The worst part about the bots, and the reason it is so hard to stop them, is because 90% of those accounts are bought with stolen credit cards.
It’s true. When I was working as online security consultant for Atari in reference to Star Trek Online, just before the PWE sell, I found evidence that well over 90% of the accounts reported for “gold spam” were actually bought with a stolen credit card.
In less than half of the instances, the charges that activated the accounts were never reported as fraudulent. And the way that credit card investigation works, the account will be set up and authorized for months in many cases before the charges are reversed. Some CC companies don’t even contact the vendor about the fraud, they just write it off.
I know with STO, getting ahead of the fraudulent accounts was like getting ahead in a footrace with your laces tied together. Everytime you shut down an account, three more appeared in it’s place.
These gold farmers advertise, and some stooge is tempted. He visits the site and buys. More than half the time, he won’t get his purchase, and even if he does they have his CC info. Now they use that info to buy as many accounts as they can at once without setting off red flags.
Some of these vendors, like Atari, didn’t have tracking software that flagged it when someone bought multiple accounts at once. Many companies, like Blizzard, do have tracking for it. You buy three or four accounts at once and see if you don’t get an email for verification before they activate. You should.
I agree that bots are a nuisance. But they aren’t exactly easy to stop. A-net should make their first effort to inform players that you can buy gold in game using gems. And that buying gems from A-net is going to be cheaper, and 100% safe compared to buying from some gold seller.
That would do a lot to start. When players don’t buy gold, the gold spammers/farmers are easier to shut down. First, they won’t have new CC info to use to make new accounts. Second, they get reported and lose the accounts they do have, because there will be fewer of them to sift through.
You can never get rid of them completely, because honestly there are too many idiots out there who just give out CC and personal info without a second thought.
But you can do much to reduce it.
For Guild Wars 2, make sure you take a screenshot every time you see these bots, and report them. You can attach screenshots to your report, but you might want to post the screenshot on the forums too, and list the link to it in the report.
That usually helps them see visually without trying to sift through data to prove someone is a bot or not.
Screenshots work wonders, in most cases, and make it much easier to “prove” the guilt that just a report.
I too hope that A-net gets this under control. Not only because of the reasons the author listed, but because the longer it goes unchecked, the more likely that accounts get stolen and more and more security incidents begin to happen.
quoted from the page’s reply,really informative one
10~20
