Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Kill Momma.6127

Kill Momma.6127

I have been logging in to find this message in my inbox. What can I do to remove them?

I do not want any association from them whatsoever!

Attachments:

HOD [PHZE]
Chemistry can be a good and bad thing. Good when you make love with it. Bad when you make crack.

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

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Posted by: pessimist.7294

pessimist.7294

Dont panic, just press the button on the bottom left and report this guy. Its nothing unususal these days that you get spam mails from gold sellers.

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Posted by: Astral Projections.7320

Astral Projections.7320

Report. Delete. Go on your way.

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Posted by: Gaile Gray

Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

Confirming — we DO want your reports, so we can smite them to kingdom co… so we can take care of the issue.

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

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Posted by: mohrad.8972

mohrad.8972

Yeah, 2 days ago i’ve got my first (yay?) goldbot mail.
Oddly enough it was sent to my inactive alt and the tittle of the mail was " I love you ^-^".
Dat crativity.

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Posted by: Kill Momma.6127

Kill Momma.6127

HAHA Ive never seen that one, bet it got your attention though huh!

HOD [PHZE]
Chemistry can be a good and bad thing. Good when you make love with it. Bad when you make crack.

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

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Posted by: Oranisagu.3706

Oranisagu.3706

HAHA Ive never seen that one, bet it got your attention though huh!

I’m more popular than you, I get the ‘I love you’ spam quite often! ^^

seriously though, I find it a bit irritating that the same url is in every single one of those spammails so far, not even altered in any way – and yet the messages don’t get delayed for manual inspection by a GM.

the best solution imho would be if a mail contains questionably content it gets delayed and the user notified about it being reviewed. once it’s cleared it can go on, otherwise they can take action. directly deleting it would be risky, as it can be an accident.

(edited by Oranisagu.3706)

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Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

It takes the arenanet 5 minutes to add certain url’s to the banned list. It takes the godlsellers 2 minutes to make a new url and link the existing site there. Arenanet does do this, but they take more time to make more decent blocks that isn’t circumvented that easy.

When I started playing this game, people where sending bout 10 mails per day, now it is bout 1 every 2 weeks on average. So there is progress, it is just hard to get this pest totally out of the game.

Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

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Posted by: Kill Momma.6127

Kill Momma.6127

I guess people really want their weapons super fast, and don’t want to work for it. Heck I now have 200g only need 1k more to make my first legendary….might take me about 30 more years….

HOD [PHZE]
Chemistry can be a good and bad thing. Good when you make love with it. Bad when you make crack.

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Oranisagu.3706

Oranisagu.3706

It takes the arenanet 5 minutes to add certain url’s to the banned list. It takes the godlsellers 2 minutes to make a new url and link the existing site there. Arenanet does do this, but they take more time to make more decent blocks that isn’t circumvented that easy.

When I started playing this game, people where sending bout 10 mails per day, now it is bout 1 every 2 weeks on average. So there is progress, it is just hard to get this pest totally out of the game.

so far it’s taken ANet over a year and they still haven’t added the [censored] (wow, they actually did filter the url in the forums, just not ingame) url to their banlist. they do work against spam, thats right, but mainly by closing hacked accounts etc, not by adding stuff to a blacklist. I’m not saying their way doesn’t work – on the contrary, they’ve been very successful so far, the spam went down to a minimum.

also, you don’t seem to know exactly how domains work:
you go to a registrar and apply for a new domain. this is an electronic process of course and only takes a few minutes to complete (including the payment of a few dollars except in special cases), but still, it’s not instant. then you need to enter a nameserver which has to be configured to serve information about this domain. either you host yourself, which is fast (if you have the technical skill – which I doubt an average goldseller has, it can be a bit tricky), or you need to enter the necessary information at your webhoster (and not all of them automate this or even allow infinite domains).
by now you would on average have spent about 15 to 30 minutes, except if it’s something you do all the time (in the mentioned instance: so far never).

now you need an account to send your spam from – either create a new one (costs one game) or use a hacked account (finite amount available).
if you have that, you send out several mails with the url you just created.

but wait! if you send immediately, half your potential customers won’t even be able to access the site, as their hosters webserver might use heavy caching and might not have updated the nameservers yet.
so you wait 30 minutes to be sure. then send the spam

all anet has to do:

  • receive one report
  • add an url to a graylist (delay delivery, but don’t delete the message)
  • stop sent mails from being delivered until approved
  • if enough mails are disapproved, add the url to a blacklist (which means deletion of the mail)

it’s not hard to get a new domain name up, but it does take effort, money and time.
ANet’s current strategy is working very well, but a halfdecent graylist/blacklist system might improve their response time drastically.

though to be fair, in reality about 98% of all mails are spam, most of which gets filtered by your hoster without you ever knowing – so ANet is doing well against spam.

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Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

It takes the arenanet 5 minutes to add certain url’s to the banned list. It takes the godlsellers 2 minutes to make a new url and link the existing site there. Arenanet does do this, but they take more time to make more decent blocks that isn’t circumvented that easy.

When I started playing this game, people where sending bout 10 mails per day, now it is bout 1 every 2 weeks on average. So there is progress, it is just hard to get this pest totally out of the game.

so far it’s taken ANet over a year and they still haven’t added the [censored] (wow, they actually did filter the url in the forums, just not ingame) url to their banlist. they do work against spam, thats right, but mainly by closing hacked accounts etc, not by adding stuff to a blacklist. I’m not saying their way doesn’t work – on the contrary, they’ve been very successful so far, the spam went down to a minimum.

also, you don’t seem to know exactly how domains work:
you go to a registrar and apply for a new domain. this is an electronic process of course and only takes a few minutes to complete (including the payment of a few dollars except in special cases), but still, it’s not instant. then you need to enter a nameserver which has to be configured to serve information about this domain. either you host yourself, which is fast (if you have the technical skill – which I doubt an average goldseller has, it can be a bit tricky), or you need to enter the necessary information at your webhoster (and not all of them automate this or even allow infinite domains).
by now you would on average have spent about 15 to 30 minutes, except if it’s something you do all the time (in the mentioned instance: so far never).

now you need an account to send your spam from – either create a new one (costs one game) or use a hacked account (finite amount available).
if you have that, you send out several mails with the url you just created.

but wait! if you send immediately, half your potential customers won’t even be able to access the site, as their hosters webserver might use heavy caching and might not have updated the nameservers yet.
so you wait 30 minutes to be sure. then send the spam

all anet has to do:

  • receive one report
  • add an url to a graylist (delay delivery, but don’t delete the message)
  • stop sent mails from being delivered until approved
  • if enough mails are disapproved, add the url to a blacklist (which means deletion of the mail)

it’s not hard to get a new domain name up, but it does take effort, money and time.
ANet’s current strategy is working very well, but a halfdecent graylist/blacklist system might improve their response time drastically.

though to be fair, in reality about 98% of all mails are spam, most of which gets filtered by your hoster without you ever knowing – so ANet is doing well against spam.

Againt this doesnt work at all. Anet is doing a much better job and I’m very pleased with the progress they made.

Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!

Gold Sellers PMing me. HELP!

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Posted by: The Scarlet Raven.5416

The Scarlet Raven.5416

also, you don’t seem to know exactly how domains work:
you go to a registrar and apply for a new domain. this is an electronic process of course and only takes a few minutes to complete (including the payment of a few dollars except in special cases), but still, it’s not instant. then you need to enter a nameserver which has to be configured to serve information about this domain. either you host yourself, which is fast (if you have the technical skill – which I doubt an average goldseller has, it can be a bit tricky), or you need to enter the necessary information at your webhoster (and not all of them automate this or even allow infinite domains).
by now you would on average have spent about 15 to 30 minutes, except if it’s something you do all the time (in the mentioned instance: so far never).

It’s a nice thought, Oranisagu….but it doesn’t work. Trust me, I played another game that went the blacklisting route and it was an ineffective nightmare. For example, let’s say the gold spammer sends out the following message:

“Cheap gold! Buy now from us at www.spamalotgold.com!!!” The game company responses and blacklists the website.

The next message is “Cheap gold!! Buy now! vvwvv.spamalotgol d.com”. This version is now blacklisted.

Next: “Cheap g o l d!!! Buy at wvvw.s p a m a l o t g o l d . c o m!!” This is also put on the blacklist.

Next comes: “Cheap gold!! Find us at www.tinyurl.com/something”

In the meantime, you send a mail to your friend saying, “hey, I just got a strange looking mail from spamalot.com. Are you getting that junk too?” and you get banned for triggering the blacklist.

I think you get the idea. Blacklists just don’t work.