Thanks for the update Eric, means a lot and shows you have been reading the forums... contrary to uh... som... someones.... uh... belief...

Death to credit spammers!

Oh finally Do you know how many credits that were deleted along with their accounts?

Great question...I too would love to know "about" how many credits were removed.

Hey folks,

 

As you may know from previous posts on the topic, when it comes to credit sellers we will often do a large takedown at one time. This allows us to have the largest impact on the credit sellers without them being able to react. Today was one of those instances.

 

With today's maintenance we acted on a few different initiatives to help curb the in-game chat and mail spam of credit sellers. Some examples of what was done today include:

• Banning of thousands of credit selling accounts.
  
• Closing a loophole in an existing promotion, that allowed credit sellers to quickly and easily make accounts which could send you in-game mail and access the fleet.
  
• Made adjustments to some existing automated functions to better catch credit sellers.
  
• And more... (we don't want to reveal everything we are doing to the credit sellers )
  

Keep in mind that when it comes to catching credit sellers, as we make adjustments, so do they. It is a constant game of cat and mouse, but it is one that we will continue to focus on aggressively. For this reason, it is important that you continue to always report these spammers and credit sellers as you see them. I know sometimes it seems like we aren't taking action, but I promise that your reports are critical in our ability to find and take action against credit sellers.

 

-eric

Thank you so much for this update. I was about to give up reporting SPAM after seeing the same website advertised over and over and over again.

Great News! Glad all the spam reporting isn't a waste of time.

One thing you might consider is putting in a report spam and ignore option (instead of just the report spam) so we don't have a two step process when dealing with people shouting their spam in general chat. Sometimes I just ignore because its faster then report spam and then ignore. But I generally only do that when I've already reported the spam on another character.

Great News! Glad all the spam reporting isn't a waste of time.

 

One thing you might consider is putting in a report spam and ignore option (instead of just the report spam) so we don't have a two step process when dealing with people shouting their spam in general chat. Sometimes I just ignore because its faster then report spam and then ignore. But I generally only do that when I've already reported the spam on another character.

This please, if report spam auto-ignored someone I would do it way more often. But right now reporting spam means I keep seeing the messages.

Well it makes sense to do one large takedown at a time, where taking them down 1 at a time takes a while and its like cutting a hydras head off where 2 more will just spawn, but taking down 100+ they will need time to lick their wounds.

So good to know.

This please, if report spam auto-ignored someone I would do it way more often. But right now reporting spam means I keep seeing the messages.

While it would be nice I guess if /report spam also auto-ignored.... that is not the purpose of /report spam.

/report spam, as noted by Eric above, is a valuable tool to help the studio catalog and evaluate and action accounts.

If you want to report to get them on your ignore list, you are ignoring the purpose of /report.

Well it makes sense to do one large takedown at a time, where taking them down 1 at a time takes a while and its like cutting a hydras head off where 2 more will just spawn, but taking down 100+ they will need time to lick their wounds.

 

So good to know.

Yeah... most studios do this stuff in waves. It gives them the opportunity to find interconnections between accounts, and give the RMTs a false sense of security (which likely makes them act more carelessly) ... then BAM!... take out a large swath of them at once.

And I have to say, the autofiltering must be keeping the mail spammers on their toes because the contortions of text and spaces they must do to get the mail through these days is hilarious. Of course the RMTs adapt to every barrier or snare the devs put in... but much more.. and they will be unreadable.

Hopefully, these periodic sweeps catch a lot of the players that are actually selling credits to these RMTs. More of that would put the hurt on their supply chain since RMTs are largely middleman brokers now days.

without them being able to react.

I saw a flying Bantha today.

Thanks Eric and Team

Have you given any thought to developing email settings for the user to choose to restrict emails being sent by other players to friend list & guildies?

While it would be nice I guess if /report spam also auto-ignored.... that is not the purpose of /report spam.

 

/report spam, as noted by Eric above, is a valuable tool to help the studio catalog and evaluate and action accounts.

 

If you want to report to get them on your ignore list, you are ignoring the purpose of /report.

You are missing the point. The point is not what is the "purpose" of the report button, the point is "how can we increase the number of people reporting spam".

If you report spam, but keep seeing the spam messages, does that actually encourage someone to keep reporting? Obviously in chat you have the option to then ignore them after reporting spam, but what about for mail messages? And regardless, someone who reports spam and then keeps seeing the messages (and does not religiously check the forums and see BW is doing something) will eventually lose faith in the system and stop reporting. I know I did for a good chunk of time, and I still will just ignore any credit sellers who send it to my mail because I can't do both. While it's nice to think that everyone will do the former and just keep reporting, reality is that many (including myself) will just ignore and move on because we don't want to deal with it.

Just think about spam reporting emails, that means that any additional mails from that sender don't make it to your inbox (i.e. it gets added to your ignore list automatically).

I saw a flying Bantha today.

Well, if it was my flying bantha it has lasers attached to its head and ATG missiles.

and to Eric, thanks for the report on spam takedowns by the STF (Spam Takedown Force) of Bioware, and now Tait with weather...

That being said, we aren't going to go into detail on the trillions of credits that we just took out of the game with this wave of action.

 

-eric

Nice lol...that started with a "T" and ended with an "s", meaning multiples. WOW!!!

!!

A trillion here, a trillion there...

No, wait, you were always talking about a large amount of credits.

The downside to this is, unfortunately, this almost certainly means that a certain amount of rare items went up in smoke with the banned accounts.