Spam Filter Feedback

[Zoltaroth]

I'd like to use this thread to get some feedback on the updated filter that went live with yesterdays patch. The two main things I am interested in are: How many false positives are you getting compared to what you were getting for the last two weeks. How much more / less spam is being correctly filtered. Of course you are welcome to report anything you feel is a bug, but I caution you, this does not mean "try to send as much spam as you can to as many people as you can."  It simply means if you happen across a glaring bug please let us know. One of the things we are already adding is a "Not Spam" button to help reduce false positives. Also keep in mind that the filter can not block 100% of spam tells, it should however be reacting much faster to blocking new "types" of spam than it was in the last two weeks.  I would not expect you to get the same tells from spammers for a long period of time, if you do see this type of behavior please report it in this thread. What I don't want this thread to turn into is a discussion on other types of filtering and the pro's and con's of them.  We are looking at many different ways to block spam, and if we find a reason to implement other/different systems there will be threads started about them for specific feedback.  So again please try to stay on topic about the current filter. Thanks, ~Zoltaroth

[Tide]

Thanks for the thread, Zoltaroth. Yesterday I got a spam message that had a URL link of some kind instead of just a normal text message.  Don't know if you have a way of detecting that. Also, if we could click the [SPAM] part and have a drop down that allows us to click Ignore so it will set the sender on ignore, that would be neat as well.

[Bozidar]

<p>i noticed over the last few weeks that the filter was quickly bypassed by the spammers.  Yesterday, no spam got through at all.</p><p>Happy so far <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Ama]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd like to use this thread to get some feedback on the updated filter that went live with yesterdays patch. The two main things I am interested in are: How many false positives are you getting compared to what you were getting for the last two weeks. How much more / less spam is being correctly filtered. Of course you are welcome to report anything you feel is a bug, but I caution you, this does not mean "try to send as much spam as you can to as many people as you can."  It simply means if you happen across a glaring bug please let us know. One of the things we are already adding is a "Not Spam" button to help reduce false positives. Also keep in mind that the filter can not block 100% of spam tells, it should however be reacting much faster to blocking new "types" of spam than it was in the last two weeks.  I would not expect you to get the same tells from spammers for a long period of time, if you do see this type of behavior please report it in this thread. What I don't want this thread to turn into is a discussion on other types of filtering and the pro's and con's of them.  We are looking at many different ways to block spam, and if we find a reason to implement other/different systems there will be threads started about them for specific feedback.  So again please try to stay on topic about the current filter. Thanks, ~Zoltaroth </blockquote>One thing i'm glad about is that the filter not only blocks tells per say but channellist things incase spam happens.  Hopefully what can happen down the line is an automatic checker system that identifies potential spammers and alerts their presence to CSR/GM people. 

[Bramwe]

I didn't receive any spam from anyone and nobody in guild chat complained about not being able to send me tells.  I have the spam notification turned off though so I don't even know when spam gets caught.  Maybe I will turn it on for awhile to make sure legitimate tells aren't getting blocked.....particularly people who may want me to make something for them.

[EvilIguana9]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote> One of the things we are already adding is a "Not Spam" button to help reduce false positives. </blockquote> I'd be worried about this if it has any direct impact (sans human intervention) on the filter's operation.  If it did then spammers would start spamming each other and reporting it as "Not Spam" in great volumes in order to confuse the filter. 

[Dasein]

How vulnerable is the spam filter to poisoning? For example, what if the spammers were to sesd out spam messages with just common EQ2 terms and URLs, but no actual advertisement?

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>EvilIguana966 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote> One of the things we are already adding is a "Not Spam" button to help reduce false positives. </blockquote> I'd be worried about this if it has any direct impact (sans human intervention) on the filter's operation.  If it did then spammers would start spamming each other and reporting it as "Not Spam" in great volumes in order to confuse the filter.  </blockquote>Fear Not! There will be strict automated and human oversight of this process <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>How vulnerable is the spam filter to poisoning? For example, what if the spammers were to sesd out spam messages with just common EQ2 terms and URLs, but no actual advertisement? </blockquote> See my reply above.  Same applies to Spam Reports.

[Tide]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>How vulnerable is the spam filter to poisoning? For example, what if the spammers were to sesd out spam messages with just common EQ2 terms and URLs, but no actual advertisement? </blockquote> See my reply above.  Same applies to Spam Reports. </blockquote>Any reply to my post?  An option to add to add the player to ignore from the SPAM text?

[Thay]

<p>I'm getting no false positives.</p><p>I am, however, getting 10 or so spams a day STILL</p>

[KerowynnKaotic]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>How vulnerable is the spam filter to poisoning? For example, what if the spammers were to sesd out spam messages with just common EQ2 terms and URLs, but no actual advertisement? </blockquote> See my reply above.  Same applies to Spam Reports. </blockquote><p> uh huh .. </p><p>What do we do for non spam that does get caught?  </p><p>Yesterday on Perma on the 60-69 chat .. " It's on the Test Server " got registered as spam.   oh and I'm not sure what part of spam this is " I am a professional pipe layer " but it triggered the spam filter .. </p><p>And, a few other random things .. the guys in chat really got into trying to trigger the spam filter without actually saying "plat selling/buying or YouKnowWho.com" .. </p>

[Hannalynn]

I am still getting as much spam as I was before the filtre went into affect. They are finding new ways to go around by spelling out things or just not using 'buy' in anything and making it sound like they are your therapist or something urging you to buy the things from them. It's quite annoying still, though for a few days when it was implemented, there was no spam. Sadly, the problem is back.

[Eldcen]

<span style="font-size: medium"><span style="font-size: large"><b>Bug Report:</b></span> </span> This afternoon on Unrest, every single piece of chat that a certain character sent to the level 10_19 (I think) channel showed up there as filtered spam.  He is not a spammer, and none of his conversation was even related to plat spam.  From clicking the "View" button (the only way you could see what he was saying), he was just as perplexed as everyone else and had no idea why all of his conversation was labeled as spam.  Unfortunately, I forget the name of the character, but presumably he /petitioned or something.  I could tell by his conversation that English was his native language (Asians who try to speak English - even if they're fairly good at it - can always be spotted), and again *nothing* he said was plat spam or related to it.  He was worried about getting banned for nothing. The somewhat funny/sad part is all the hate tells he was getting from people who didn't click the View button, but just assumed he was a plat spammer and started unloading on him.  Poor guy. On a side note, I think I see what you guys are doing now with the report spam button and the "real time" updating filter.  I'll say no more in case spammers are reading, but if you're doing what I think you're doing it's ingenious, and I think it will work.  If it's what I think, I think we'll still see spam occasionally, but not often at all.  Nice work Zoltaroth.  <img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> EDIT:  Zoltaroth, I found the name of the character with the problem in my log - I will PM you with it.

[Valdaglerion]

<p>Interestingly enough, every plat spammer that was on the bazaar server for the last several months seems to be gone with the exception the GM...com</p><p>I get more spam from them now than I did previously and more perplexing is the fact their url still comes through the filter. Rather than key terms it would seem that more attention needs to me paid to the names and addresses used by plat spammers to advertise in game. If they cant effectively advertise the name of their company or the location at which to buy goods they wont be profitable.</p><p>What I have noticed with this filter is that we have a lot of people, primarily in the 60-69 chat which are sending major amounts of spam now because they are trying to prove how ineffective the filter is. While childish and counter productive it has created yet a side problem - spam from non-plat sellers.</p><p>I would suggest focusing on the names and urls of companies first, then worry about the next layer to deal with. There arent that many companies peddling plat, they just peddle it very often.</p>

[Boyar]

Not sure if this is related, or if we experienced some other sort of bug, but on a Labs raid last night, our parsing guy couldn't send parse to /ooc. It worked fine in shout, so that's what we used. None of us had spam showing, to reduce lag, and we were doing the raid, so didn't take time to test.

[Wallzak]

<p>I would like to point out:</p><p>Spam... that doesn't get filtered out but rather shortened... is still Spam.  Now... instead of getting 3 lines of a text that I can ignore (or spam back... that's always fun on a slow night) I get twice as much from regular people who are bored who want to see if the can send spam. Either that, or I still get spam, its just more creatively written to avoid the filter.</p><p>This... was a dumb idea.  Putting a bandaid on wound that has never been treated. </p>

[Dasein]

You can turn off spam notification in your chat options.

[Devilsbane]

<p>Here is a possible bypass of the filter. Sorry if someone mentioned it already or if it has been identified and solved.</p><p>Remember how other players link an item in chat? Do you know how to change the name of the linked item to something different? Is it possible to change the linked item's name to a plat selling spam message?</p><p>Sorry if this is too cryptic. I really did not want to explain in enough detail for those plat spammers to use this possible bypass. </p>

[Dasein]

<cite>Devilsbane wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here is a possible bypass of the filter. Sorry if someone mentioned it already or if it has been identified and solved.</p><p>Remember how other players link an item in chat? Do you know how to change the name of the linked item to something different? Is it possible to change the linked item's name to a plat selling spam message?</p><p>Sorry if this is too cryptic. I really did not want to explain in enough detail for those plat spammers to use this possible bypass. </p></blockquote> I do not believe it is possible to link to an item not already in SOE's item database. While it's possible to change the link display text, you still need to give an item ID, so one cannot create custom link targets. I also do not think it is possible to embed HTML in a text message, but even if it were possible, that would be easy to filter.

[Devilsbane]

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Devilsbane wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here is a possible bypass of the filter. Sorry if someone mentioned it already or if it has been identified and solved.</p><p>Remember how other players link an item in chat? Do you know how to change the name of the linked item to something different? Is it possible to change the linked item's name to a plat selling spam message?</p><p>Sorry if this is too cryptic. I really did not want to explain in enough detail for those plat spammers to use this possible bypass. </p></blockquote> I do not believe it is possible to link to an item not already in SOE's item database. While it's possible to change the link display text, you still need to give an item ID, so one cannot create custom link targets. I also do not think it is possible to embed HTML in a text message, but even if it were possible, that would be easy to filter. </blockquote><p>Right, changing the text. Something like the following.</p><p><Power leveling><Gold selling><**Dorks.***> </p><p>When the links are clicked on they show the original item description of a torch/bag....</p>

[Lathaine]

<p>Spam filter work very well, every day some new spam are blocked.</p><p>Still some new spam to report, with some new spelling like "p latinum" or "w w w"</p><p>but work well new spam is well cough few time later, i know this i got a tab where i keep spam and i watch them sometime <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> still 2 or 3 different spam in this tab each game cession</p><p>No false positive for me, never. Only spam got filtered.</p><p>thanks for this, and dont listend people who dont like it, if they dont like it, that sure they are gold seller. (or gold buyer who is same)</p><p>anyway, each time i look who is spammer, it's a lvl 1 from starter isle !!!</p><p>why let player on isle talk to other ??? and sure not from trial i hope.</p>

[Dasein]

<cite>Devilsbane wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Devilsbane wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here is a possible bypass of the filter. Sorry if someone mentioned it already or if it has been identified and solved.</p><p>Remember how other players link an item in chat? Do you know how to change the name of the linked item to something different? Is it possible to change the linked item's name to a plat selling spam message?</p><p>Sorry if this is too cryptic. I really did not want to explain in enough detail for those plat spammers to use this possible bypass. </p></blockquote> I do not believe it is possible to link to an item not already in SOE's item database. While it's possible to change the link display text, you still need to give an item ID, so one cannot create custom link targets. I also do not think it is possible to embed HTML in a text message, but even if it were possible, that would be easy to filter. </blockquote><p>Right, changing the text. Something like the following.</p><p><Power leveling><Gold selling><**Dorks.***> </p><p>When the links are clicked on they show the original item description of a torch/bag....</p></blockquote>I'd imagine the filter would catch those - it could easily strip out any punctuation or other special characters and then look for certain patterns in the text, for example.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Thaych wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting no false positives.</p><p>I am, however, getting 10 or so spams a day STILL</p></blockquote>Caught or uncaught?

[Zoltaroth]

Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote>Not sure if this is related, or if we experienced some other sort of bug, but on a Labs raid last night, our parsing guy couldn't send parse to /ooc. It worked fine in shout, so that's what we used. None of us had spam showing, to reduce lag, and we were doing the raid, so didn't take time to test.</blockquote> That is very odd.  I will look into it.  Those two channels should work in the same way so not sure why one worked and one did not. Update: I could not get this to happen.  Can you PM me a sample parse from last night that did not go through? Thanks.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>KerowynnKaotic wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote> </blockquote><p> uh huh .. </p><p>What do we do for non spam that does get caught?  </p><p>Yesterday on Perma on the 60-69 chat .. " It's on the Test Server " got registered as spam.   oh and I'm not sure what part of spam this is " I am a professional pipe layer " but it triggered the spam filter .. </p><p>And, a few other random things .. the guys in chat really got into trying to trigger the spam filter without actually saying "plat selling/buying or YouKnowWho.com" .. </p></blockquote> This will be addressed by the "Not Spam" button that is being added in the next hotfix (as I said in the original post).

[Vydar]

Someone said "I'll give you a plat for it" and it got blocked as did "where do you work?" and "hard worker" lol

[Zoltaroth]

Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote>Someone said "I'll give you a plat for it" and it got blocked as did "where do you work?" and "hard worker" lol </blockquote> When was this?  I just tested all 3 of those on live and they went through just fine.

[Vydar]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote>Someone said "I'll give you a plat for it" and it got blocked as did "where do you work?" and "hard worker" lol </blockquote> When was this?  I just tested all 3 of those on live and they went through just fine. </blockquote> Few days ago. Someone in 10-19 chat said "how do you get all your plat mosque?" and it blocked it as well.

[Zoltaroth]

Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote>Someone said "I'll give you a plat for it" and it got blocked as did "where do you work?" and "hard worker" lol </blockquote> When was this?  I just tested all 3 of those on live and they went through just fine. </blockquote> Few days ago. Someone in 10-19 chat said "how do you get all your plat mosque?" and it blocked it as well. </blockquote> Again, please keep the feedback in this thread to the filter since <b>_yesterday's_ </b>update.  There were huge changes to it with the hotfix and I am trying to find out what else needs to be done.

[Devilsbane]

Well just got done testing my theory. I reported my findings to Zoltaroth in a PM. <img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Tyndaleon]

My apolozies Zol if this has already been asked, but.....if we receive a tell caught by the spam filter, should we report those as spam if they indeed are anyway so that the players/accounts can be dealt with by CS folks, or does that automatically happen as evidence of their activity collects in the filter?

[liveja]

<p>I got a spam this morning, in which the person had put spaces between almost every letter, so it looked like</p><p>w w w b a d p e o p l e . c o m</p><p>& so on, & then there was the word "platinum" spelled p latinum & other such tricks.</p><p>But after that, nothing at all, not a single spam, even on my main. </p><p>Edit: yes, BTW, this one got thru the filter. Since I have the "you've got spam" message turned off, I don't know if I got any others <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Tyndaleon wrote:</cite><blockquote>My apolozies Zol if this has already been asked, but.....if we receive a tell caught by the spam filter, should we report those as spam if they indeed are anyway so that the players/accounts can be dealt with by CS folks, or does that automatically happen as evidence of their activity collects in the filter? </blockquote> No need.  In fact I am going to turn that option off when the "Not-Spam" feature goes live.

[Zoltaroth]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote: <blockquote><p>I got a spam this morning, in which the person had put spaces between almost every letter, so it looked like</p><p>w w w b a d p e o p l e . c o m</p><p>& so on, & then there was the word "platinum" spelled p latinum & other such tricks.</p><p>But after that, nothing at all, not a single spam, even on my main. </p><p>Edit: yes, BTW, this one got thru the filter. Since I have the "you've got spam" message turned off, I don't know if I got any others <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote> I expect they will find ways to get through, but as people Report the spam the filter will learn about the new tricks and plug the gaps.

[Nerill]

******** Needed Command ******** You guys need to add /spam as a command that players can type. Anytime someone types /spam then the last /tell you get gets sent to you guys. We have it on e-mail .... why not for /tells ? Or, since plat farmers could just get passed this by sending 2 /tells .... one for their plat and the next a simple /tell Randomplayer "hi" , then have a /spam command that reports the last 2 or 3 direct tells? That way you can see exactly the messages that get through just by us players typing /spam. Seems like a simple coding issue. /shrug

[Zoltaroth]

Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote>******** Needed Command ******** You guys need to add /spam as a command that players can type. Anytime someone types /spam then the last /tell you get gets sent to you guys. We have it on e-mail .... why not for /tells ? Or, since plat farmers could just get passed this by sending 2 /tells .... one for their plat and the next a simple /tell Randomplayer "hi" , then have a /spam command that reports the last 2 or 3 direct tells? That way you can see exactly the messages that get through just by us players typing /spam. Seems like a simple coding issue. /shrug </blockquote> You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam."

[Sedenten]

<p>I just received a rather humorous spam tell, that made it through the filter (I reported it):</p><p>Glaskpwogh tells you, 'hi, welcome you take Pla (PLATINUM) or safety LEVLEING . We providing ther servings.plz visit 3w , X X X XXX , C0M .'</p><p>The name isn't exactly what was sent, but the message is word for word what the tell said, minus some fill-ins for the actual website URL they gave (it wasn't our most popular spammers this time, unless they changed their name).</p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Sedenten wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I just received a rather humorous spam tell, that made it through the filter (I reported it):</p><p>Glaskpwogh tells you, 'hi, welcome you take Pla (PLATINUM) or safety LEVLEING . We providing ther servings.plz visit 3w , X X X XXX , C0M .'</p><p>The name isn't exactly what was sent, but the message is word for word what the tell said, minus some fill-ins for the actual website URL they gave (it wasn't our most popular spammers this time, unless they changed their name).</p></blockquote> Did you report this as spam?  Answered my own question, just saw it pop up in the new spam list <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  You will notice that if this type of messages comes at you anymore, it will be correctly identified -- this is the whole idea behind the system.  Quick learning and real time updates.

[Sedenten]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Sedenten wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I just received a rather humorous spam tell, that made it through the filter (I reported it):</p><p>Glaskpwogh tells you, 'hi, welcome you take Pla (PLATINUM) or safety LEVLEING . We providing ther servings.plz visit 3w , X X X XXX , C0M .'</p><p>The name isn't exactly what was sent, but the message is word for word what the tell said, minus some fill-ins for the actual website URL they gave (it wasn't our most popular spammers this time, unless they changed their name).</p></blockquote> Did you report this as spam?  Answered my own question, just saw it pop up in the new spam list <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  You will notice that if this type of messages comes at you anymore, it will be correctly identified -- this is the whole idea behind the system.  Quick learning and real time updates. </blockquote> Geez, get some sleep!  <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Thanks for the reply though!  It is refreshing to see this sort of feedback on the issue!

[Rattfa]

What happens when someone starts abusing the system and 'spamming' tells from someone they dont like. Will these be caught before they reach the filter?

[Nerill]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done.

[Dynaen]

<p>As of yesterday, the spam filter once again successfully blocked at least 2-3 spams for me from nonsensical character names I'm pretty darn sure were plat sellers.  On the other hand I also saw a lot of false positives coming from 60-69 chat.  Once was the devil site being named, the other times were people trying to link url's, first in sincerity, but then they were just messing with the filter such as trying to give a link to Tupperware's (don't ask, I have no idea) website and a few others that had nothing to do with online gaming.</p><p>So, it seems to be working once again as intended, but also giving a decent amount of false positives when people try to link basically any website at all...unless I'm missing something and Tupperware sells plat now.  ;p</p>

[Rijacki]

Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done. </blockquote>It was put in yesterday, or the day before (days are all blurry right now for me.. too much work to do).

[Oakum]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done. </blockquote>It was put in yesterday, or the day before (days are all blurry right now for me.. too much work to do). </blockquote>Actually "left" clicking. It comes up as part of the reply,  ect dropdown menu.

[Zoltaroth]

Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done. </blockquote> Left click on the name but yes.

[Thay]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Thaych wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting no false positives.</p><p>I am, however, getting 10 or so spams a day STILL</p></blockquote>Caught or uncaught? </blockquote><p> Uncaught, as in "We offer power leveling and plat for less than ANYBODY!" type spams as of 2 days ago. I did not play yesterday, so I cannot comment on anything done yesterday. </p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Thaych wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Thaych wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting no false positives.</p><p>I am, however, getting 10 or so spams a day STILL</p></blockquote>Caught or uncaught? </blockquote><p> Uncaught, as in "We offer power leveling and plat for less than ANYBODY!" type spams as of 2 days ago. I did not play yesterday, so I cannot comment on anything done yesterday. </p></blockquote>Keep me up to-date with what you see in game next time you play.  From my own play experience (and leaving a few test toons logged in 24/7) I am seeing a drastic improvement.

[Shadowtzer]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done. </blockquote> Left click on the name but yes. </blockquote><span style="color: #ff0066">The one thing that I don't like about this is that the button is too close to the /tell button. Yesterday I accidently reported spam on a few guildies because I use the left click name to send tells. Maybe either move it or have an "oops didn't mean to report them". </span>

[Aven Elonis]

Shadowtzer@Butcherblock wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Banzai@Unrest wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can click on the name of the person that sent you the spam and click "Report Spam." </blockquote> Awesome ! I obviously did not know that. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I assume we are talking about "right clicking" on the name of the person in your chat box ? I logged out for the night and am too lazy to log back in to see how it is done. </blockquote> Left click on the name but yes. </blockquote><span style="color: #ff0066">The one thing that I don't like about this is that the button is too close to the /tell button. Yesterday I accidently reported spam on a few guildies because I use the left click name to send tells. Maybe either move it or have an "oops didn't mean to report them". </span></blockquote>Agree, please put the report spam at the top of list, as oppose to just below /tell. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Zoltaroth]

Aven Elonis wrote: <blockquote>Agree, please put the report spam at the top of list, as oppose to just below /tell. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote> I originally had it at the top and the feedback was that it was too easy to miss click.  So I moved it down under tell.  I will think about putting it all the way at the bottom if it becomes a problem.

[Boyar]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote>Not sure if this is related, or if we experienced some other sort of bug, but on a Labs raid last night, our parsing guy couldn't send parse to /ooc. It worked fine in shout, so that's what we used. None of us had spam showing, to reduce lag, and we were doing the raid, so didn't take time to test.</blockquote> That is very odd.  I will look into it.  Those two channels should work in the same way so not sure why one worked and one did not. Update: I could not get this to happen.  Can you PM me a sample parse from last night that did not go through? Thanks. </blockquote><p>I'll see if we get the same issue on tonight's raid. I wasn't the one parsing, and don't recall who was now. I looked in my log and I can find our /ooc test typing of 'can you see this?' but it appears that /shout isn't logged, or at least none of our shouted parse that evening is in my log.</p><p>If parse again fails to show in /ooc, I'll petition so a GM can collect data </p>

[Zoltaroth]

Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote>Not sure if this is related, or if we experienced some other sort of bug, but on a Labs raid last night, our parsing guy couldn't send parse to /ooc. It worked fine in shout, so that's what we used. None of us had spam showing, to reduce lag, and we were doing the raid, so didn't take time to test.</blockquote> That is very odd.  I will look into it.  Those two channels should work in the same way so not sure why one worked and one did not. Update: I could not get this to happen.  Can you PM me a sample parse from last night that did not go through? Thanks. </blockquote><p>I'll see if we get the same issue on tonight's raid. I wasn't the one parsing, and don't recall who was now. I looked in my log and I can find our /ooc test typing of 'can you see this?' but it appears that /shout isn't logged, or at least none of our shouted parse that evening is in my log.</p><p>If parse again fails to show in /ooc, I'll petition so a GM can collect data </p></blockquote>If you could also make sure you have spam channel enabled so that you can see spams (see if they are getting filtered as spam) and let me know that as well.

[Sedenten]

<p>Zoltaroth, </p><p> I'm not sure how the filter is really working, but I figured I'd throw this out there.  Would it be possible for users to select what sort of chat they want the serverside filter triggering on?  I have a feeling that might be more trouble than it's worth (I'm guessing the filter is picking everything up serverside before it even gets passed to the client), but it'd help users decide if they want to even block stuff said in the level channels.  Personally I only care about spam that comes in via /tell, and I completely stopped joining all the level chats because of the amount of spam I was getting from people playing around with the filter.  If the spammers start using those channels to advertise, I'd turn it back on, but it'd be nice to have that sort of thing an option.</p><p> Otherwise, I'm impressed with how well this filter is coming along now.  You guys have made vast improvements and I really like the idea of it being real-time updateable now without having to wait for the next hotfix.</p>

[Lowell_high]

<p>Ok, as long as I can see the tell whether it says view or not it is just as annoying.</p><p>Suggestions,</p><p> 1.  Allow players to auto-ignore or prevent players from sending others a tell if they are not guildmates or on your friends list.  (Allow players who have LFG or LFW up to receive all tells)</p><p>2. Allow players to create their own filter, if someone says a certain word or phrase that is created by the player it gets filtered.</p><p>3. Please REMOVE all visibility from a filtered tell or ATLEAST add it in chat options whether or not we can see the "Soandso sends you a tell [View]" So, we can atleast put it in a seperate window or not see it at all.</p><p> Also bots are sending mass mail now and it seems like they are sending more tells out than usual.  Force them to advertise in the public channels by preventing them to even send a tell at all and you will find out who these guys are much more easily. </p><p>Try boosting the price of mail to 5 or 10 gold a letter to stop them from mailing..</p>

[Rijacki]

Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><p>3. Please REMOVE all visibility from a filtered tell or ATLEAST add it in chat options whether or not we can see the "Soandso sends you a tell [View]" So, we can atleast put it in a seperate window or not see it at all.</p></blockquote> That's been in game since the first started putting the filter in.  You can filter it to a particular window or have it completely not show at all.  I forget exactly where it is in the chat options, but it is.

[Lowell_high]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><p>3. Please REMOVE all visibility from a filtered tell or ATLEAST add it in chat options whether or not we can see the "Soandso sends you a tell [View]" So, we can atleast put it in a seperate window or not see it at all.</p></blockquote> That's been in game since the first started putting the filter in.  You can filter it to a particular window or have it completely not show at all.  I forget exactly where it is in the chat options, but it is. </blockquote> Sweet,  I had no idea.  I know a lot of people in my guild are annoyed by the tell, so you can filter out the filter already?  Does the noise of a tell still exist?  I don't want to filter out my private tells competely, only the ones that get filtered.

[LostOne]

Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><p>3. Please REMOVE all visibility from a filtered tell or ATLEAST add it in chat options whether or not we can see the "Soandso sends you a tell [View]" So, we can atleast put it in a seperate window or not see it at all.</p></blockquote> That's been in game since the first started putting the filter in.  You can filter it to a particular window or have it completely not show at all.  I forget exactly where it is in the chat options, but it is. </blockquote> Sweet,  I had no idea.  I know a lot of people in my guild are annoyed by the tell, so you can filter out the filter already?  Does the noise of a tell still exist?  I don't want to filter out my private tells competely, only the ones that get filtered.</blockquote><a href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news_archive_content.vm?id=1236" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2players.station.sony.com/...tent.vm?id=1236</a>

[Zoltaroth]

Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yosemite@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote><p>3. Please REMOVE all visibility from a filtered tell or ATLEAST add it in chat options whether or not we can see the "Soandso sends you a tell [View]" So, we can atleast put it in a seperate window or not see it at all.</p></blockquote> That's been in game since the first started putting the filter in.  You can filter it to a particular window or have it completely not show at all.  I forget exactly where it is in the chat options, but it is. </blockquote> Sweet,  I had no idea.  I know a lot of people in my guild are annoyed by the tell, so you can filter out the filter already?  Does the noise of a tell still exist?  I don't want to filter out my private tells competely, only the ones that get filtered.</blockquote>^^^^  The poster above me did a much better job of answering this question.

[Ama]

<p>Glad to see the spam filter is catching alot of these people and being updated constantly.  So far all is quiet on my live toon *knocks on wood* and it's funny seeing the people trying to spam me.  Had a few instances where people said www.badpeople.com and it got blocked as spam.  However i'm bettin they were just messin around seeing if they could trigger it.  </p><p>If I see anything get through i'll be sure to report it ASAP.  </p>

[Tstorm]

I received 2 spam /tells this evening (about normal for me in an average session) and both were filtered properly. While spam /tells never bothered me to the level they did some players, I am pleased to see this problem being given the attention it has been recently.  Special kudos to Zoltaroth for sticking his neck out on the forums like he has recently.  I certainly understand the value of silence at times to avoid committing SOE to something unintentionally or in the case of something like this where surprising the bad guys has value, but the red-name visibility to make sure this problem is addressed as well as-is possible is very soothing for the community in my opinion. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Nerill]

<cite>Tstorm wrote:</cite><blockquote>Special kudos to Zoltaroth for sticking his neck out on the forums like he has recently.  I certainly understand the value of silence at times to avoid committing SOE to something unintentionally or in the case of something like this where surprising the bad guys has value, but the red-name visibility to make sure this problem is addressed as well as-is possible is very soothing for the community in my opinion. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote>Agreed ! It is nice to have such communication with a Dev to work on an issue. <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I just wish more Devs would communicate with us on the boards ... at least a little more often. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Eldcen]

Since the update went live that triggered this thread (with real-time updating, and the Report Spam button), I have not received one piece of un-filtered spam.  It's working great so far.  <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> It is funny, though, to see some of these spammers' attempts to get around the filter.  Some of the spam tells I have "Viewed" were almost completely unintelligible.  But they are not getting through the filter.  At least for me at any rate.  I think the way this is structured, we will still occasionally see the odd spam tell that slips through.  But once enough people report it and it gets filtered, we'll never see it again. Excellent work, Zoltaroth - we all really appreciate it!  Here's to hoping the spammers eventually give up in frustration. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[jjlo69]

i got one this morning it seems like they are testing what they can do and not do on weekends and use different websiite on those to just see if they can get though especally since they now the cs team is at skeleton crew on weekends and they can get away more interesting one i got though 3w, s p a m e r 890, C0M(not the site just and example of the text there trying out). hehe

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>jjlo69 wrote:</cite><blockquote>i got one this morning it seems like they are testing what they can do and not do on weekends and use different websiite on those to just see if they can get though especally since they now the cs team is at skeleton crew on weekends and they can get away more interesting one i got though 3w, s p a m e r 890, C0M(not the site just and example of the text there trying out). hehe</blockquote> Did you report it?  And on what server do you play? (Feel free to PM)

[jjlo69]

<p>i sure did not 3even 15 minutes ago</p>

[Eldcen]

It seems the spam (filtered) might be slowing down a bit.  The spammers may be getting frustrated with the filter a little.  On the other hand, I just received the first piece of plat spam in-game e-mail that I have gotten in a long time.  Is the spam filter applied to in-game mail as well?  If not, it should be. I used the report button on the mail.  My character that received the mail is Aphotis, the server is Unrest, and the mail came from "Sciid".

[Ama]

<cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>It seems the spam (filtered) might be slowing down a bit.  The spammers may be getting frustrated with the filter a little.  On the other hand, I just received the first piece of plat spam in-game e-mail that I have gotten in a long time.  Is the spam filter applied to in-game mail as well?  If not, it should be. I used the report button on the mail.  My character that received the mail is Aphotis, the server is Unrest, and the mail came from "Sciid". </blockquote> Ya the spammers may start trying to send spammer mail.  I got a plat spam message on my illusionist and reported it using the report command.  Hopefully the filter system will be extended to filter out messages for spam. 

[Boyar]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thud@Befallen wrote: <blockquote>Not sure if this is related, or if we experienced some other sort of bug, but on a Labs raid last night, our parsing guy couldn't send parse to /ooc. It worked fine in shout, so that's what we used. None of us had spam showing, to reduce lag, and we were doing the raid, so didn't take time to test.</blockquote> That is very odd.  I will look into it.  Those two channels should work in the same way so not sure why one worked and one did not. Update: I could not get this to happen.  Can you PM me a sample parse from last night that did not go through? Thanks. </blockquote><p>I'll see if we get the same issue on tonight's raid. I wasn't the one parsing, and don't recall who was now. I looked in my log and I can find our /ooc test typing of 'can you see this?' but it appears that /shout isn't logged, or at least none of our shouted parse that evening is in my log.</p><p>If parse again fails to show in /ooc, I'll petition so a GM can collect data </p></blockquote>If you could also make sure you have spam channel enabled so that you can see spams (see if they are getting filtered as spam) and let me know that as well. </blockquote>Update: everything went fine - must've been messed up settings for whomever was parsing Wednesday. Sorry to trouble you, and thanks for being so responsive.

[ChrisRay]

It was kind of funny. Someone was asking about a quest in 60-69 chat today. And someone replied "Try <a href="http://eq2.wikia.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com"</a> and it got filtered.  

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>ChrisRay wrote:</cite><blockquote>It was kind of funny. Someone was asking about a quest in 60-69 chat today. And someone replied "Try <a href="http://eq2.wikia.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com"</a> and it got filtered.   </blockquote> Just updated with new info so that this wont be spam anymore.  Once the Not Spam option goes live this will be automated.

[ReturnOfMadness]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ChrisRay wrote:</cite><blockquote>It was kind of funny. Someone was asking about a quest in 60-69 chat today. And someone replied "Try <a href="http://eq2.wikia.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com"</a> and it got filtered.   </blockquote> Just updated with new info so that this wont be spam anymore.  Once the Not Spam option goes live this will be automated. </blockquote>had a spam earlier that didnt get filtered and reported it the best thing didnt came to 30 mins or something like that later as the report i got an identical spam message but filtered <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> gj on the filter tbh =)

[ArivenGemini]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ChrisRay wrote:</cite><blockquote>It was kind of funny. Someone was asking about a quest in 60-69 chat today. And someone replied "Try <a href="http://eq2.wikia.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com"</a> and it got filtered.   </blockquote> Just updated with new info so that this wont be spam anymore.  Once the Not Spam option goes live this will be automated. </blockquote> heh, I sent in a "not spam" report via petition and the response from the GM was "Huh?" waiting ever so eagerly for the notspam button <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Chefren]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just updated with new info so that this wont be spam anymore.  Once the <b>Not Spam</b> option goes live this will be automated. </blockquote>It's called <b>Ham</b>, people! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[willnotuse]

I'm starting to notice the spammers use the same technique used against the email providers.  Periods, spaces, hyphens, etc.  I wonder if it may be a good idea to temporarily "break" the random name generator as well?

[Mr. Dawki]

<cite>willnotuse wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm starting to notice the spammers use the same technique used against the email providers.  Periods, spaces, hyphens, etc.  I wonder if it may be a good idea to temporarily "break" the random name generator as well? </blockquote>good sugestion but.... the spammers could make their own name generator, finding a program that will generate 4-9 random alpha characters wouldnt be too hard

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>willnotuse wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm starting to notice the spammers use the same technique used against the email providers.  Periods, spaces, hyphens, etc.  I wonder if it may be a good idea to temporarily "break" the random name generator as well? </blockquote> Is this working though?

[willnotuse]

Yes. I've been getting the spam setup like this coming through.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>willnotuse wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes. I've been getting the spam setup like this coming through. </blockquote> PM me an example, I am curious if it already got picked up by the db (it should have it you reported it).

[ytuy]

<p>I got one today... it went like this</p><p>Ywdvag sends a tell, "falsesite.com"</p><p>then it was followed by:</p><p>Dsjsesad sends a tell, "he means -realplatsellingsite.com"</p><p> Both were marked as spam, although I didn't report it.</p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>ytuy wrote:</cite><blockquote> <p> Both were marked as spam, although I didn't report it.</p></blockquote> /cackle Sorry but this brings me great inner joy.

[Methriln]

Just got some spam same as before the filter except the website was in caps with a v at the end of it.

[Josgar]

your reported it right?

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Methriln wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just got some spam same as before the filter except the website was in caps with a v at the end of it. </blockquote> Filtered or unfiltered?  When people talk about spam I would like if you could put "filtered spam" or "unfiltered spam" instead of "spam" so that I can sort out if there are ones getting through.

[Sedenten]

<p>So far so good on the spam filter--about two days ago I just filtered the "spam" from all of my chat boxes entirely, and haven't been annoyed at all.  I haven't had to report anything for going on about 4 days now or so, which is a huge improvement over the previous situation.</p><p> However, my incoming email spam has more than doubled since the tells started getting filtered.  Is there any way to have the system also work for in-game mails, with anything marked as spam put in it's own seperate tab (and not triggering the "you have mail" icon by being there)?  This would of course have to be after you work all the kinks out of the current tell filter, but it would be a blessing to have the system also work to help filter out mail spam.  </p><p> Once again, amazing job on this serverside filter--I had my doubts before it was implemented and Sony has proven me wrong <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Good job on keeping up with the feedback in this thread, Zoltaroth!</p>

[Rijacki]

I've been finding it amusing, from time to time, to 'view' the filtered spam to see their latest -blocked- attempts:  'v' at the end of the URL,  the URL mangled, the message almost undecipherable in the combination of leet speak and broken English, using PLA (Platinum), the URL widely spaced, returning to the original bad name from the 'new' one, etc.  The one thing that is common to all of them is the name that's nearly or all consonants.  I haven't seen any real names, yet, marked as spam. I think, over the weekend, on 2 different accounts and 2 different servers, I have gotten ONE spam to make it through the filter and I did report it. I have the filtered spam going to a window that isn't one I look at all the time so I can completely and utterly ignore the whole thing most of the time (and I do when I am doing something other than harvesting for tinkering while no one is about to chat with). Thank you SOE. The world is definitely becoming a lot more civil again.

[liveja]

<cite>Sedenten wrote:</cite><blockquote><p> Once again, amazing job on this serverside filter--I had my doubts before it was implemented and Sony has proven me wrong <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Good job on keeping up with the feedback in this thread, Zoltaroth!</p></blockquote><p>QFE on all points.</p><p>I get maybe 1 "unfiltered" spam per day, usually borked up the way Rijaki described. Some of those spams are actually pretty entertaining to read, too.</p><p>Life is good <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p>

[Hellswrath]

Spam filter feedback....hmmmm. How do I feel about not seeing all that spam all the time..... (*&%#@$ GREAT!  Well Done!

[Tstorm]

I had a 100% spam free weekend. <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I received 6 spam /tells (or thereabout) and the filter caught them all.  I was pretty impressed too when I reviewed the /tells since some of them were nearly unreadable with the spammers desperately trying to work around the filter with spaces, symbols, abbreviations, etc. I shed a little tear when I thought of the plight of the spammer -- ok, maybe not. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Wilin]

<p>I had a spam free weekend. Thanks.</p><p>I have one concern. With your automated filter and allowing users to mark spam as Not Spam, will the spammers be able to mark their own spam (or each other's) as Not Spam and bypass your automated filter?</p>

[Oakum]

<p>I got a kick out of something related to this last weekend. A person was saying stuff just to see what would get picked up and what could slip by (non plat seller I am pretty sure since it was a lvl 70) and eventually all his tells and chat text started coming through as spam even innocent tells without any of the websites named ect. </p><p>I call that poetic justice. Try and get around the filter and annoy people even though it was not actually advertising in the sense of telling people where to buy plat and you end up having to petition to get your chat restored to normal. Hopefully he learned a lesson in the process. </p>

[bluemoon420]

<p> I just wanted to report over the weekend on the unrest server, not one single spam tell went thru unfiltered. Not one /rejoices I did notice on Sunday, and this morning when I logged in to check my broker they were sending out spam mails. My mailbox had about 4 of them. I reported those of course.</p><p> Thanks for all the hard work <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I was so happy to see the last update made a huge difference.</p><p>  Iuminya</p>

[ravenscale]

ive noticed alot less spam but have also noticed they are starting to use more realitic names there where 2 day before yesterday that looked like they could have been real players (as far as name goes not the Qhfisenfl ones) and it picked them up to <img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Trepan]

Even with the spam filter I'm still choosing to see the msgs because I'm a sadist and like to click their name and report them for spam. How about a little fire, scarecrow?  Moohawhaw BUT, the filter is catching 95% of the spam, kudos for that!

[Spyrit]

I have turned off Spam notification on all toons and I have not had a Spam tell for days. Wooooot. Great job guys.

[Eldcen]

<cite>Trepan wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even with the spam filter I'm still choosing to see the msgs because I'm a sadist and like to click their name and report them for spam. How about a little fire, scarecrow?  Moohawhaw BUT, the filter is catching 95% of the spam, kudos for that! </blockquote>If you received filtered spam, Zoltaroth has confirmed that you <b>do not </b>need to report it.  In fact I believe he is soon removing the option to even report spammers that have already been filtered.  If you receive unfiltered spam, by all means, report away!

[Asfera]

<p>I have had one false Positive and 3 messages get through in the last 3 days..</p><p>I have /report and /petition the 3 that did get through BUT there is no record of my petitions in my question history.</p><p> My suggestion for soe to save us a lot of headaches is can we please get an Account Ignore option?? I have played other MMO's in the past and when you did an ignore account all that showed up was a named and a number in () , from that point on that persons account could not message you anymore, Furthermore if an account got banned it was flushed from every-ones ignore list.</p><p>that's my 2 plat spend it however you like but at least consider it</p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Asfera wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I have had one false Positive and 3 messages get through in the last 3 days..</p><p>I have /report and /petition the 3 that did get through BUT there is no record of my petitions in my question history.</p><p> My suggestion for soe to save us a lot of headaches is can we please get an Account Ignore option?? I have played other MMO's in the past and when you did an ignore account all that showed up was a named and a number in () , from that point on that persons account could not message you anymore, Furthermore if an account got banned it was flushed from every-ones ignore list.</p><p>that's my 2 plat spend it however you like but at least consider it</p></blockquote>You should _NOT_ /report and /petition the ones that got through.  Rather left-click on the name of the sender in your chat box and click _Report Spam_.. Ignoring accounts would add little value since these spammer accounts are banned in 12-14 hours.

[Warpax]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Asfera wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I have had one false Positive and 3 messages get through in the last 3 days..</p><p>I have /report and /petition the 3 that did get through BUT there is no record of my petitions in my question history.</p><p> My suggestion for soe to save us a lot of headaches is can we please get an Account Ignore option?? I have played other MMO's in the past and when you did an ignore account all that showed up was a named and a number in () , from that point on that persons account could not message you anymore, Furthermore if an account got banned it was flushed from every-ones ignore list.</p><p>that's my 2 plat spend it however you like but at least consider it</p></blockquote>You should _NOT_ /report and /petition the ones that got through.  Rather left-click on the name of the sender in your chat box and click _Report Spam_.. Ignoring accounts would add little value since these spammer accounts are banned in 12-14 hours. </blockquote>would it be possible to make the spammers name rightclickable to report spam without having to actually view the message? Also,  I got a spam message from the 10-19 general chat that was blocked. Awesome job guys!

[Eriol]

<cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote>would it be possible to make the spammers name rightclickable to report spam without having to actually view the message? </blockquote>He means to report messages that are NOT marked as spam and just come through as regular tells.  If it IS marked as spam (correctly) already, don't do anything, as it's already "flagged" internally.

[Warpax]

<cite>Eriol wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote>would it be possible to make the spammers name rightclickable to report spam without having to actually view the message? </blockquote>He means to report messages that are NOT marked as spam and just come through as regular tells.  If it IS marked as spam (correctly) already, don't do anything, as it's already "flagged" internally. </blockquote>oh, ok. so If its already marked as spam then that person automatically gets reported to whoever and gets banned? Thats even better thanks

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eriol wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote>would it be possible to make the spammers name rightclickable to report spam without having to actually view the message? </blockquote>He means to report messages that are NOT marked as spam and just come through as regular tells.  If it IS marked as spam (correctly) already, don't do anything, as it's already "flagged" internally. </blockquote>oh, ok. so If its already marked as spam then that person automatically gets reported to whoever and gets banned? Thats even better thanks </blockquote>That is correct!

[Zoltaroth]

Today's update included some new code to help further lessen false positives.  I would like to get some feedback from people about how many false positives they are getting with this update.

[Dionysoz]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eriol wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Warpax wrote:</cite><blockquote>would it be possible to make the spammers name rightclickable to report spam without having to actually view the message? </blockquote>He means to report messages that are NOT marked as spam and just come through as regular tells.  If it IS marked as spam (correctly) already, don't do anything, as it's already "flagged" internally. </blockquote>oh, ok. so If its already marked as spam then that person automatically gets reported to whoever and gets banned? Thats even better thanks </blockquote>That is correct! </blockquote>SWEET!!! I thought I had to keep reporting stuff that came through as spam but this is good to hear that it is already taken care of.<img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Eldcen]

Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.)

[Ama]

<p>It maybe necessary to start making this filter screen emails *first w/o attachments then with*.  Starting to receive more than the normal mails in game about buying plat.  Have received atleast 5 mails within the past week about this maybe 3.  </p><p>Worst problem maybe people that write computer programs to spam these messages out.  Wouldn't doubt there is a program out there that helps the bots spam people.</p>

[Bromir]

<p>IMO the mails are not even close to beeing as annoying as the tells . </p><p>Yours</p><p>Bromir</p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.) </blockquote>Yes, the code for this is pretty much done, it just needs to go through QA.  I will try to get it pushed in one of the next two or three hotfixes.

[ZeroRavesOn]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.) </blockquote>Yes, the code for this is pretty much done, it just needs to go through QA.  I will try to get it pushed in one of the next two or three hotfixes. </blockquote> If this is applied to mail, does that mean that you will receive a mail that says something to the effect of "this is a mail that has been picked up as spam, click here to view the contents. [contents]" or would it be blocked entirely? If mail is planning on being blocked entirely, then will there be a way to opt out, since there doesn't sound like there would be oversight for false positives.

[mellowknees72]

<cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>(Asians who try to speak English - even if they're fairly good at it - can always be spotted), </blockquote>Careful, there - there are a lot of Asians in this world who are native English speakers.  Being Asian does not equal not speaking English.  Let's try and remember that the world is made up of a lot of different people, who are born all over the place with various ethnic and racial heritages, and speaking various languages natively.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>ZeroRavesOn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.) </blockquote>Yes, the code for this is pretty much done, it just needs to go through QA.  I will try to get it pushed in one of the next two or three hotfixes. </blockquote> If this is applied to mail, does that mean that you will receive a mail that says something to the effect of "this is a mail that has been picked up as spam, click here to view the contents. [contents]" or would it be blocked entirely? If mail is planning on being blocked entirely, then will there be a way to opt out, since there doesn't sound like there would be oversight for false positives. </blockquote>There will be a "Spam" Tab next to the "Inbox" tab.  Everything can be reported as "Spam" from the "Inbox" and everything in the "Spam" tab can be reported as "Not Spam" This tab will function exactly the same way the Inbox functions with the exceptions above.

[Ama]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.) </blockquote>Yes, the code for this is pretty much done, it just needs to go through QA.  I will try to get it pushed in one of the next two or three hotfixes. </blockquote><p>Glad to hear that this is being pushed to mail as well.  It died down for a bit, but picked up with one company spamming me constantly.  I keep feeling as if the plat sellers are checking guild rosters and spamming from there. </p><p>Have to say I deffinately give a thumbs up to the anti-spam filter.  Best part is I can go to chat and click the spam thing off so I don't even have to see the "You received spam from X" person. </p>

[Bromir]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Any word on possibly adding the spam filter to in-game mail?  I still haven't gotten a single un-filtered spam tell since the auto-update thing went live, but I am getting considerably more mail spam than I was before the filter.  (Yes, I use the report button on the mail spam.) </blockquote>Yes, the code for this is pretty much done, it just needs to go through QA.  I will try to get it pushed in one of the next two or three hotfixes. </blockquote><p>Glad to hear that this is being pushed to mail as well.  It died down for a bit, but picked up with one company spamming me constantly.  I keep feeling as if the plat sellers are checking guild rosters and spamming from there. </p><p>Have to say I deffinately give a thumbs up to the anti-spam filter.  Best part is I can go to chat and click the spam thing off so I don't even have to see the "You received spam from X" person. </p></blockquote><p>Yeah I'm really impressed by the filter too .. So far i have to eat my words on the /tell level ignore option . The filter seems great .</p><p>Nice to play again <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Yours</p><p>Bromir</p>

[Astrlidia]

<p>I'm getting spam<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I wasn't before, just through the mail. Not very many of those either. Now I'm getting spammed to death.<img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Troubor]

<cite>Astrlidia wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting spam<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I wasn't before, just through the mail. Not very many of those either. Now I'm getting spammed to death.<img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote><p> I haven't gotten any Norrath mail spam (yet), but I have seen level 1 toons, usually with nonsense names or just odd ones loitering near the mailbox, presumably sending spam mail.  I've reported a couple now, with hopes they would be investigated (if such can be done), and yet I still see the same people at the same mailboxes the next day.</p><p>This is a second hand account since I didn't see it, but people also report level 1 toons standing in an area like Qeynos Harbor and spamming zonewide OOC channel or shout.  This was closer to when the filter was patched in though, I haven't heard of anyone complaining about such recently, and I never encountered it personally.</p><p>The filter itself seems to be working fine.  Yesterday I did get three messages, but all were flagged as spam and blocked.  This was the first time, blocked or not that I had gotten any in about a week, so it seems like the spammers are slowing down for now (I hope).  Anyway, so far this filter seems to be evolving well.  Only time a non plat spammer has been blocked is when a friend has sent me a /tell intentionally trying to see if it can be blocked by spam, either as a joke or out of curiosity.</p>

[Eldcen]

Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>(Asians who try to speak English - even if they're fairly good at it - can always be spotted), </blockquote>Careful, there - there are a lot of Asians in this world who are native English speakers.  Being Asian does not equal not speaking English.  Let's try and remember that the world is made up of a lot of different people, who are born all over the place with various ethnic and racial heritages, and speaking various languages natively.</blockquote>Oh please...  You know exactly what I mean. The vast majority of Asians that are involved in these plat spamming ventures are NOT native English speakers, and can NOT speak English well enough to avoid standing out like a sore thumb to someone who IS a native English speaker.  Any more than the vast majority of North Americans cannot speak Chinese well enough to avoid standing out like a sore thumb to someone who is a native Chinese speaker. Trying to play the racial insensitivity card on me because I alluded to the fact that it's easy to spot an Asian who's speaking English is ridiculous.  It's also easy to spot me trying to speak Chinese, or a native German trying to speak Spanish, or a native Mexican trying to speak French. Anyway, /thread derail off

[Mordeak]

for the past week I had no spam tells / mails whatsoever, not even filtered ones and I'm still displaying all tells in my chat window This is one dev that's going to get a big bearhug when I come to the SOE fan fair next year

[Echgar]

<cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>The vast majority of Asians that are involved in these plat spamming ventures... </blockquote>Let's avoid stereotyping spammers by race, nation, religion, gender, or sexual orientation please.  As we have seen, some people do not take this very kindly and while you may not be intentionally disparaging people in these groups, it is easy to misinterpret written communication. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I suggest a focus on the actual mechanics and what you actually see in-game so that Zoltaroth, who has been very communicative in this thread, can see about implementing effective ways of combating the spam.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Astrlidia wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting spam<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I wasn't before, just through the mail. Not very many of those either. Now I'm getting spammed to death.<img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote> In tells or in mail?

[EvilIguana9]

<cite>Echgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Eldcen wrote:</cite><blockquote>The vast majority of Asians that are involved in these plat spamming ventures... </blockquote>Let's avoid stereotyping spammers by race, nation, religion, gender, or sexual orientation please.  As we have seen, some people do not take this very kindly and while you may not be intentionally disparaging people in these groups, it is easy to misinterpret written communication. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I suggest a focus on the actual mechanics and what you actually see in-game so that Zoltaroth, who has been very communicative in this thread, can see about implementing effective ways of combating the spam. </blockquote> The stereotype in this case is accurate.  It's not a function of race.  Many east-Asian countries are no more prone to house plat farms than the US.  People of Asian descent living in Europe or America are probably no more likely to be a botter than you or I.  But there is a sort of perfect storm in some parts of the world, particularly China.  The level of education, the level of technology, the general level of wages, and the chances of any repercussions are just right for this sort of activity to flourish.  China just happens to be where it's at these days.  Being a MMORPG botter is a pretty good way to make a living for a lot of Chinese people, and the managers know that they are pretty much immune to any attempts to shut them down, because quite frankly our government would have to care enough about the issue to consider raising it and the Communists would have to care enough about fair trade to make any effort to right the wrongs.  We are afraid to even confront the Chinese over massive software piracy, and the economic damage done by plat farmers is much harder to quantify than that. But anyway, the botters and farmers are primarily Chinese, and they generally speak little English because they really have no need to where they live.  <i><b>If</b></i> these facts can be used to help discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate players then they should be.  I personally feel not enough is being done on the billing/account side in this respect.  The people who cause all these problems for legitimate customers tend to come from specific parts of the world.  If you have to just cut off access from IP ranges or ISPs that are used for and/or condone breaking the EULA.  Bottom line is you know who to pay special attention to. 

[liveja]

<cite>EvilIguana966 wrote:</cite><blockquote>The stereotype in this case is accurate. </blockquote><p>I don't think Echgar cares whether it is or isn't.</p><p>Echgar is saying "drop the talk about the stereotype, & <b>FOCUS ON THE MECHANICS OF THE SPAM FILTER</b>." Because, you see, they're trying to get the spam filter to work, regardless of who's doing the spamming.</p>

[Grimwell]

I made it very clear that this thread would not be welcoming discussion about national origin. You can discuss the existing tool, and help Zoltaroth stay updated about what's working and what is not. You are not welcome to talk about who the spammers are, and where they live. It stirs up the drama, and makes it harder for Zoltaroth to find the feedback he's looking for - the feedback that keeps our filter on it's toes. Please keep it on topic.

[Ama]

<cite>Astrlidia wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting spam<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I wasn't before, just through the mail. Not very many of those either. Now I'm getting spammed to death.<img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote><p> My mail has started to slow down a bit which has got me worried.  However the spammers are still at their game and right now i'm tempted just to turn the *spam* option off so I don't even have to see the spam message from player X thing.  </p><p>Received atleast 7 messages today which shows the plat sellers are getting pretty dang desperate.  I haven't been monitoring their activites like I usually do.  I'll start checking their messages to see if they attempt to bypass the filter so I can give updates.  </p><p>I'm really REALLY glad this filter has been implemented.  Now I don't run into those scenarios where i'm knee deep in combat about to take down an epic and receive the tell "We give u good plat send discount code X to get plat at X site.  Thank you for time". *Yes I did receive a message similiar to that. </p>

[Maroger]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote: <blockquote><cite>EvilIguana966 wrote:</cite><blockquote>The stereotype in this case is accurate. </blockquote><p>I don't think Echgar cares whether it is or isn't.</p><p>Echgar is saying "drop the talk about the stereotype, & <b>FOCUS ON THE MECHANICS OF THE SPAM FILTER</b>." Because, you see, they're trying to get the spam filter to work, regardless of who's doing the spamming.</p></blockquote>Identifying and pinpointing the geographical source of a problem is often important in providing a good fix.

[Syndic]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Astrlidia wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm getting spam<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I wasn't before, just through the mail. Not very many of those either. Now I'm getting spammed to death.<img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote><p> My mail has started to slow down a bit which has got me worried.  However the spammers are still at their game and right now i'm tempted just to turn the *spam* option off so I don't even have to see the spam message from player X thing.  </p><p>Received atleast 7 messages today which shows the plat sellers are getting pretty dang desperate.  I haven't been monitoring their activites like I usually do.  I'll start checking their messages to see if they attempt to bypass the filter so I can give updates.  </p><p>I'm really REALLY glad this filter has been implemented.  Now I don't run into those scenarios where i'm knee deep in combat about to take down an epic and receive the tell "We give u good plat send discount code X to get plat at X site.  Thank you for time". *Yes I did receive a message similiar to that. </p></blockquote>Personally I turned off spam filter the day it went live and since the update talked about have yet to receive even 1 spam tell on any character (even taken them off anon now too).  As for mail I am still getting the occasional one or two, but hopefully the mail filter going in will stop that also (although would love an option to not receive them at all, checking a spam tab and checking my inbox are the same thing to me).

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Syndic wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Astrlidia wrote: </blockquote>Personally I turned off spam filter the day it went live and since the update talked about have yet to receive even 1 spam tell on any character (even taken them off anon now too).  As for mail I am still getting the occasional one or two, but hopefully the mail filter going in will stop that also (although would love an option to not receive them at all, checking a spam tab and checking my inbox are the same thing to me). </blockquote> The way I have it setup right now mail in the spam box will not cause the icon to appear on your screen and will not give you a popup telling you that there is new mail.  It will be totally silent.  The spam tab will have a "Delete All" button that will let you clear all the spam with 1 button press.

[Syndic]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Syndic wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Astrlidia wrote: </blockquote>Personally I turned off spam filter the day it went live and since the update talked about have yet to receive even 1 spam tell on any character (even taken them off anon now too).  As for mail I am still getting the occasional one or two, but hopefully the mail filter going in will stop that also (although would love an option to not receive them at all, checking a spam tab and checking my inbox are the same thing to me). </blockquote> The way I have it setup right now mail in the spam box will not cause the icon to appear on your screen and will not give you a popup telling you that there is new mail.  It will be totally silent.  The spam tab will have a "Delete All" button that will let you clear all the spam with 1 button press. </blockquote>Cool thanks for that and all the brilliant work you and others have done so far, makes playing so much more enjoyable.

[Ama]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Syndic wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Astrlidia wrote: </blockquote>Personally I turned off spam filter the day it went live and since the update talked about have yet to receive even 1 spam tell on any character (even taken them off anon now too).  As for mail I am still getting the occasional one or two, but hopefully the mail filter going in will stop that also (although would love an option to not receive them at all, checking a spam tab and checking my inbox are the same thing to me). </blockquote> The way I have it setup right now mail in the spam box will not cause the icon to appear on your screen and will not give you a popup telling you that there is new mail.  It will be totally silent.  The spam tab will have a "Delete All" button that will let you clear all the spam with 1 button press. </blockquote><p><img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Amana Approves this function</p><p>Logged in and got a mail from a plat sellers on one of my 3 main toons.  Can't wait for this feature to be put into effect live so the plat sellers can be slapped down not once, but twice.  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p>

[Mystfit]

<p>None of my alts have received a spam message since about the last GU, I've been really pleased with how it seems to be going.  </p><p>I should edit this to say none have sneaked through the filter, not sure what it's catching <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I also noticed it stopped resetting. For awhile, every time they made tweaks, I had to resent my spam settings. That's not happening now. </p>

[lilmohi]

It appears the spammers on my server have figured out a way around the filter by sending 4 seperate tells, and now instead a one line ad i get 4 tells every time the spammers cycle through.  I love the new filter though don't get me wrong.  But can you please implement a cool down on direct tells (either 1 sec delay or 1 mana point)?  Even the really fast chatters will be hard pressed to type a reply in less than 1 second but a spammer sending thousands of tells would get significantly slowed down. 

[SisterTheresa]

<p>My experiance is that the spam filter is doing quite well.  I have been getting spam from the same character while i was in a zone for a while, but all of it was blocked.  I have had very few experiances when it blocked something in a level chat talking about how much gold or platnium something is when asked.</p><p>I like this and hope it gets to become even better.</p>

[Vith]

I got several from the same guy last night, forgot to write down his name but he's on my ignore list after six or seven. The spam filter caught all of them, but it was still pretty annoying. Should I have /reported him? The filter caught him, so I figured with the volume of /tells it wasn't necessary to also /report. Pretty funny message though, something about buying 1000pp a week for 5812 weeks and you will be 100 years old and mighty powerful!

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote>It appears the spammers on my server have figured out a way around the filter by sending 4 seperate tells, and now instead a one line ad i get 4 tells every time the spammers cycle through.  I love the new filter though don't get me wrong.  But can you please implement a cool down on direct tells (either 1 sec delay or 1 mana point)?  Even the really fast chatters will be hard pressed to type a reply in less than 1 second but a spammer sending thousands of tells would get significantly slowed down.  </blockquote> I saw some of this come through the updater yesterday, I am curious if these tells are still getting though.  When I ran it through my tester they were not.

[Zoltaroth]

Vith@Oasis wrote: <blockquote>I got several from the same guy last night, forgot to write down his name but he's on my ignore list after six or seven. The spam filter caught all of them, but it was still pretty annoying. Should I have /reported him? The filter caught him, so I figured with the volume of /tells it wasn't necessary to also /report. Pretty funny message though, something about buying 1000pp a week for 5812 weeks and you will be 100 years old and mighty powerful!</blockquote> No need to report it if it's caught by the filter. And I also saw that message it was hilarious.

[ShinmaRyche]

<span style="color: #99ff00">After unchecking the spam box from my main window, I havent seen a spam tell in 3 days. There was one that got through shortly before that, and it was in perfect english about buying "plats".</span>

[Jeridor]

I have had no false positives, nor any spam get through the filter, since the last update to it.

[lilmohi]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote>It appears the spammers on my server have figured out a way around the filter by sending 4 seperate tells, and now instead a one line ad i get 4 tells every time the spammers cycle through.  I love the new filter though don't get me wrong.  But can you please implement a cool down on direct tells (either 1 sec delay or 1 mana point)?  Even the really fast chatters will be hard pressed to type a reply in less than 1 second but a spammer sending thousands of tells would get significantly slowed down.  </blockquote> I saw some of this come through the updater yesterday, I am curious if these tells are still getting though.  When I ran it through my tester they were not. </blockquote> They were getting through last night. <img src="/smilies/49869fe8223507d7223db3451e5321aa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I clicked the report spam button on a couple of the lines, and did a /report of the name.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote>It appears the spammers on my server have figured out a way around the filter by sending 4 seperate tells, and now instead a one line ad i get 4 tells every time the spammers cycle through.  I love the new filter though don't get me wrong.  But can you please implement a cool down on direct tells (either 1 sec delay or 1 mana point)?  Even the really fast chatters will be hard pressed to type a reply in less than 1 second but a spammer sending thousands of tells would get significantly slowed down.  </blockquote> I saw some of this come through the updater yesterday, I am curious if these tells are still getting though.  When I ran it through my tester they were not. </blockquote> They were getting through last night. <img src="/smilies/49869fe8223507d7223db3451e5321aa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I clicked the report spam button on a couple of the lines, and did a /report of the name.</blockquote> Do you have a log of what was getting through?  I just want to double check that it is now blocked.

[Leatherneck]

I have yet to have one get through, however guildmates were claiming some were getting through because of a creative use of parenthesis and the like.

[lilmohi]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lilmohi wrote:</cite><blockquote>It appears the spammers on my server have figured out a way around the filter by sending 4 seperate tells, and now instead a one line ad i get 4 tells every time the spammers cycle through.  I love the new filter though don't get me wrong.  But can you please implement a cool down on direct tells (either 1 sec delay or 1 mana point)?  Even the really fast chatters will be hard pressed to type a reply in less than 1 second but a spammer sending thousands of tells would get significantly slowed down.  </blockquote> I saw some of this come through the updater yesterday, I am curious if these tells are still getting though.  When I ran it through my tester they were not. </blockquote> They were getting through last night. <img src="/smilies/49869fe8223507d7223db3451e5321aa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I clicked the report spam button on a couple of the lines, and did a /report of the name.</blockquote> Do you have a log of what was getting through?  I just want to double check that it is now blocked. </blockquote><p> I log everything, i'll send you a PM with the log when i get home from work.</p>

[Leatherneck]

Personally I'd love to see a system where if you have <i>x</i> amount of message spamblocked in <i>x</i> minutes/hours you are disconnected and your account is deleted or disabled.

[Gallenite]

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally I'd love to see a system where if you have <i>x</i> amount of message spamblocked in <i>x</i> minutes/hours you are disconnected and your account is deleted or disabled.</blockquote> Right now there's a manual review step to make sure we're not sweeping valid customers, but that's exactly what happens currently at least twice a day.

[Leatherneck]

<cite>Gallenite wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally I'd love to see a system where if you have <i>x</i> amount of message spamblocked in <i>x</i> minutes/hours you are disconnected and your account is deleted or disabled.</blockquote> Right now there's a manual review step to make sure we're not sweeping valid customers, but that's exactly what happens currently at least twice a day. </blockquote><p> I thoroughly applaud your desire to make sure valid players aren't getting axed.</p><p>Put a big red flashing warning in there after the first time.  Something along the lines of "Your last message was flagged as spam.  Please reconsider your wording.  Additional spam sent from this account will result in deletion".  That would save the innocent player who asks "Hey, I just got a tell from <a href="http://www.scumbagsellers.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.scumbagsellers.com</a>.  What's that all about?"</p><p>I think you could apply some judgement criteria to ensure you're not accidentally nuking a "real" player.  Examples:</p><p><b>Paid account - </b>That alone would be a big one.  If they had to pay $20 or so for a new copy of EQ2 every 10 minutes because they sent out 100 spammings, I think you'd pretty much cut spamming out.  If it's a paid account, isn't it reasonable to assume they're real players?  If it's not a paid account and you send out 2 or 3 spammings, you're not playing, you're selling.</p><p><b>Character level and played time</b> (either adventuring or tradeskilling) could also be used.</p><p>Perhaps something really tricky and arcane such as <b>the ratio of unique /tells sent and received</b>.  I think stuff like this could be a public relations coup for EQ2 and really set the pace for aggressively weeding out sellers.</p>

[Silverfrost]

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><b>Paid account - </b>That alone would be a big one.  If they had to pay $20 or so for a new copy of EQ2 every 10 minutes because they sent out 100 spammings, I think you'd pretty much cut spamming out.  If it's a paid account, isn't it reasonable to assume they're real players?  If it's not a paid account and you send out 2 or 3 spammings, you're not playing, you're selling.</blockquote>You'd think that, but unfortunately plat spammers routinely use stolen credit card numbers to obtain accounts, so it's not costing them anything.  Yet another reason to never, ever give your credit card company to a plat farming service.

[Leatherneck]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><b>Paid account - </b>That alone would be a big one.  If they had to pay $20 or so for a new copy of EQ2 every 10 minutes because they sent out 100 spammings, I think you'd pretty much cut spamming out.  If it's a paid account, isn't it reasonable to assume they're real players?  If it's not a paid account and you send out 2 or 3 spammings, you're not playing, you're selling.</blockquote>You'd think that, but unfortunately plat spammers routinely use stolen credit card numbers to obtain accounts, so it's not costing them anything.  Yet another reason to never, ever give your credit card company to a plat farming service. </blockquote> You know, I wish I could say I was surprised.

[vlgrjm]

ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day. </blockquote> None of these would stop what our plat spammers are currently doing, unfortunately, except maybe #2.  On top of that they would all negatively (especially #2) impact legitimate players.

[Maroger]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><b>Paid account - </b>That alone would be a big one.  If they had to pay $20 or so for a new copy of EQ2 every 10 minutes because they sent out 100 spammings, I think you'd pretty much cut spamming out.  If it's a paid account, isn't it reasonable to assume they're real players?  If it's not a paid account and you send out 2 or 3 spammings, you're not playing, you're selling.</blockquote>You'd think that, but unfortunately plat spammers routinely use stolen credit card numbers to obtain accounts, so it's not costing them anything.  Yet another reason to never, ever give your credit card company to a plat farming service. </blockquote><p>WoW -- I just hope you are reporting to the correct Federal law enforcement officials. It doesn't surprise me, but it is discouraging to hear the length these criminal will go. Can't you do more about the buyers? If there were no buyers - they would be out of busines! I think buyers should be punished too. At least can't you take the bought plat away from them!</p><p>EDIT: I had one tell I reported, but I have noticed the junk mail increasing suddenly. </p>

[Troubor]

<p>I've noted, just in the last day or two, that they are "trying harder"...actually had more /tells, but none of them made it past the filter.  No false positives either.  Did have one spam mail.  The /tells I assume (I didn't look, but they used the same gibberish names) were from gm*****r.com (hope it's clear whom I mean without posting their URL to advert them), the one spam letter from trade4****.com.  (Again, hope that's obvious).</p>

[sliderhouserules]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day. </blockquote> None of these would stop what our plat spammers are currently doing, unfortunately, except maybe #2.  On top of that they would all negatively (especially #2) impact legitimate players. </blockquote>I find this *very* hard to believe. I've put this out there quite a few times. What normal player for any normal reason needs to send a tell to more than 10 players inside one minute? *Nobody* does.

[travelerb8]

<cite>sliderhouserules wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day. </blockquote> None of these would stop what our plat spammers are currently doing, unfortunately, except maybe #2.  On top of that they would all negatively (especially #2) impact legitimate players. </blockquote>I find this *very* hard to believe. I've put this out there quite a few times. What normal player for any normal reason needs to send a tell to more than 10 players inside one minute? *Nobody* does. </blockquote>Assuming that is true, such a limit would only slow down the spammers slightly, but certainly wouldn't eliminate them.  Either the spammer can now send spam once every 6 seconds while logged in, or can send 10, switch toons, send 10, switch toons, etc. 

[Jardon]

A low level officer alt in a guild sending message to different people in the guild alliance trying to organize a raid before switching to a main, and that is just one legitimate example.

[jsandawg]

I have been pleased with the Spam Filter, but I did get one that was missed a couple nights ago.  They put spaces in the URL. G M X X X X E R . C O M Hope this helps.  I didn't get a chance to read all 11 pages of this thread to see if it was already posted <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Targ]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day. </blockquote> None of these would stop what our plat spammers are currently doing, unfortunately, except maybe #2.  On top of that they would all negatively (especially #2) impact legitimate players. </blockquote><p>#2 would be quickly worked around by the spammers. All they have to do is use two toons. Step 1 Toon #1 send spam tell. Step 2 Toon #1 send tell toon#2, Step 3 Toon #2 auto Responds to Toon#1.  Rinse and repeat 10,000 times. </p>

[Oakum]

<cite>sliderhouserules wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>ways to cut down on spam .one limit  the who alls to level 20, second limit the amount of tells that can be sent with no response to a certain time period, third limit web pages to approved pages only and limit the amount of toons you can creat and delete in one day. </blockquote> None of these would stop what our plat spammers are currently doing, unfortunately, except maybe #2.  On top of that they would all negatively (especially #2) impact legitimate players. </blockquote>I find this *very* hard to believe. I've put this out there quite a few times. What normal player for any normal reason needs to send a tell to more than 10 players inside one minute? *Nobody* does. </blockquote>I have before while investigating an alleged guildie ninja looting while in a pickup raid. I sent about 15 tells to different members of the raid asking questions. Also when your raid needs one certain class for something, a person could be sending tells to all clerics on line for example to see if they will come.

[Maroger]

<p>The spam filter seems to be working pretty good these day. We must have one of the better filters as I see complaints pouring in from other games.</p><p>Which really raises an interesting point -- how to stop these plat selling firms period. Why don't we hit the buyers, like take their plats away after they buy them.</p><p>Why isn't more of an effort made by companies to pressure Google and Yahoo for selling this scum advertising space? I mean interest groups go after these companies about their advertisers and in some cases, I think in the EU, have been successful in blocking advetisers.</p><p>Part of killing plat selling companies is to target their buyers, and their ability to advertise both in-game and out of game. Right not I see the effort being made to deal with the matter in-game. To really shut them down it has to cost them more money than they can make -- it is an economic issue and I don't see that being dealt with effectively. Efforts are piecemeal with each company doing "its own thing".</p>

[vlgrjm]

limit the who alls will stop their copy and past. also you can have at least 10 toons to limit them to that any one who is creating and deleting that many in a day is exploiting something.

[Maroger]

<cite>vlgrjm wrote:</cite><blockquote>limit the who alls will stop their copy and past. also you can have at least 10 toons to limit them to that any one who is creating and deleting that many in a day is exploiting something. </blockquote>But I got the impression from what has been said that these are all different account. I am sure the account get banned before they can create a 2nd set of 10 toons.

[Ama]

Starting to get spammed more via mail vs tells right now.  Most mails will contain the garbage "Discount Code" or give some stupid speech about lessening restrictions to give more play time to me the player.  Can't wait for the spam stuff to go into effect more mail. 

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Starting to get spammed more via mail vs tells right now.  Most mails will contain the garbage "Discount Code" or give some stupid speech about lessening restrictions to give more play time to me the player.  Can't wait for the spam stuff to go into effect more mail.  </blockquote> I want it to sit on internal test for a bit, but I will probably push it live sometime next week.

[shadowscale]

removing the ability to copy/paste to the mail would get them mad, but would interfere with normal players to.

[Kharzon]

I want the ability to ignore the entire account. /ignoreaccount playername would be wonderful. As it is now, even with the spam filter, that doesn't work for me about 1/3 of the time, and the mail (I can see it now, your mailbox is full), they are still getting around it all. /ignoreaccount playername Problem solved from the spam standpoint. Now you just need to get them for spamming, botting, etc cuz I know if I used a bot to actually play the game, I'd be banned in a heartbeat. Why shouldn't that apply to them as well? More banning less spamming.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Kharzon wrote:</cite><blockquote>I want the ability to ignore the entire account. /ignoreaccount playername would be wonderful. As it is now, even with the spam filter, that doesn't work for me about 1/3 of the time, and the mail (I can see it now, your mailbox is full), they are still getting around it all. /ignoreaccount playername Problem solved from the spam standpoint. Now you just need to get them for spamming, botting, etc cuz I know if I used a bot to actually play the game, I'd be banned in a heartbeat. Why shouldn't that apply to them as well? More banning less spamming. </blockquote> Ignoring accounts simply won't help.  We ban spammer accounts at least twice per day, they re-create characters with the same names often, which makes you think they are the same account, but they are not.  You would be adding *hundreds* of accounts to this list per day, and they would still send you tells.  I am surprised by your "1/3" number, because I don't see that on either my play accounts, or my fishing accounts (accounts I leave up 24/7 at the office to watch for spam).  Are you reporting  this spam with the 1-click reporting?  I don't see that much new spam being added to the system.

[Wraithstalker]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kharzon wrote:</cite><blockquote>I want the ability to ignore the entire account. /ignoreaccount playername would be wonderful. As it is now, even with the spam filter, that doesn't work for me about 1/3 of the time, and the mail (I can see it now, your mailbox is full), they are still getting around it all. /ignoreaccount playername Problem solved from the spam standpoint. Now you just need to get them for spamming, botting, etc cuz I know if I used a bot to actually play the game, I'd be banned in a heartbeat. Why shouldn't that apply to them as well? More banning less spamming. </blockquote> Ignoring accounts simply won't help.  We ban spammer accounts at least twice per day, they re-create characters with the same names often, which makes you think they are the same account, but they are not.  You would be adding *hundreds* of accounts to this list per day, and they would still send you tells.  I am surprised by your "1/3" number, because I don't see that on either my play accounts, or my fishing accounts (accounts I leave up 24/7 at the office to watch for spam).  Are you reporting  this spam with the 1-click reporting?  I don't see that much new spam being added to the system. </blockquote><p>Why are people allowed to purchase accounts in this quantity and perpetuate this menace? Are these trial accounts? If that is the case then surely there is a fix.</p><p>If so give players the ability to turn off tells from trial accounts. I'm not sure I care too much if I don't receive communications from this section of the player base, especially if it's causing me to get tells which are making my play a lot less enjoyable, regardless of any filtering. I'm paying to enjoy the game, they are not paying to abuse the system. It's an option, as soon as the account are subscribed, they can do whatever they want, you can even turn this feature off for players who want to help lower level players or don't perceive this as an issue. Remember these are just trials, they should have as little impact on possible on the customers who pay to play.</p><p>If these are full accounts then you appear to be making a whole lot of money from them if they are banned. I imagine the income here would serve to increase the amount of customer service manpower devote to erradicating this issue.</p><p>I'm happier with these changes recently, but if there is anyway of making it better and erradicating selling of services or plat (especially on a SE server where other players are bound by very strict guidelines, and have to pay commission to SOE for using the service), you need to improve things accordingly. </p>

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Wraithstalker wrote:</cite><blockquote>Why are people allowed to purchase accounts in this quantity and perpetuate this menace? Are these trial accounts? If that is the case then surely there is a fix.<p>If so give players the ability to turn off tells from trial accounts. I'm not sure I care too much if I don't receive communications from this section of the player base, especially if it's causing me to get tells which are making my play a lot less enjoyable, regardless of any filtering. I'm paying to enjoy the game, they are not paying to abuse the system. It's an option, as soon as the account are subscribed, they can do whatever they want, you can even turn this feature off for players who want to help lower level players or don't perceive this as an issue. Remember these are just trials, they should have as little impact on possible on the customers who pay to play.</p><p>If these are full accounts then you appear to be making a whole lot of money from them if they are banned. I imagine the income here would serve to increase the amount of customer service manpower devote to erradicating this issue.</p><p>I'm happier with these changes recently, but if there is anyway of making it better and erradicating selling of services or plat (especially on a SE server where other players are bound by very strict guidelines, and have to pay commission to SOE for using the service), you need to improve things accordingly. </p></blockquote>Trial accounts have not been able to send tells/mail for many many updates now. And as to your second point, no, credit card fraud does not yield a profit for us.  It yields a loss.  See Gallenite and Silverfrost's posts in this thread for a bit more info.

[Drevva]

While I think the Spam filter is a step in the right direction how about going for the source. On the Lucan D.  server there are farming groups in PoF all the time.  Everytime I go into that area I see them.  Everytime I raise an alt I get to fight with them to try and quest in the area around the Goblin camps. I report them everytime I see them and yet they are still here.  These folks will clear entire areas in a matter of minutes.  They seem to go in the same pattern.  They could be banned for zone disruption as they make it impossible to do any quests in the area.  They will harass as they will drag mobs onto you when you are fighting (didn't hurt me as I was mentoring a friend but lvl appropriate folks would have been killed).  We here time and time again that you are trying to stop the gold sellers, yet I have seen farming groups in this area for over 1.5 yrs.  How easy it would be to watch these groups and just track the money and ban those along the flow to the gold sale. Yes this spam filter helps, but I find the farming groups that keep me from doing quests and enjoying the game more annoying than a few tells I can just ignore. If you are serious about the gold selling go to the source, ask the players, we know where they farm.   Seems the best way to deal with this issue is hit them from both sides.  The advertising and in the generation of the gold. D

[Maroger]

<p>Got a spam tell this morning that got through. I reported it.</p><p>But they are now not only putting in spaces -- they are adding diacritical marks to the names.</p><p>Sort of looks like this now : G M W Ộ xxxxxxxx.</p><p>This is getting byt the filter due to the diacritical marks they are using. </p>

[shadowscale]

how long do you think it will be before all  the account codes are used up at this rate. how fast are they useing them up and how many are there?

[travelerb8]

<cite>shadowscale wrote:</cite><blockquote>how long do you think it will be before all  the account codes are used up at this rate. how fast are they useing them up and how many are there? </blockquote>Never.  I think quintillions is the number you are looking for  (quadrillions at least).

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Got a spam tell this morning that got through. I reported it.</p><p>But they are now not only putting in spaces -- they are adding diacritical marks to the names.</p><p>Sort of looks like this now : G M W Ộ xxxxxxxx.</p><p>This is getting byt the filter due to the diacritical marks they are using. </p></blockquote>Saw that, and that should not be valid anymore <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Ama]

The plat sellers are getting more crafty in their attempts to spam us.  Had a message break through the spam filter and reported the person/message as spam.  Unfortunately I don't have a log, but do remember enough of what was contained within the message to break the filter.  I won't say it here so I don't give the other plat sellers out there ideas on how to do so. 

[Garnaf]

One just slipped past.  ш and 0 used in place of letters.

[Captain_Xpendab]

You'd think they'd get the hint by now.

[Ama]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Got a spam tell this morning that got through. I reported it.</p><p>But they are now not only putting in spaces -- they are adding diacritical marks to the names.</p><p>Sort of looks like this now : G M W Ộ xxxxxxxx.</p><p>This is getting byt the filter due to the diacritical marks they are using. </p></blockquote>Saw that, and that should not be valid anymore <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote><p>Good to hear that will now be caught.  Plat sellers are deffinately getting desperate to be attempting those diacritical marks.  </p>

[Zaelicor]

<cite>Captain_Xpendable wrote:</cite><blockquote>You'd think they'd get the hint by now. </blockquote> Like tobacco companies should've gotten the hint by now? <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> They know there's a market for what they are peddling, and as long as there's a profit to be had, they will do anything they can to get it. Not picking on smokers here (hey want to smoke, just don't breathe on me and you can do whatever you want <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />) but as an example, because there will always be smokers, no matter what the government does to deter their sale (heavy taxing, prohibition, scare tactics), there will always be smokers. There will always be smokers who will pay a higher price for the cigarettes,  or when offered with the alternative, purchase cheaper alternatives (in ontario here we have a lot of reservations making cigarettes, and people buying them and peddling them outside of high smoker populated businesses like bingos and bars) whether legally or not. Methods of stamping out smoking has been,so far, very unsuccessful. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. Now that being the sales model, platsellers know there will always be buyers. Buyers know there will always be sellers (even if some sellers shut down, others eventually will open up). Removing the sellers only ends up causing more sellers to appear with new methods and even less respect for the rules.  Buyers, on the other hand, are a finite resource (so to speak). Due to personal experience, if you're against buying plat, you probably won't be changing your mind unless the game really takes a turn for the worse. A plat buyer isn't necessarily going to promote others to buy, mainly because the more people buying, the risk of getting caught (and losing a lot more money time and effort than any seller would lose if banned) goes up, and even worse, the risk of prices going up due to higher demand. New people entering the MMO scene are almost immediately bombarded with "buy plat here!" advertisements and think that it must be ok to buy since there are so many companies providing the service. This creates buyers, and keeps the sellers motivated and in business. Ok overly long answer, but suffice it to say, they got the hint, and know there's other smokers in the bingo, even if they can't smoke in there. (On a side note, keep at it SOE. I prefer my game experience plat selling/plat farming bot/plat buyer-free.)

[Wraithstalker]

Well I've just created a character called stopspamming on vox. All of the toons that send these messages stand completely still on queens isle or where ever they start and just start sending these messages. Why would a level 1 toon send so many tells out without even moving. When replying before I was under the impression these were trial accounts, because they were permitted to send tells outside of the starter areas, but surely some sort of control could be introduced to do the following. Sending tells and other communications is only permitted once you hit lvl 7 or 8, it's part of the tutorial and shows players what's permitted, how to use the chat channels and how to act responsibly This way the spammers would need to work at at least leveling before they can spam, they don't want that. They don't want to be on one toon for too long either, so you are making work for them. Encourage new players to use say and ooc until they are proficient at communication, then allow new ways of communicating. I can see a slight downside in that alts might want guild invites, so allow it to people when you are on their friends list. But tell's are the mechanism so far, make them work harder to achieve it, then they'll again be a reduction in spam altogether. From my experiences today, and with stopspamming's current success rate, 21 spammers stopped within 3 or 4 minutes, as opposed them being on for 10-15 minutes previously and much longer wiats between they log in with another alt, I know they don't like any trouble at all. Sorry for the problem before, but observing this behaviour, it wasn't clear that the measure you outlined were actually in the game, given spammers behaviour is so predictable. My Thanks

[melaine_dvarvensplitter]

Well, today in I have had several tells from plat sellers, and they are using numbers and LEET speech in there tells to get around the filter. I am reporting them as fast as I get them.

[shadowscale]

considering the filter is learning, hopefully they are fighting a losing battle to bypass it. what i dont get. is why they think spamming everyone is a good market strategy. do they honestly think the people who tell them to get lost will break down and buy plat? wonder if they spam their customers to.

[Rijacki]

There is one that seems to be reliably getting through right now.  I've gotten multiples at different times. I think they're using ascii code for letters now.  The w's don't look like actual w's.  I have reported each occurance, but I thought I should also add it here, too. "I can make your behalf more charming and admired by other people, i can let you laugh and laugh in your magic life,come here<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />шшш.** ш ** . C 0 M)"

[melaine_dvarvensplitter]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is one that seems to be reliably getting through right now.  I've gotten multiples at different times. I think they're using ascii code for letters now.  The w's don't look like actual w's.  I have reported each occurance, but I thought I should also add it here, too. "I can make your behalf more charming and admired by other people, i can let you laugh and laugh in your magic life,come here<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />шшш.** ш ** . C 0 M)" </blockquote>This is the exact wording im getting on half of them.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>melaine_dvarvensplitter wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is one that seems to be reliably getting through right now.  I've gotten multiples at different times. I think they're using ascii code for letters now.  The w's don't look like actual w's.  I have reported each occurance, but I thought I should also add it here, too. "I can make your behalf more charming and admired by other people, i can let you laugh and laugh in your magic life,come here<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />шшш.** ш ** . C 0 M)" </blockquote>This is the exact wording im getting on half of them. </blockquote>I saw the filter pick these up a little bit ago, they should be being blocked now.  Anything else getting through currently?

[Cuz]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>melaine_dvarvensplitter wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is one that seems to be reliably getting through right now.  I've gotten multiples at different times. I think they're using ascii code for letters now.  The w's don't look like actual w's.  I have reported each occurance, but I thought I should also add it here, too. "I can make your behalf more charming and admired by other people, i can let you laugh and laugh in your magic life,come here<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />шшш.** ш ** . C 0 M)" </blockquote>This is the exact wording im getting on half of them. </blockquote>I saw the filter pick these up a little bit ago, they should be being blocked now.  Anything else getting through currently? </blockquote>I got a plat spam using the 'ш' today. It was "ш0" instead of "wo".

[Upathia]

<p>I was asked to refer to this thread for a suggestion I had on in-game spam.  If developers can't get rid of it completely - perhaps there are other ways to combat the situation... I left this suggestion on another forum earlier today:</p><p>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How many times have we all come back into a town with a mailbox only to find spam.  We are all now faced with the decision in the field- "I see I have mail - do I bother going out of my way to check it?"</p><p>An idea for developers to play with - if they assign colours to the mail icons to tell us who we have mail from:</p><p>Green Letter icon = you have received mail from your guild, or someone on your safe / friends list Red Letter icon = you have received mail from an unknown person to you Blue Letter icon = you have received mail from a mix of both the above</p><p>I would love to hear any other suggestion people may have on combatting the ingame spam issue</p>

[Zoltaroth]

Upathia@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote><p>I was asked to refer to this thread for a suggestion I had on in-game spam.  If developers can't get rid of it completely - perhaps there are other ways to combat the situation... I left this suggestion on another forum earlier today:</p><p>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How many times have we all come back into a town with a mailbox only to find spam.  We are all now faced with the decision in the field- "I see I have mail - do I bother going out of my way to check it?"</p><p>An idea for developers to play with - if they assign colours to the mail icons to tell us who we have mail from:</p><p>Green Letter icon = you have received mail from your guild, or someone on your safe / friends list Red Letter icon = you have received mail from an unknown person to you Blue Letter icon = you have received mail from a mix of both the above</p><p>I would love to hear any other suggestion people may have on combatting the ingame spam issue</p> </blockquote>The spam filter is being applied to in-game mail with one of the next few hotfixes.

[ganjookie]

I have had 0 false SPAM reports, although some SPAM comes through still. This is maybe 2-3 SPAM messages within a  hour period.  I am not anon or under an RP tag. I really appreciate the work done to prevent these [Removed for Content].

[Phaldyne]

<p>I'd also like to make a suggestion to in-game mail SPAM.  When an account is removed from the game for spamming via the mail system, would it be possible to delete all the mail they've already sent people?  Even if someone reports them and they get removed from the game within 30 minutes of their first mail that's lots of mail they're still getting out to people.  I can't tell you how many times I've logged on a toon after being offline for almost 30 days only to find 2 or 3 mail messages sitting there.  Kinda pointless to report them now of course but their messages are still getting through.</p><p>-Phaldyne</p>

[denmom]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is one that seems to be reliably getting through right now.  I've gotten multiples at different times. I think they're using ascii code for letters now.  The w's don't look like actual w's.  I have reported each occurance, but I thought I should also add it here, too. "I can make your behalf more charming and admired by other people, i can let you laugh and laugh in your magic life,come here<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />шшш.** ш ** . C 0 M)" </blockquote> I was hit with two of those last night on Unrest server. I reported them and put them on ignore.  The first guy must've been kicked off because I received the exact same spam from a different name about two hours later. From the comments in level chats, they were hitting everyone in the span of micro-seconds.

[Rijacki]

<cite>Phaldyne wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'd also like to make a suggestion to in-game mail SPAM.  When an account is removed from the game for spamming via the mail system, would it be possible to delete all the mail they've already sent people?  Even if someone reports them and they get removed from the game within 30 minutes of their first mail that's lots of mail they're still getting out to people.  I can't tell you how many times I've logged on a toon after being offline for almost 30 days only to find 2 or 3 mail messages sitting there.  Kinda pointless to report them now of course but their messages are still getting through.</p><p>-Phaldyne</p></blockquote> Oooo I'd love that, too.  Eliminate them and their endeavors completely.

[Feneant]

I received at least 10 spam filters when I went afk for bed, it all came in with accents over some letters and periods here and there so its all sentence fragments, here is how the last one looked : "Hi, come to my home:we provide shining M, you can gain most surprise and enjoy yourself here. just for you u. loyal home: (<a href="http://www.G" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.G</a> M w O~ R K Ë R . C 0 M)'' The tild was over the O and thats a 0 in the .com.  Sometimes there is a letter after the ). This only started 2 days ago, please find a fix soon, I was really enjoying not seeing any spam. Regards

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Feneant wrote:</cite><blockquote>I received at least 10 spam filters when I went afk for bed, it all came in with accents over some letters and periods here and there so its all sentence fragments, here is how the last one looked : "Hi, come to my home:we provide shining M, you can gain most surprise and enjoy yourself here. just for you u. loyal home: (<a href="http://www.G" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.G</a> M w O~ R K Ë R . C 0 M)'' The tild was over the O and thats a 0 in the .com.  Sometimes there is a letter after the ). This only started 2 days ago, please find a fix soon, I was really enjoying not seeing any spam. Regards </blockquote> This should already be blocked, as of this morning.

[Hamervelder]

Getting more tells from gmworker this morning.  They're using foreign-language symbols that my keyboard can't reproduce, with a space between each letter.  I'm curious as to how difficult it would be, to let players choose whether or not to get tells from people under lvl 10, who are not on our friends list.  Some type of option, or something like that.  Or what about client-side spam filters?  That way, we could define our own parameters, and block spammers individually.  Perhaps it would take more man-hours than Sony thinks it's worth, but ... it seems like maybe giving the individual player more ability to block spam would benefit the players and Sony.

[Zoltaroth]

Atelos@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>Getting more tells from [Bad People] this morning.  They're using foreign-language symbols that my keyboard can't reproduce, with a space between each letter.  I'm curious as to how difficult it would be, to let players choose whether or not to get tells from people under lvl 10, who are not on our friends list.  Some type of option, or something like that.  Or what about client-side spam filters?  That way, we could define our own parameters, and block spammers individually.  Perhaps it would take more man-hours than Sony thinks it's worth, but ... it seems like maybe giving the individual player more ability to block spam would benefit the players and Sony. </blockquote>Are these still getting through?  My tests show that they should not be.

[TheStateFish]

<p>They are getting through as of 1030am August 12:</p><p>(1186929199)[Sun Aug 12 10:33:19 2007] aPC -1 Tlyrptpypq:Tlyrptpypq/a tells you, "Hi, come to my home:we provide shining M, you can gain most surprise  and enjoy yourself here. just for u. loyal home: (шшш.G M ш Õ R K Ë R . C 0 M)v"</p>

[Zoltaroth]

Prof@Blackburrow wrote: <blockquote><p>They are getting through as of 1030am August 12:</p><p>(1186929199)[Sun Aug 12 10:33:19 2007] aPC -1 Tlyrptpypq:Tlyrptpypq/a tells you, "Hi, come to my home:we provide shining M, you can gain most surprise  and enjoy yourself here. just for u. loyal home: (шшш.G M ш Õ R K Ë R . C 0 M)v"</p></blockquote> It's only 9 am here, so what timezone are you in?  I saw this get blocked around 8am Pacific.

[Zard]

<p>Are accounts flagged as potential spammers based on the <b>transmission</b> <b>pattern </b>instead (or addition to) the content of the mail or message?</p><p>Messages or mail from characters in the same guild or on the friends list of the recipient would be exempt. Only mass mailings/messages to <i>strangers</i> should be suspect.</p><p>For example, if I send out a "Hello World" to 10 people -- that are not guildmates or have ME on their friends list -- within 1 minute I would expect that would raise a red flag somewhere. Possibly even throttling my transmission rate until it can be investigated by SOE.</p><p>Blocking based on content alone is a never-ending battle because spammers will <i>always</i> find ways to avoid immediate detection by altering their message. Blocking based on transmission patterns is harder to circumvent because a spammer, by definition, sends out a large number of messages to strangers.</p>

[Rijacki]

With the increasing gibberish in their messages, only those who know what their trying to sell will know what the messages are about.. rather funny, actually. What the heck is "Shining M"? *laugh*

[Norrsken]

Auric@Oasis wrote: <blockquote><p>Are accounts flagged as potential spammers based on the <b>transmission</b> <b>pattern </b>instead (or addition to) the content of the mail or message?</p><p>Messages or mail from characters in the same guild or on the friends list of the recipient would be exempt. Only mass mailings/messages to <i>strangers</i> should be suspect.</p><p>For example, if I send out a "Hello World" to 10 people -- that are not guildmates or have ME on their friends list -- within 1 minute I would expect that would raise a red flag somewhere. Possibly even throttling my transmission rate until it can be investigated by SOE.</p><p>Blocking based on content alone is a never-ending battle because spammers will <i>always</i> find ways to avoid immediate detection by altering their message. Blocking based on transmission patterns is harder to circumvent because a spammer, by definition, sends out a large number of messages to strangers.</p></blockquote>you can make some pretty advanced language interpreters that could probably be taught to recognise spam.

[Norrsken]

Auric@Oasis wrote: <blockquote><p>Are accounts flagged as potential spammers based on the <b>transmission</b> <b>pattern </b>instead (or addition to) the content of the mail or message?</p><p>Messages or mail from characters in the same guild or on the friends list of the recipient would be exempt. Only mass mailings/messages to <i>strangers</i> should be suspect.</p><p>For example, if I send out a "Hello World" to 10 people -- that are not guildmates or have ME on their friends list -- within 1 minute I would expect that would raise a red flag somewhere. Possibly even throttling my transmission rate until it can be investigated by SOE.</p><p>Blocking based on content alone is a never-ending battle because spammers will <i>always</i> find ways to avoid immediate detection by altering their message. Blocking based on transmission patterns is harder to circumvent because a spammer, by definition, sends out a large number of messages to strangers.</p></blockquote>you can make some pretty advanced language interpreters that could probably be taught to recognise spam, and also, recognise spam that it has not encountered yet. but traffic analysis is a fast and easy way to find spam. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Zoltaroth]

Auric@Oasis wrote: <blockquote><p>Are accounts flagged as potential spammers based on the <b>transmission</b> <b>pattern </b>instead (or addition to) the content of the mail or message?</p><p>Messages or mail from characters in the same guild or on the friends list of the recipient would be exempt. Only mass mailings/messages to <i>strangers</i> should be suspect.</p><p>For example, if I send out a "Hello World" to 10 people -- that are not guildmates or have ME on their friends list -- within 1 minute I would expect that would raise a red flag somewhere. Possibly even throttling my transmission rate until it can be investigated by SOE.</p><p>Blocking based on content alone is a never-ending battle because spammers will <i>always</i> find ways to avoid immediate detection by altering their message. Blocking based on transmission patterns is harder to circumvent because a spammer, by definition, sends out a large number of messages to strangers.</p></blockquote> I hesitate to talk about details here for obvious reasons, however, there are criteria other than content.

[Ama]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the increasing gibberish in their messages, only those who know what their trying to sell will know what the messages are about.. rather funny, actually. What the heck is "Shining M"? *laugh* </blockquote><p> Yes and there is one potential flaw in the program itself.  There are 2 key elements that I have not seen in recent messages.  I will have to do some cross checking, but the plat sellers wised up rather quickly to the anti-spam filter.  </p><p>What would be nice is a rapid succession flagging system.  If a player sends out messages too quickly to multiple people that person is automatically flagged via program and their chat system is disabled.  They cannot send anymore messages till a CSR/GM sees what they are spamming.  Once checked if the message turns out to be spam the account is automatically suspended pending investigation. </p><p>Biggest problem imho is the fact some people may "Claim" their account was hijacked then get it back.  After that they turn right around going back to the PLing service saying "Be More Careful".  What may need to happen is a 2-3 strike wherebye if it is hacked the first time is forgiven.  The person is refered to a technical help number which will suggests steps to protect your account.  </p><p>Second time it happens the person is warned what will occur on the third attempt.  The account will be suspended for X amount of time just incase the person is having security issues.  On the third attempt the account will be suspended indeffinately pending review seeing who you had contact with and what transactions occured.  If everything checks out the account will be seized by SoE and the person will have to pay a return fee to get it back.  </p><p>After that if the account is hacked it is permanently deleted to prevent problems in the future.  </p>

[SisterTheresa]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote>Upathia@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote><p>I was asked to refer to this thread for a suggestion I had on in-game spam.  If developers can't get rid of it completely - perhaps there are other ways to combat the situation... I left this suggestion on another forum earlier today:</p><p>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How many times have we all come back into a town with a mailbox only to find spam.  We are all now faced with the decision in the field- "I see I have mail - do I bother going out of my way to check it?"</p><p>An idea for developers to play with - if they assign colours to the mail icons to tell us who we have mail from:</p><p>Green Letter icon = you have received mail from your guild, or someone on your safe / friends list Red Letter icon = you have received mail from an unknown person to you Blue Letter icon = you have received mail from a mix of both the above</p><p>I would love to hear any other suggestion people may have on combatting the ingame spam issue</p> </blockquote>The spam filter is being applied to in-game mail with one of the next few hotfixes. </blockquote>Even if the spam filter is going for the e-mail filter, I still like the idea of color coded or something to tell what is in the e-mail.  Especially if you are in a zone where there is no mailbox.  I would go get e-mail from my guild and see that as more important than some other mail.

[SisterTheresa]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the increasing gibberish in their messages, only those who know what their trying to sell will know what the messages are about.. rather funny, actually. What the heck is "Shining M"? *laugh* </blockquote><p> <snip></p><p>Biggest problem imho is the fact some people may "Claim" their account was hijacked then get it back.  After that they turn right around going back to the PLing service saying "Be More Careful".  What may need to happen is a 2-3 strike wherebye if it is hacked the first time is forgiven.  The person is refered to a technical help number which will suggests steps to protect your account.  </p><p>Second time it happens the person is warned what will occur on the third attempt.  The account will be suspended for X amount of time just incase the person is having security issues.  On the third attempt the account will be suspended indeffinately pending review seeing who you had contact with and what transactions occured.  If everything checks out the account will be seized by SoE and the person will have to pay a return fee to get it back.  </p><p>After that if the account is hacked it is permanently deleted to prevent problems in the future.  </p></blockquote><p>Hm, this is interesting.  When I played LoTRO there was a person in the chat channel who was adamant is saying someone hijacked his account to send spam e-mails to people in the game, but he never did it ... and he was now getting rude e-mails back.  Of course he didn't want to delete his character or to contact CS to figure out what might have happened.  Hm ...</p><p>Besides, if your account is hacked more than once, I start looking not only at the person but the code of the program as well.  Cause unless the person who owns the account is blantantly giving info away the codes that hold the info on the server side has a problem. </p>

[sayitaintso]

OK the filter is working really well, now lets tighten up on the reason WHY the spammers are doing it in the first place..BAN ALL PLAT BUYERS NOW! You know how to track the coin, you know the tactics the sellers use to meet their buyers....You know what to look for...NOW BAN THE CHEATERS First rule of supply and demand...NO DEMAND, NO REASON TO SUPPLY! but thanks for the filter...IT ROCKS!

[shadowscale]

i know what you mean, some of the spam even says that its safe to buy from them without being banned. kinda funny. yet annoying how they mislead people. why do people buy from them still if they are stealing their credit cards to do the spamming? i dont get people sometimes.

[Spyrit]

<cite>shadowscale wrote:</cite><blockquote>i know what you mean, some of the spam even says that its safe to buy from them without being banned. kinda funny. yet annoying how they mislead people. why do people buy from them still if they are stealing their credit cards to do the spamming? i dont get people sometimes. </blockquote><p>That is funny in a sick kinda way. Give them your Credit Card details and they use it to buy accounts and spam you, lol.</p><p>I tend to agree with the last few posts. Start to put pressure on the buyers and the sellers will go away. I have never read the EULA, I am having way too much fun playing the game to waste time doing that. Does it address buying game currency with RL money? Maybe they cannot ban people because it's not in the EULA (I will have to read it one day).</p>

[Leatherneck]

<p>Well, the EULA is just a guideline.  There's no law that says you have legal recourse if SOE bans you for something not on the EULA.</p><p>I'm not convinced that going after the buyers is going to do all that much.  I'm not at all opposed to it, I just don't have much faith that it will accomplish all that much.</p><p>I'd be really surprised if SOE wasn't back-tracking the coin and finding out who bought what from who and taking action, though.</p>

[Ama]

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Well, the EULA is just a guideline.  There's no law that says you have legal recourse if SOE bans you for something not on the EULA.</p><p>I'm not convinced that going after the buyers is going to do all that much.  I'm not at all opposed to it, I just don't have much faith that it will accomplish all that much.</p><p>I'd be really surprised if SOE wasn't back-tracking the coin and finding out who bought what from who and taking action, though.</p></blockquote><p>Well the biggest thing is going after the buyers and seizing their assets will help out the Economy quite a bit.  Right now things are majorly inflated and i'm bettin there is in excess of 100 billion plat on some servers if not more.  What I really wish SoE would do is if they find a suspected plat buyer is take their account and all things tradeable go to newbies.  This way newbies get a helping hand and the buyers have to skirm seeing their precious stuff they "Bought" being miss used by a newb.  </p><p>I can confirm that I have received mail and plat spam that says it is "Safe" to buy plat from the supposed website.  It also states that you will not get banned for buying plat which is <b><span style="font-size: x-large">WRONG</span></b> and people maybe scamed into those situations.  Hopefully with the filter in place here SoE can spread it across their other games like a plugin and kill messages.  Force those plat sellers to think typing their fingers to the bone until they give up.  Human Tenacity has a limit and i'm bettin down the road the plat sellers will give up cause it will be too much of a hassle to sell it in EQ2.  </p>

[Zoltaroth]

I do appreciate all the replies, but I want to bring us back to the spam filter subject. <img src="http://ruphus.com/stash/target.png" border="0">

[Leatherneck]

At this point, I had a couple get through, but haven't had that happen for a few days now.

[Bunion]

<p>The new tactic the gold sellers seem to be using now is to just send you a tell saying "hello" or "hey you!" then if you reply they ask if you need any plat. I got a "hello" from someone and asked someone in my guild if that was the person who was asking them if they wanted to buy plat and it was, I just didn't reply but should have I reported the "hello" as spam?</p><p> Bunion</p>

[Maroger]

<cite>Bunion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The new tactic the gold sellers seem to be using now is to just send you a tell saying "hello" or "hey you!" then if you reply they ask if you need any plat. I got a "hello" from someone and asked someone in my guild if that was the person who was asking them if they wanted to buy plat and it was, I just didn't reply but should have I reported the "hello" as spam?</p><p> Bunion</p></blockquote>Was the name a typical plat spammer name? Was the sender a Level 1 on the newbie isle?

[sayitaintso]

<cite>Bunion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The new tactic the gold sellers seem to be using now is to just send you a tell saying "hello" or "hey you!" then if you reply they ask if you need any plat. I got a "hello" from someone and asked someone in my guild if that was the person who was asking them if they wanted to buy plat and it was, I just didn't reply but should have I reported the "hello" as spam?</p><p> Bunion</p></blockquote>I got one of these the other day from a toon in Feerroot who was LEVEL 1. Dont think that just because they aren't on Newbie Island they aren't plat spammers...It's really easy to get to most zones now without much trouble. It's time to make it a requirement to be at least level 6 before you can depart the island.

[Cusashorn]

The Gold sellers have begun using the Russian alphabet to replace the w's in "www.gmWorker" etc.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Bunion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The new tactic the gold sellers seem to be using now is to just send you a tell saying "hello" or "hey you!" then if you reply they ask if you need any plat. I got a "hello" from someone and asked someone in my guild if that was the person who was asking them if they wanted to buy plat and it was, I just didn't reply but should have I reported the "hello" as spam?</p><p> Bunion</p></blockquote> "Hello" should probably not be reported as spam.  All things that spammers say are not spam.  Stick to reporting thing that solicit you to buy / goto a website / etc.

[Leatherneck]

Thanks again, Zoltaroth, for your efforts on this.  I know it's a pain in the posterior region trying to build a better trap for this as they're actively trying to find a way to break the rules, and I-for one-appreciate all the work going into it.

[Tstorm]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bunion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The new tactic the gold sellers seem to be using now is to just send you a tell saying "hello" or "hey you!" then if you reply they ask if you need any plat. I got a "hello" from someone and asked someone in my guild if that was the person who was asking them if they wanted to buy plat and it was, I just didn't reply but should have I reported the "hello" as spam?</p><p> Bunion</p></blockquote> "Hello" should probably not be reported as spam.  All things that spammers say are not spam.  Stick to reporting thing that solicit you to buy / goto a website / etc. </blockquote>I tend to just not reply to "Hello" types of /tells (has nothing to do with plat spam).  It is a means for the other person to check if you are at the keyboard (isn't that what /afk is for?) and get your undivided attention.  I figure if they really want to talk to me, they will tell me what they want up front without dancing around.  If they want to talk to me about a great deal on plat that will allow me to have more fun (me being banned for buying their plat doesn't seem like "fun" to me), it will be a short conversation. I have seen ZERO spam /tells getting through for over a week now.  Big kudos to Zoltaroth and anyone else at SOE that is involved for keeping after this problem.  I have seen a few spam e-mail messages in game and am looking forward to the new functionality there as well.

[sayitaintso]

Are you telling us that the spammers/coin sellers are actually stealing the credit card information from the plat buyers and using that information to illegally purchase EQ2 accounts? Are you flagging these credit card numbers and comparing them to your credit card database and banning accounts that are attached to them? (obviously these people have purchased plat and need to be banned for doing such) Why are you not making this information more public, even going as far as making it know with in game announcement or update notes?  It might make people think twice about buying plat and it will also help people to understand that there are negative aspects to cheating themselves and other players..

[Leatherneck]

<cite>sayitaintso wrote:</cite><blockquote>Are you flagging these credit card numbers and comparing them to your credit card database and banning accounts that are attached to them? (obviously these people have purchased plat and need to be banned for doing such)</blockquote> Well....personally I have more than one credit card and one debit card.  If I were suspicious and/or cautious, I could easily pay for EQ2 with one card and my illegal platz with a different card.

[sayitaintso]

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>sayitaintso wrote:</cite><blockquote>Are you flagging these credit card numbers and comparing them to your credit card database and banning accounts that are attached to them? (obviously these people have purchased plat and need to be banned for doing such)</blockquote> Well....personally I have more than one credit card and one debit card.  If I were suspicious and/or cautious, I could easily pay for EQ2 with one card and my illegal platz with a different card.</blockquote> And I am sure some people do exactly that, but I am equally sure that some people pay for their plat and EQ2 account with the same card. If they didn't how would SOE know that the card info was being stolen? Those accounts need to be banned for cheating.

[Cusashorn]

Zoltaroth, as I mentioned above, today the plat spammers are using the Russian Alphabet to replace specific letters. Specifically "W" with <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/colosseum/track/7635/_sh.gif" border="0"> (highlight to see it. It's not showing up on the forum very well.

[Targ]

<cite>sayitaintso wrote:</cite><blockquote>Leatherneck wrote: And I am sure some people do exactly that, but I am equally sure that some people pay for their plat and EQ2 account with the same card. If they didn't how would SOE know that the card info was being stolen? Those accounts need to be banned for cheating. </blockquote>Err.. The bank tells them its stolen when they refuse to pay them, would be my guess.

[sayitaintso]

<cite>Targ wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>sayitaintso wrote:</cite><blockquote>Leatherneck wrote: And I am sure some people do exactly that, but I am equally sure that some people pay for their plat and EQ2 account with the same card. If they didn't how would SOE know that the card info was being stolen? Those accounts need to be banned for cheating. </blockquote>Err.. The bank tells them its stolen when they refuse to pay them, would be my guess. </blockquote>Exactly, but how would SOE know that the card belonged to a player or it was just some random stolen card number? The only way SOE could link the two together would be to have the same card number on file for a "legitimate" account...Any players account linked to a stolen credit card used by plat sellers should be banned.

[Zoltaroth]

<cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Zoltaroth, as I mentioned above, today the plat spammers are using the Russian Alphabet to replace specific letters. Specifically "W" with <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/colosseum/track/7635/_sh.gif" border="0"> (highlight to see it. It's not showing up on the forum very well.</blockquote>This does not buy them much as long as people report it.  But, I will make it harder for them to do this in the next few updates as well.

[Ama]

<cite>Zoltaroth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Zoltaroth, as I mentioned above, today the plat spammers are using the Russian Alphabet to replace specific letters. Specifically "W" with <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/colosseum/track/7635/_sh.gif" border="0"> (highlight to see it. It's not showing up on the forum very well.</blockquote>This does not buy them much as long as people report it.  But, I will make it harder for them to do this in the next few updates as well. </blockquote> Hope so I am seeing an increase in tells from these people using that icon to bypass the filter. 

[Debillus]

I have received dramatically less tell-spam since these changes went in and I am ever so thankfull for that fact. The amount of ingame mail spam has however went up quite a bit as of late. I guess that's to be expected. On that topic, could I suggest one change please. Once a mail gets reported and verified as spam. Please sweep the mailboxes this spammer infested, and clean out the garbage. Reading my mail is usualy something i do with a lot of joy. Logging on to a character i haven't played for a while to find 8 spam mails in his inbox, days and weeks old doesn't exactly put a smile on my face. I can't imagine you appreciate getting fresh reports of spam on issues you corrected since long either. /Deb

[niteowl53]

I hadn't played EQ2 in about 6 months and just recently activated my account.  I found out about the spam filter, and how to use it, and it worked beautifully.  One week after activation, I got my first spam that bypassed the filter: I'm sure the rest are getting them now also:  www. i w a n t t o s e l l p l a t.com (not the name of a real website, lol) After i got the first one I thought, hmmm ok they were able to sneak one in.  30 minutes later, I was getting them on Vox, which is a SE server, at the rate of 3-5 per minute.  Reporting every one I got.  I happened to be in a 4X PvP raid at the time, and it disrupted us totally, because instructions were being told in chat, for what each team was to do. There was so many spams, we had to scroll up to try to find the instructions.  It was chaos for awhile, you could obviously tell the Q's were having the same problem, seeing them all stop at once, you just know they got a tell/spam. It DOES affect game play.  It IS annoying.  They also used symbols and such as well.  I don't know what else can be done, I'm not ragging on EQ2, I'm just reporting what has been happening, so they know, after all they asked for feed back <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I know EQ2 is trying to clean this up, and I applaud them.

[napalmpt]

wouldnt it stop most of the plat sellers if they just got rid of the free trial altogether? That mainly what the sellers use to get on and advertise, so why not just do away with it?

[shadowscale]

because the spammers arnt using a free trial? hasent that been mentioned already?

[Sedenten]

<p>As of the last update today, I've received a total of 4 spam tells in 2 hours that were not caught by the filter.  They are very similar, with the website spaced out and in various non-standard ASCII character symbols.  I have only ever received spam tells that make it through the filter from exactly one website in particular (and we all know which that is).  The spam has slowed down a ton, but I was hoping the spammers would've given up by now.  All of them but this one company apparently have.  I'd personally love to see that entire company shut down somehow, but that's the vindictive part of me.  </p><p><b> Any chance of making it so once you report a tell as spam, any new tells you get with that same exact text get filtered out as spam on the client side and automatically reported on further instances (so that proper action can be taken against all accounts involved)?  </b>Currently each day they're just altering the tells enough so they make it through the filter then just spam that message over and over again into the early am.  Two of the tells I received were from two different characters literally within 10 seconds of one another.  I reported all 4, but I think it's silly that once I've reported a string of text they can spam me again from another character using that same exact string until the filter updates that text as officially spam.  I think if they knew that the players were updating their own spam lists instantly when a tell is sent, they realize they don't have a certain window of time they can "get away with" spamming their new message by simply changing accounts.</p><p> I forgot to add that I do think this spam filter is working out phenomenally well.  All but one company has completely stopped trying to circumvent the system, and I strongly feel it is only a matter of time before they throw in the towel.</p>

[pedigr]

the filters are almost completely useless now. Special characters, high ASCII, japanese characters, all bypassing the filters as if htey werent even there. PLEASE give me the abiity to ignore all tells/mails from characters under a level of my choosing.

[Ama]

<cite>niteowl53 wrote:</cite><blockquote>I hadn't played EQ2 in about 6 months and just recently activated my account.  I found out about the spam filter, and how to use it, and it worked beautifully.  One week after activation, I got my first spam that bypassed the filter: I'm sure the rest are getting them now also:  www. i w a n t t o s e l l p l a t.com (not the name of a real website, lol) After i got the first one I thought, hmmm ok they were able to sneak one in.  30 minutes later, I was getting them on Vox, which is a SE server, at the rate of 3-5 per minute.  Reporting every one I got.  I happened to be in a 4X PvP raid at the time, and it disrupted us totally, because instructions were being told in chat, for what each team was to do. There was so many spams, we had to scroll up to try to find the instructions.  It was chaos for awhile, you could obviously tell the Q's were having the same problem, seeing them all stop at once, you just know they got a tell/spam. It DOES affect game play.  It IS annoying.  They also used symbols and such as well.  I don't know what else can be done, I'm not ragging on EQ2, I'm just reporting what has been happening, so they know, after all they asked for feed back <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I know EQ2 is trying to clean this up, and I applaud them. </blockquote><p> I'm keeping tabs on some of the plat sellers and the spacing isn't getting through.  However those foreign characters are bypassing the filter that resemble english lettering.  Hopefully the filter will be equiped to deal with engrish.  </p><p>Biggest thing is they are changing their messages to be incoherrent so they can atleast spam their website.  Some of the messages have gone beyond the bizzare route. </p>

[liveja]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Some of the messages have gone beyond the bizzare route. </blockquote><p>Saturday afternoon, on Mistmoore ... something like "Please help us make your magic more Charming and more Admirable to all you know! Let us show how we help you laugh and laugh all day! Come to <a href="http://www.we-help-you-cheat.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.we-help-you-cheat.com</a>!", with the "www" part replaced by Russian characters.</p><p>Well ... I thought it was funny, at least. & that's the only spam I've gotten in about 2 weeks -- that I know of, I turned off the "You've Got SPAM!" message almost as soon as I found the option -- so I'd say the spam filter is much better than "useless". </p>

[Zorastiz]

<p>Spam for me has decreased, maybe one a week, it's the plat seller sittin beside the bank watching me check e-mail, getting my name and sending me 10 e-mails one after the other. </p><p>Now that <a href="mailto<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I!@$@#%" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">PI!@$@#%</a> ME OFF!</p>

[Zorastiz]

<p>Spam for me has decreased, maybe one a week, it's the plat seller sittin beside the bank watching me check e-mail, getting my name and sending me 10 e-mails one after the other. </p><p>Now that PI!!!! ME OFF!</p>

[Zorastiz]

<p>Spam for me has decreased, maybe one a week, it's the plat seller sittin beside the bank watching me check e-mail, getting my name and sending me 10 e-mails one after the other. </p><p>Now that PEEVES ME OFF!</p>

[Scrylla]

(1187195962)[Wed Aug 15 11:39:22 2007] aPC -1 Rzqcrfkceo:Rzqcrfkceo/a tells you, "(шшш.X X ш X Ŗ X X Ŗ . X X X) help you to be the leader of this game." I replaced normal capital letters with Xs. I think "help you to be the leader of this game." is hilarious. Some people seem to think they are using the random name generator, it looks more to me like they just run their hands across the keyboard for random-ish letters.

[Maroger]

<p>Got a spam that bypassed the filter today. Sent in a report. Not only using the Russian Alphabet for the W but also using a combination of other letters with diacritical marks. Apparently combinging diacritical marks over letters, russian Alphabet and spaces to break through the filter.</p><p>Sent in a report today. </p><p>Keep the good work up Zoltaroth!!</p>

[yohann koldheart]

<p>since they found a way around the filter by adding spaces, upside down m's, and r's with the lil squiggly under them they have been spamming harder then before you guys put the filter in.</p><p>i thought i remember you making it so  they cant send tells off the noobie island a few patches ago, but alot of the tells that i've been getting were from toons on the noobie island and they werent even anon or roleplaying to try to hide whare they were.</p>

[Zoltaroth]

The next hotfix will address both the issues above, I am just checking in the code now <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> In the meanwhile, please do "Report Spam" them.  This will make is so that by the time they hit the next server their text is flagged anyway.

[Josgar]

New players arent noobs... they are newbs... Anyways: They cant send tells off of trial accounts; however, real accounts can send off those islands. Even if they blocked that the spammers would figure out and just leave the island and spam from freeport.

[Scrylla]

Adriana@Venekor wrote: <blockquote><p>since they found a way around the filter by adding spaces, upside down m's, and r's with the lil squiggly under them they have been spamming harder then before you guys put the filter in.</p><p>i thought i remember you making it so  they cant send tells off the noobie island a few patches ago, but alot of the tells that i've been getting were from toons on the noobie island and they werent even anon or roleplaying to try to hide whare they were.</p></blockquote> Trial accounts are the ones that are restricted. The sellers are actually buying new accounts (sometimes with credit cards numbers stolen from the buyers) now.

[Yindari]

<cite>Nonacha wrote:</cite><blockquote>Trial accounts are the ones that are restricted. The sellers are actually buying new accounts (<b>sometimes with credit cards numbers stolen from the buyers</b>) now. </blockquote> It should not, but if the stolen credit card part is true it makes me kinda happy inside lol. With any luck the spammers and sellers will ruin their own customer base.

[Ramius613]

What about the email spam filter? I'm not sure if this is the right area, but the other night I was checking my in game email, and the spam mail I was receiving was being sent by the person standing right next to me. I did report his name, and did the spam button on the email. Is there anything else I should have done?

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "G M Worker sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of Jurrassic Park actually where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter!

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "S O me company sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of Jurrassic Park actually where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter!

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "S O me company sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of the big dinosaur move actually where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter!

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "S O me company sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of the big dinosaur move actually where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter!

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos/Lavastorm to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "S O mecompany sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of the big dinosaur move actually where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter!

[the6th1980]

I haven't really read this thread all the way through but I figured I would provide some feedback at least from the live servers. Nektulos/Lavastorm to be exact. I have noticed that the spammers have actually started to log in what seems to be their main chars now and are testing the spam filters by using creative ways to spell the company name or just saying "(somecompany) sux" . They are hitting it on the lvl channels and in tells. Earlier today I got one that had the company name spelled with special characters ie: commas and semicolons. This has to be the spammers because I'm getting tells from people I have never heard of but not the usual "asdffafa" names. Also, before the filter no one really mentioned the company name in the channel chat before and why would 30 different people send me the same tell that "S O mecompany sux" fifty different ways. It seems to me that they are testing the boundaries of the spam filter. Reminds me of Jurrasic Park actually, where they found out the dinosaurs were testing the electric fences everyday in a new spot. lol Anyways, I hope this information helps. And thank you for the filter! I tried posting this on the spam filter feedback but it kept giving me an error.

[denmom]

<cite>Ramius613 wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about the email spam filter? I'm not sure if this is the right area, but the other night I was checking my in game email, and the spam mail I was receiving was being sent by the person standing right next to me. I did report his name, and did the spam button on the email. Is there anything else I should have done? </blockquote> I'm also receiving spam mail from the same person across all of my alts.  I report the spam mail but it continues to hit. As for tell spam, now and then they get thru, the tells using different alphabets and fonts to bypass the filters, but I report spam and block their names. Is it possible to have a spam email blocker?