SPAM during game play

[Hammertime]

<p>Man, do I hate it.  You get a message from a player...SPAM.  Get some mail...SPAM.</p><p>It really [Removed for Content] me off.</p><p>I don't care if you can level my character to a high level in a matter of days for a fee.  This is MY character.  Leave me alone!</p>

[Cusashorn]

You'd think those idiots would realize that we have a Report Spam button for mail spam. lol

[Jai1]

I always like to dish out my opinions but I would think that it's kind of hard to get away from people in an online game.

[tass]

I always respong in the following: Suck my bleep u mother bleeping 3rd world bleep sucking pig of a fathers bleep bleep bleeep gold seller. And then I spam it until im on theyre ignore.

[Cadaveria]

Did you know they make flavored Spams now? Yeah, Cheesy Spam, Spicy Spam, Smoky Spam... the possibilities are limitless.

[azekah]

<cite>Hammertime wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Man, do I hate it.  You get a message from a player...SPAM.  Get some mail...SPAM.</p></blockquote>Sounds like a twisted version of Emeril

[Jenudil]

<cite>Hammertime wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Man, do I hate it.  You get a message from a player...SPAM.  Get some mail...SPAM.</p><p>It really [Removed for Content] me off.</p><p>I don't care if you can level my character to a high level in a matter of days for a fee.  This is MY character.  Leave me alone!</p></blockquote> I know what you mean! i HATE these [Removed for Content] spammers! i wish SOE would ban the IP addresses of all these [Removed for Content] spammers! i report these people every time they spam me! SOE never does a [Removed for Content] thing about it! i wish SOE would nut up and ban these [Removed for Content] spammers!

[deKoven]

<cite>Jenudil wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hammertime wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Man, do I hate it.  You get a message from a player...SPAM.  Get some mail...SPAM.</p><p>It really [Removed for Content] me off.</p><p>I don't care if you can level my character to a high level in a matter of days for a fee.  This is MY character.  Leave me alone!</p></blockquote> I know what you mean! i HATE these [I cannot control my vocabulary] spammers! i wish SOE would ban the IP addresses of all these [I cannot control my vocabulary] spammers! i report these people every time they spam me! SOE never does a [I cannot control my vocabulary] thing about it! i wish SOE would nut up and ban these [I cannot control my vocabulary] spammers! </blockquote> Hmmm, I've been on the other end of one of those "bans" and I certainly didn't like it. I got tarred with the same brush as the guy who was doing all the damage. My IP address and his were the same since he lived fairly near me; we both got banned from a site. His was earned, mine was not. I still (two years later) can not log on or even create a new login to that site. And I know of one site that banned a fairly extensive general site for the same reasons even though it was only a couple peeps that were troublemakers. Thousands "died" just because they were on the same site. Be careful of what you wish for; one day they may ban YOUR site and you'll be SOL. <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Sedenten]

<p>Every single night this past week, I've received no less than 20 tells from spammers.  That's every night, over about a 2-3 hour span.  They range from about 4 different companies (or 4 different web sites at least).  Some of them spam me with tells every minute from the same character until I'm able to stop what I'm doing long enough to put them on ignore, report, and petition them.  About an hour ago, I had 4 different characters send me spam within around 10 seconds of one another.</p><p> This is getting rather ridiculous, and is affecting how much I enjoy logging in and playing.  Nothing kills the mood of enjoying the game like getting a ton of tell spam wanting to sell you power leveling services or gold.  The spammers have even started to put a polite tone to the tells, usually starting them with, "Sorry to bother you, but...".</p><p> Regardless of what others say I would love to have a complete filter system set up, where I <i>can if I so choose</i> filter out tells from people from level X to level Y unless they are on my friends list or that aren't in my guild.  To make this less abrasive, I could get a "tell" from people outside of the parameters I've set saying something like... "Character001 has tried to send you a tell but was rejected".  That way, if I think that was a legitimate tell, I could place them on my friends list and send them a tell asking if they could resend their last tell to me.  If that's still too abrasive of a system, make it so newly made characters must adhere to player-specified filters until they've reached a certain character "age" (age being defined in hours since that character was created).  The characters can still send all the tells they want to players that aren't blocking via those filters, or ones that have that are on their friends list or in their guild.  <b>The idea here is such a filter would not be default and would instead me an option a player could set themselves.</b></p><p> On top of that, add a filter system where tells to me with certain phrases or what not will not be sent.  <b><i>I know this isn't fool proof as it can't catch every variation of syntax someone could think of</i></b> but it would give me another option.  If I want to build a list of phrases I don't want to receive, then so be it.  I would get a similar warning as explained in the previous paragraph that a tell wasn't sent from whoever because of my filters.  </p><p> Lastly, something could be set on the server side to detect and squelch players who are trying to send more than X amount of tells over a Y time period.  This should be set liberally enough so that someone could legitimately talk to several people at once, but it should catch people who are quite obviously using macros to aid them in their spamming.  Looking at the various server logs it could be determined what the timing these spammers are using in their scripts to drive the spam, and help stop it that way.  </p><p> Sure spammers will always find ways to work around the system, but the idea is to make it difficult for them without completely alienating actual players who are trying to communicate with their community.  </p><p>There will be a breaking point where this kind of spam will adversely affect player subscription rates, and I'm afraid that isn't too far away.</p><p> And yes, IP bans do nothing when the IP's in question are dynamically assigned via different ISP's.  I could see the possibility of banning certain credit card or personal information, however.  It's obvious that these spammers are not using Trial of the Isle accounts, as those have had restrictions on them for quite some time.  The spammers are somehow easily using full accounts to do their work from, and banning them isn't keeping them from the spamming.  This tells me that when an account is banned a person could use the same credit card and personal information to run over and create another full account to spam from.  Since they're not likely paying any amount to keep the account on a very temporary basis, they aren't losing anything by doing so.</p>

[StarryEyedElf]

Guys, there are already some older, active threads on this topic on this page. Use those instead of creating new ones.