filter to block them. There's no point in seeing a particular spam advert again once you've reported it.

MercyKilling · April 2014

Coggage wrote: »

Hmmm, yet another anti-spam thread, as if we haven't got lots and lots of those. Think smart - get an anti-spam addon.

My favourite is X4DLibAntiSpam from esoui.com, which gets regular updates (sometimes 2 or 3 times per day) for the spam filter pattern recognition system. You can add your own custom words to the filter (E.G. wtt, wts, wtb, foreign words for "guild") and - this is very clever - it actually blocks chat instead of using the /ignore function.

IF a gold-spammer gets through, I do my bit and /report it, then input a filter to block them. There's no point in seeing a particular spam advert again once you've reported it.

Except by using that, you lump yourself in the "no better than they are" category. You're certainly not happy with them, but rather than take action against them and help not only yourself, but others and Zenimax itself....you only think of yourself and sweep the chat under the rug, so to speak.

Way to look out for only yourself.

BoloBoffin · April 2014

MercyKilling wrote: »

Coggage wrote: »

Hmmm, yet another anti-spam thread, as if we haven't got lots and lots of those. Think smart - get an anti-spam addon.

My favourite is X4DLibAntiSpam from esoui.com, which gets regular updates (sometimes 2 or 3 times per day) for the spam filter pattern recognition system. You can add your own custom words to the filter (E.G. wtt, wts, wtb, foreign words for "guild") and - this is very clever - it actually blocks chat instead of using the /ignore function.

IF a gold-spammer gets through, I do my bit and /report it, then input a filter to block them. There's no point in seeing a particular spam advert again once you've reported it.

Except by using that, you lump yourself in the "no better than they are" category. You're certainly not happy with them, but rather than take action against them and help not only yourself, but others and Zenimax itself....you only think of yourself and sweep the chat under the rug, so to speak.

Way to look out for only yourself.

Coggage said they reported the player before filtering them. So they did take action against the spammers and didn't just help themselves.

Coggage · April 2014

MercyKilling wrote: »

Coggage wrote: »

Hmmm, yet another anti-spam thread, as if we haven't got lots and lots of those. Think smart - get an anti-spam addon.

My favourite is X4DLibAntiSpam from esoui.com, which gets regular updates (sometimes 2 or 3 times per day) for the spam filter pattern recognition system. You can add your own custom words to the filter (E.G. wtt, wts, wtb, foreign words for "guild") and - this is very clever - it actually blocks chat instead of using the /ignore function.

IF a gold-spammer gets through, I do my bit and /report it, then input a filter to block them. There's no point in seeing a particular spam advert again once you've reported it.

Except by using that, you lump yourself in the "no better than they are" category. You're certainly not happy with them, but rather than take action against them and help not only yourself, but others and Zenimax itself....you only think of yourself and sweep the chat under the rug, so to speak.

Way to look out for only yourself.

Read my last paragraph again. Do it 5 or 6 times if you need to. Think about it. Finally, understand it. Your mistake will become clear.

Thete · April 2014

MercyKilling wrote: »

Except by using that, you lump yourself in the "no better than they are" category. You're certainly not happy with them, but rather than take action against them and help not only yourself, but others and Zenimax itself....you only think of yourself and sweep the chat under the rug, so to speak.

Way to look out for only yourself.

It's not his/her job to police the game. ZOS could easily use a similar system themselves to investigation suspicious chat and in game mail messages. Perhaps they do.

metaldrummer1962b14a_ESO · April 2014

The most infamous gold spammer stands in front of teh bank in daggerfall with one of those "afsdwe" type names, and just keeps switching names.
Have they really stolen so many accounts that they can keep staying ahead of teh bans?

Coggage · April 2014

Well, they don't steal them all. They get a lot of the card numbers handed to them by the sheeple who buy gold from them.

Kevaliji · April 2014

I would see them all the time hanging out in front of wayshrines in Daggerfall and Rivenspire. It gets better though, since moving on to veteran zones gold sellers are a distant memory.

Shimond · April 2014

Thete wrote: »

It's not his/her job to police the game. ZOS could easily use a similar system themselves to investigation suspicious chat and in game mail messages. Perhaps they do.

Yea if everyone used the addon the problem would go away. It's one of those things maybe ZOS should just add into the client by default.

It's so prevalent you could easily spend an hour or two every play session just filling out reports. No thanks, I'm here to play the game, not play internet cop.

Saihung423 · April 2014

I'm done reporting. And now I ignore the chat window mostly while gaming. Tired of it, I didn't buy the game to /report the majority of my time in game.

Jeremy · April 2014

Saihung423 wrote: »

I'm done reporting. And now I ignore the chat window mostly while gaming. Tired of it, I didn't buy the game to /report the majority of my time in game.

They need a faster way to report no doubt. Currently it eats way too much of my play time to report them all. And I'll be damned if I let gold sellers take away that much of my time.

Expect this problem to get worse not better. The way this economy is structured, it practically breeds desperation. And desperate people are more likely to buy gold.

Vorkk8383 · April 2014

Personally, the spammers are not so bad...I can block them with addons for the most part. The REALLY annoying ones are the 30 bots who are killing the same mob over and over in a dungeon and you have to try to kill it 40x just to get one hit in so you can get credit. Why they haven't sent GM's to dungeons to ban right away and to ban the spammers from chat, I cannot comprehend. It's not like they are hard to spot. They are all wearing the same gear, have names like aaashduidfk....If you don't want to put GM's there, give me a free subscription and I'll go ban them for you. You'll have thousands of accounts banned within a week. Tons of other players are willing to do the same thing. As for those who claim that it could be abused, make it simple...you only ban gold sellers and if you ban someone else, you get banned too. It's fairly obvious to see who is selling gold. They say it ''buy my gold''...The GM's can take care of the dungeons and ban the hackers there. Let's team up and make this a place where those annoying s***heads know they are not welcomed. Let's make them say ''Zeni is not messing around''.

zhevon · April 2014

metaldrummer1962b14a_ESO wrote: »

The most infamous gold spammer stands in front of teh bank in daggerfall with one of those "afsdwe" type names, and just keeps switching names.
Have they really stolen so many accounts that they can keep staying ahead of teh bans?

Uhhh ... I have never seen him and one of my toons been in daggerfall the past week.

MAGWolf · April 2014

I think if they put made it so you would have to be Level 10 to make a guild it would solve some of the spammer problems with them making guilds and spamming people.

Here is how gold sellers are getting accounts. First of people are simple and stupid. They sign up on site trying to buy gold. The simple person uses probably same username and password they use on emails and ESO. Boom scam website sees that and gets into your account and changes password and then uses your account to spam the living hell out of everyone.

Azzuria · April 2014

So, I finally broke down and got an anti-spam add-on. It's amazing! No more chat spam! Just annoying mail-spam that I have to report every time I log in on every toon... every day. *sigh*

Now to see more in-game GMs bringing down the Ban-Hammer on boss-farming bots.

Altheina · April 2014

Strange, I don't see gold spammers spamming in chats nor do they spam my mail and I am not using any anti-spam add-on...

Saihung423 · April 2014

Altheina wrote: »

Strange, I don't see gold spammers spamming in chats nor do they spam my mail and I am not using any anti-spam add-on...

Are you sure you're playing Elder Scrolls Online and not Skyrim?:P

Thesiren · April 2014

I have seen barely a gold farmer at all for over 24 hours now. There were a couple one-line dribbles last night, but they were so clogged with crazy symbols no one could tell what they were trying to say. The only way we could even tell they were gold farmers was because of their names: afakfkfk and such. It was worth the one line of spam every couple hours just to see them squirm.