Ariven

first I never assume they are gonna be smart about this stuff.. and second there is a cap on how many are returned with a /who if you did a /who all 60-70 it will likely exceed the cap.. but odds of a single zone exceeding it are smaller.. and by a lesser amount.

Put that with the wierdness we see as to who does and who does not get snagged with spam tells and I still think this happens... not on all plat sellers definately... but there is enough to make me think it is happening on some.

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Nurta

I still think it's unlikely b/c the data is already present on eq2players...you could extract it and you could narrow it down by last online time. Why stand in a zone and spam /who (which is something I'm sure a dev can code for) when the data is already out there for the taking? It makes very little sense to me.

Yes, I know things are capped to 100 results I believe which could explain the random /spams. Or maybe they spam randomnly so that it's harder to see a pattern. I don't know if EQ2 has the ability but in WoW, you can narrow your /who to a zone, class, and level so there's no need to be in a specific zone to get /who results.

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tracheaspider

/anon & /role

Unless you're in the zone with the person (or already have their name), they will not show up on /who searches.

Nurta

mmmkay?
And do people who are anon/role get spam messages? I don't know anymore :D

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Ariven

They get a lot fewer of them typically.. which is what has caused a lot of people to go anon..

Plus, while the data of player names is indeed on eq2players, it takes longer to get names out of there than it does from simply parsing a logfile in game.. and it ISNT up to date info.. if I do a /who, I KNOW they are online right there... if I go to eq2players I cant even be 100% sure the alt exists any more... let alone is logged in..

And, when time counts (and it does) I would rather spam out to say 99 online people and get say 1 I missed who logged off, than grab eq2players info and get a potentially 100 people not on.

If I was writing code to harvest names, I would focus first on the /who route.. its faster, gives more up to date info.. and you can target it fairly well.. and as long as you dont use the same alt as the one spamming, you can keep it up til they catch on.

Now, when you look at the broader spam problem and include email in it, sure, eq2players becomes the better tool, for while it takes more effort to parse and harvest, and more time to get the names.. it is names that WILL most likely get your email and see it the next time you log on..

Until they get their spam filter for email fixed and working ;)

But also remember, I am slightly paranoid, so no doubt this all feeds my conspiracy theories..

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Illuminator

Any time you get a plat seller spam, do a /who and play a little game called Find The Chinese Spy.

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Illusionist turnover rate, ain't it a bitch. Don't vote for Obama.

Nurta

I dunno man I bet I know a few people who could script something to pull data from eq2players and update it at whatever interval they wanted to. Whether or not that data is accurate or up to date means little when you have already scripted a /tell with your message at that point your passing $1 <message> where $1=playername from parsed data. That whole thing could take seconds whereas someone typing /who over and over to a text file would take longer. If you get incorrect or non-existant characters it wouldn't matter b/c the spam just continues over and over as it runs through the alphabet on that particular server. Sadly I'm no coder hence I can never be a dev or I'd probably have thought of some way to sniff out such activity and block it!

Still the concepts for filtering spam are much like what we employ for our Data Center's console. We have a large plasma screen that Operators monitor for exceptions....every ounce of activity is going to that console either via snmp traps or by us thru 3rd party utilities. Sometimes when a server barfs or a service dies it can generate several hundred (sometimes thouand) messages. We have cleverly devised a watchdog program that keeps a tally of messages as they feed to the console and only spit them out when thresholds are reached...say 100 messages in 10 seconds....it may let 1 pass....1000 in 30 seconds it may alert someone via page or whatever. A watchdog should be able to be scripted to sit on the servers and watch for player generated traffic and look for non-randomness...if x number of the same message occurs after a small amount of time it could alert someone to monitor it. Obviously you'd want to not catch the guy in the trade channel selling his uber-leet widget but I think spammers are sending the same message far more often and to more people than that guy is advertising his wares....plus these are tells? It can be done though, I just wish I knew how I'd sell it!



EDIT: of course during my proof I realized that a bot could be doing the /who and dumping it to a text file and that would be faster but also draw the eye of improper activity. If that is indeed occuring then anyone spamming the /who command should be an easy target for a watchdog no? Someone needs to make one!

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Ariven

Thats my point, they dont have to type who over and over again to a text file, the log file itself can be parsed...

Yup, this is part of my point.. if there IS an automated parsing of the who command it can be found.. the big difference between the /who route and the eq2players route, besides /who being who is online, is that eq2players has a much higher noise to signal ratio of data...more to parse out, harder to deal with the vagaries of how the web page displays.. and I would bet the display on the website changes more often than the log file format.

But as for /who bots.. there SHOULD be a throttle with alert flag on /who.. more than a few bam, just like your setup.. someone gets alerted.. it gets too high and bam... account gets temp-banned...

Same with /tells.. I think a sliding throttle.. the higher you are in level the less of a throttle you get.. just simply because the higher you are the less likely you are a spammer....

And when speaking of monitoring data, if all of a sudden you get a lot of bad tells in a large volume it should also trip a flag..... it would mean using an old list of names or one from eq2players for the spamming.. which is why I wouldnt use eq2players data for /tell spamming.

But then I always have advocated a multi-tier attack on spammers.. you implement tell throttling, implement /who throttling, baysian spam filters in game.. other filters as you come up with them.. and then attack them out of game.. Any plat seller that hosts in the US should get a DMCA complaint for any images they have that are owned by SOE..

Also, SOE, being part of the 600lb gorilla that is Sony could go to Paypal and negotiate to have paypal declare RMT against their acceptable use unless it goes through the exchange server system. I am sure they could accomplish this even if they have to give Paypal some "cookie" like offering Paypal as a payment option for their games.. (a big cookie even).

No single attack on them will stop them. I dont think multiple attacks will. What a multi-tier approach WILL do is make the cost of service higher.. both in manpower and real money costs.. cut off their funding (paypal) and it gets even harder to stay in business.. done right all this will have the effect of hopefully driving some of the RMT companies out of the SOE market...

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Nurta

I have to tell you though...since Blizz filed the lawsuit I can't recall any spam mail or tells to me on my server.

Game Developers have to be serious when it comes to this stuff and while SoE does implement some things I get the feeling they aren't as tough as they could or should be.

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LFG

eq2census used to do just that - although they didn't update it often, they could have done so daily.

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