Guild Wars 2

Hey,
im currently facing a vastly rising amount of spam whispers in chat. I allways report the spamers and block them, but it seems they have an infinite amount of accounts. Every day i am wispered 1-3 times per hour.

The spammers are all “working” for the same website… So the spam text is allways the same.. “Buy our gold and get free christmas money”

Am i the only one that noticed that? Whats your experience? How are you guys dealing with that?

To the devs: Would it be possible to add aditional spam filters for he chat that prevent this? Any chance to perma ban the gold buyers (The real problem)?

My block list is getting quite large now, it had no participants at all last month. Every single one are whispering gold sellers.

Not really seen a rise, have had 2 whispers of selling since headstart one yesterday the other 6 months ago. Much less mail spam now than a year ago.

I have had one total, some time ago. Guess I’m just not interesting enough. Lol.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have had one total, some time ago. Guess I’m just not interesting enough. Lol.

Havent looked up your name, but..
They have to get the names from anywhere, i think they get them from the leaderboards or from the forums…
So if you get less spam, are you in any leaderboards?

Lol, if they get them from the forums, why would I need to be on the Leaderboards?

I’m just ‘special’. =P

I average about 3 to 4 whispers from gold sellers a month. Keep wasting time sitting in LA instead of out in the field and it will only rise. {:-þ

I’ve had to report 3 in the past week contacting me via whisper, versus zero through that method before. Very annoying!

Two or three per day lately, and 4 so far today. Just keep reporting.

Only thing i need is: “clear chat history” or “delete this message” button.

I usually see a gold seller in LA every day. A different one every day, of course. I report and block. Takes 2 seconds. I did notice that when I was in the PvP mists that it was pretty bad. Whispers and map chat. That was quite annoying.

So I’ve noticed a HUGE increase in spam-bots recently. Y’know, those lvl 2 characters with randomized names like akhjaek or pyabr. Me and my guild mates can’t go a day without being whispered by one telling us to go buy some gold or give our account details. I know there’s not much that can really be done but it’s starting to become an issue, there’s gotta be some way to make the game a little more secure, right? Some more verification, quicker report response times? Just thought I’d put it up here as it’s getting really annoying. >_<

They should be able to analyze heatmap usage of maps from known bots/gold sellers to analyze a pattern and then after verifying accounts they can ban those MAC/IP addresses.

Still the problem becomes a false positive nightmare along with the issue of anonymizer usage.

Basically discovery can be quite difficult.

I’ve dealt with false positive banning before and was none too pleased by it. So be careful what you ask for.

Doesn’t Anet claim to have a program that detects bots? Tonight I was whispered twice within 1hr by the same guy and reported them both times. My guild mates also reported that they have been whispered in WvW which could explain why JQ is always in queue on every map.

I reckon if you post the exact same message in the exact same map like… 5 times in 15 minutes it should be checked out by an agent. That way, No unfair bans and less bots.

There are no bots compared to a year ago. Literally, over night, one fateful day, ~35000 bot accounts were nixed all at once. Not surprisingly, prices in the trading post started to spiral up at about the same time.

Silvercyclone.1462:

My guild mates also reported that they have been whispered in WvW which could explain why JQ is always in queue on every map.

Not really. If you block them you can see what map they are on. Most of the time when I get these whispers in WvW the bot is in LA.

ip ban is worthless, most home connection have dinamic ip address and this mean that if you switch of the router you actually get a new one.
Mac ban is technically impossible, when an ip packet pass through a router the source mac address is changed so you won’t actually see the pc mac address (for dummy explanation).
the only way the could have to perma ban is to use nasty litle softwares that read a lot of info on your computer like hardware id and so but nobody really wants that.
if a bot can afford to lose the account a ìnd buy again the war is lost, only way is to be quick enought banning not to be worth anymore…
But i can bet my kitten that 90% of the accounts are hacked, probably of ppl not playing anymore.
only way of trully fight bots is quick ban and mandatory RSA based autentication at every log in, (like the one you can chose to have right now).

I honestly don’t know why there is a market for gold sellers in this game. You can buy gold straight from A-Net with no risk of being banned, so why would you turn to the gold sellers?

I agree, making RSA auth. mandatory instead of optional would nip this problem in the behind pretty hard.

I have also been getting a lot more whispers lately. All I can say is:
Just keep reporting and blocking. Anet will ban the accounts. Gold sellers will buy new accounts = more money for Anet.

My block list grows by 2-3 pretty much every day now. I block & report every time. It’s getting worse and needs to stop.

Latinkuro.9420

I agree, making RSA auth. mandatory instead of optional would nip this problem in the behind pretty hard.

Blizard had to do the same for D3, basically they said only rsa protected accounts were gonna be refounded in case of hacking,.
Id make it mandatory, who doesn’t have an iphone or android nowdays?

I get them multiple times daily. I’ve never bought gold (no reason to). There def. has been an increase. Just keep reporting them.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We definitely need to work on this situation, and from what I understand, we have a few recommendations and thoughts about how to ease RMT (gold seller) harassment via whispers.

If we had a means to remove those spammers instantly, we’d do it. But because we want to — and need to — verify each report, it can take time to nail the… I mean “address the issue.” ~ahem~

Please DO know that your reports are recorded and if an agent can’t “take out the garbage” instantly, he or she will do so as soon as possible. Please DO keep on reporting, and know that we sincerely appreciate your taking the time to do that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Gold-Sellers-1/first#post3310889

Its a real annoyance. I hope they’re working on something and that they at least tell us that they’re on the case.

They come in waves.

The other day I had 3-4 in the span of a couple hours. Haven’t had one since, though.

get rid of the gold sellers and bring back the chinese gold farmers and the botters. god i miss stacks of t6 mats for 10g.

Quick Mouse.7635:

I have also been getting a lot more whispers lately. All I can say is:
Just keep reporting and blocking. Anet will ban the accounts. Gold sellers will buy new accounts = more money for Anet.

Usually those accounts are stolen. Big headache for ANet.

Best thing is to block/report so ANet can collect info to help them track down locations.

And yes, it’s really annoying to get them with that frequency. Especially in WvW.

Yeah, this is getting a little annoying. I don’t even know how they find me.

Driving me NUTSSSSSS!

A couple hours ago, one whispered me (that’s happening A LOT now). I reported, and put it on block. Checked a few minutes ago to gaze upon my ever-growing block list, and it is still in Defense of Shaemoor (where it was when it first whispered me).

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Doesn’t having more gold sellers mean that GW2 is still very popular and desirable?

Don’t get me wrong sure their spams are annoying but it’s just nice seeing people still selling gold in the game

Ummm nope, to me it just means more accounts are getting hacked. Protect your accounts guys!

i’m not sure these accounts are hacked at all, i have had 4 whispers in the last 1/2 hour and when choose to report, the window i am presented with contains the account name not the character name (and i don’t believe one is able to change that, as one can change a character name). Without fail all these account names are a random group of letters such as hgdgfgr and i do not believe for a second that most players pick account names like that. We pick account names based on real world language that have personal meaning to us.

Gotta agree with Menzzo, Seems to me they’re giving ANet hundreds of thousands by buying accounts. xD

Or, they have access to an illegitimate key-maker. There are plenty of Dev posts on how bad gold-sellers are for the game and the company.

KumajirouSan.3527:

Gotta agree with Menzzo, Seems to me they’re giving ANet hundreds of thousands by buying accounts. xD

Since usually stolen or faked credit cards are used the company losses does not gain.