The isk spammers are also back and with a vengeance. We report them but the exact same spammers are never dealt with. It's been weeks now.

too much time on your hands chief

Tbh, the spams indeed are killing the social aspect in bizzier tradehubs, making it unable for normal people to advertise or talk much, without getting buried in spam. In calmer systems, the social chat is still very much alive with the right people (got a ton of good chats from my lowsec adventures with random folks)

I am seriously impressed with the amount of work you put in there Chribba. Impressed but not in the least bit surprised I think I'll sit and take a good long look through this, thank you for your continued efforts my good man

too much time on your hands chief

79k is the reason. Even if a tenth of them were full on bots, the company can hardly be bothered to dump that many subs.

That is the core of the bots in mmo's. The company gets money. It won't be gotten rid of.

Good work, and keep trucking, maybe I will be proven incorrect.

ofc he does, doesnt need to work wi9th the amount of money he makes off eve

I believe you worded this wrong, or are you implying he's RMTing ?

I believe you worded this wrong, or are you implying he's RMTing ?

I think all the Concordokkens have shaken your brain. He's referring to all the website traffic and ad revenue. Though I personally doubt it keeps him from having to work.

I fail to see how these bots put any actual money into CCP,
because they obviously have the ISK for paying via PLEX ...

I fail to see how these bots put any actual money into CCP,
because they obviously have the ISK for paying via PLEX ...

The isk spammers are also back and with a vengeance. We report them but the exact same spammers are never dealt with. It's been weeks now.

Wow Chribba, nice work. I have a feeling this might cause some red faces over in Iceland...

Do you mean the scam that involves "doubling" your isk, or people who are selling isk for cash? I haven't seen a single one of the latter, and I have a jump clone stationed in jita which I jump to quite often.

Do not ban spammers, simply "cloak-gag" them so they don't know they got gagged... and neither will we.
...
Profit.

In-case someone realizes they got gagged unfairly, it is easily noticeable and correctable.

PLEX aren't just created out of thin air. That statement is like saying Nordstrom doesn't make any money from gift card purchases.

Great analysis.

Is the raw data made available?

What kind of statistical method did you use in your classification of bot vs non-bot.. is it just some threshold of repetitiveness? If so what is that threshold?

The fact that Samantha stops dead at around 17th May may be a sign that she got banned. I would like to see an analysis of how many people you have classified as botters have subsequently stopped posting (presumably because they got banned too). It would be a good measure of how effective CCP's anti-botting campaign is at targeting chat bots!

Well done Mr. Chribba.

I have *no* idea about his sites, tbh ...
I know that he got plenty, but i've never cared of actually looking.

So my bad, i guess. I apologize. :)

Do not ban spammers, simply "cloak-gag" them so they don't know they got gagged... and neither will we.
...
Profit.

In-case someone realizes they got gagged unfairly, it is easily noticeable and correctable.

Nice work....

So, what is an appropriate punishment for bots spamming?

-- I think a server side ban on their local spam, without actually informing them, would be somewhat poetic justice... but a simple x-day ban or something is probably easier to implement and more effective in both in terms of time and EvE cpu usage..

It would if it weren't common knowledge across the entire span of the community.


However, I must commend you on our work, Chribba. The data you've collated here could be used to identify botters and with a little work identify their IP addresses.
*ahem* if CCP would like to help solve the problem there's plenty of collected in here.

I, like you, would very much like to see this issue of bot scamming solved.

I know a number of people will say "ignore local" etc, but that isn't the point, is it? The major trading hubs should be a place that people can come together and socialise as a community. EvE fails miserably in this regard due to its stubborn refusal to deal with the bots that have become endemic in these sectors.

Thanks again for all the work you do for the community, Chribba. I hope the powers that be will, upon reading your data, recognise that this is a significant detriment to players' enjoyment of the game and take steps accordingly.

They are CONSTANTLY spamming in Jita and several GMs have recommended we flag them as ISK spammers.

79k is the reason. Even if a tenth of them were full on bots, the company can hardly be bothered to dump that many subs.

That is the core of the bots in mmo's. The company gets money. It won't be gotten rid of.

Good work, and keep trucking, maybe I will be proven incorrect.

The first question is one I haven't FULLY researched but the general consensus is that removing bots actually increases CCP's income because we have more happy customers. The idea that we would want people to bot for $15 is a false one, though I could see why some people would leap to that conclusion.

Hmm...
If I block the top 100, Jita might seem quiet --
Nice!

79k is the reason. Even if a tenth of them were full on bots, the company can hardly be bothered to dump that many subs.

That is the core of the bots in mmo's. The company gets money. It won't be gotten rid of.

Good work, and keep trucking, maybe I will be proven incorrect.

I am seriously impressed with the amount of work you put in there Chribba. Impressed but not in the least bit surprised I think I'll sit and take a good long look through this, thank you for your continued efforts my good man

I think all the Concordokkens have shaken your brain. He's referring to all the website traffic and ad revenue. Though I personally doubt it keeps him from having to work.

79k is the reason. Even if a tenth of them were full on bots, the company can hardly be bothered to dump that many subs.

That is the core of the bots in mmo's. The company gets money. It won't be gotten rid of.

Good work, and keep trucking, maybe I will be proven incorrect.

This was my first thought. This ends up being like a spam block list. Thanks Chribba!



79k? Are you lumping the entirety of players who have said something in local in Jita over the last 6 months in with the couple dozen who Chribba is calling out for using macros to the detriment of the game? Because, if so, that would be a straw man argument.



I'm continually baffled why spam can get temp bans elsewhere in Eve, but Jita has seemingly been exempted because it has passed some threshold into "too dirty to clean." Hopefully more is done than taking a look at the statistics Chribba put together.

I think it's bullshit that Jita has the most market volume of all the trade hubs. Maybe they should just link the 4 big hubs or something similar to the effect. I don't want to travel out there for something; Dodixie and the other three should have about the same stuff!

Wow Chribba, nice work. I have a feeling this might cause some red faces over in Iceland...

This question has been asked of CCP before:

"Why, as a company, does CCP want to eliminate the accounts of those who use bots when doing so reduces CCP's income?

I ask because in many of the posts here it is stated that CCP likes the bots because they pay for a subscription (indirectly, via PLEX), and hence their elimination would hurt CCP's bottom line. "

With this reply:

I don't get it, one time in Rens I was trying to scam. I was reposting the same lines over and over every 4 min,not exactly but as close as possible. Somebody reported me for spamming, and I was 'gagged' for 10 mintues by a gm 'for spam'. I sent all of 5-6 messages at 4 min intervals and I was gagged. Why cant half that attention be shown to Jita?

The OpEd answer is that CCP would never ban hammer a large percentage of their user base. Too much money to lose over a fairly minor irritant. Yeah, they might slam a few to "make a point" but not many.

Sure, you call 6200 paying accounts being banned a few?

Maybe you should stop posting without having some idea what you're posting about, no?

The first question actually is not that at all. It would have to be is a macro that repeats a message in Jita once every minute or so a bot, or just a macro. Where's the line and is it bannable?

This is EXACTLY how I would like to see it, stealth gag, they won't know, they will be paying, we will have less spam. I can def see this be a very good solution.

in my opinion this shows that spamming, with or without bots isn't being dealt with at all

really good read... but i dont think ccp will do anything to kill scam bots as they are isk sinks and not faucets... so ccp imo would rather go after mining and ratting bots instead...

Do not ban spammers, simply "cloak-gag" them so they don't know they got gagged... and neither will we.
...
Profit.

In-case someone realizes they got gagged unfairly, it is easily noticeable and correctable.

Scammers are not ISK sinks because the money is still present in the economy, it just changes hands.
An isk sink is something that eliminates ISK from the market.
The LP store is an ISK sink.
Insurance is an ISK sink.
Production queue renting is an ISK sink.

Your logic is ****.

Still waiting for a CCP response on this.

Its a shame it took a player to point this out to CCP! Should have been sorted a long time ago!

Awesome job Cribba! :)


Over to you CCP!

Wow Chribba, nice work. I have a feeling this might cause some red faces over in Iceland...

I am seriously impressed with the amount of work you put in there Chribba. Impressed but not in the least bit surprised I think I'll sit and take a good long look through this, thank you for your continued efforts my good man

Wow Chribba, nice work. I have a feeling this might cause some red faces over in Iceland...

This is such a good idea that it really should get a dev response.

Would not the spammers just log in a second account and use it to see if the first has been gagged? And if so, stop using the gagged account and move the spam operation to a new one?

Spam bots should be dealt with just as harshly as mining bots, and specially when you have good proof like you gathered about these bots, they should be stopped sooner rather than later...

I think what would be needed is quicker response times. If they can be reported and actually checked up on fairly quickly the hassle of changing accounts would become bigger.

Many times, spambots are quite easily spotted, so it could be taken action against fairly quick if there is someone watching. A report that lays for 2 weeks will not be of use since the trial expired kinda. And to add to this since I'm sure CCP does some form of fingerprinting, it could be easy for them to also tag accounts far quicker.

Yes, people will use virtual machines and the likes, but really fingerprints, IP's, links like that should make it even easier for CCP to make a quicker judgement. If the same IP or computer over and over again gets reported, it's likely that the next report is the same guy again and could make it easier to make a decision.

But who will sit and do this you ask? Well yeah I think in the end CCP would need someone that has more focus on the issue to do this kind of work rather than regular GMs with petition queues.

I report these pilots when I can, but I don't even know if they are being looked at. If CCP has any guidelines I'd be happy to get some more input there and of course see if there's more we as pilots can do before this gets completely out of hand.

/c

Wondering if there will ever be a blue post in here.

Wondering if there will ever be a blue post in here.

I'd bet that volunteers would line up to do this for free if CCP would give them the tools to do the job...

Who gives a ****.

Jita will be Jita ...

You don't have to look at the chat if you don't want to.... Turn it off.

Dam! Just get on and play the game instead of wasting your life analyzing numbers from spammers...

While your post indeed offer a solution, it doesn't address the problem this thread is about (and I also think you stopped reading at my tl;dr )

/c

Bump for blue post.

Didnt read whole thread, but this brings up an idea:

Import external block list (xml file). Much like the fittings and overview. You can share a block list with other people. Our friend Chribba here (or anyone who has too much time and too much veldspar) could generate a new block list every * days we all can enjoy.

If CCP doesnt block/ban spam botters, atleast give us the tools to fight against them

And did you collect all this information manually?

Well the client does the initial "collecting", if that's what you mean. Then it gets put it in a database that I run queries against. So if the question is, do I have a bot/macro/software that intercepts the chat traffic? No. It is all collected with the regular client that both of us use.

/c

Yeah, and that would never end badly.

The real test is, Will the CCP devs do anything?

No, these people pay their subscription, they wont ban them.

The thing is.... is Jita Spam necessarily bad? The systems, spammed chat is a symbol of its industrialness and megahub status.

Its like complaining that there are too many lights in Vegas.... its part of the scenary and personality that makes it what it is.

yk

So was this a 23.5/7 operation? You did this every day, day in day out? You logged in just after DT every day?

Thats what I was wondering too...