Jump to content

An Update on Squelching and Credit Spam


EricMusco

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

Hey folks!

 

I am here today to pass on a fairly elaborate explanation around the credit spam that has been happening, and what we are doing, right from a member of our Security Team.

 

-eric

Hey everyone,

 

I’m a developer attached to our security team, and that includes fighting credit farmers, exploiters, sellers, and spammers. Unfortunately we have to be pretty tight lipped about any of our security work because we don’t want ‘The Baddies’ knowing what we’re doing. The best kind of work we do is where players don’t realize we’ve done anything at all. I promise you, though, we do work hard at ensuring the game experience is fun from all sides, and that includes cutting down on spam wherever viable.

 

One of the more frustrating kinds of spam players have reported recently was a new approach: Tell Spam. We noticed spammers sending massive numbers of tells to players around the server. The rate the messages went out meant it was impossible for us to manually react. By the time someone saw the spam the damage was done. A large number of players were impacted and the spammer could simply log out, their job done. That was too much of an inconvenience and we quickly built a system to cut down on that behavior.

 

Without going into too many details: If someone goes on a mission to send as many tells as they possibly can, as fast as they can, there’s a good chance they’ll wind up squelched, even without manual CSR intervention.

 

I want to stress that this action happens only because of efforts by the player who got squelched. They performed an action that was deemed sufficiently disruptive and likely enough to be a spammer or a griefer so the system automatically shut them down to prevent any more spam. Your friend who you sent a bunch of messages to too quickly (nice or mean) did not report you, a CSR didn’t hold a grudge against you, you just looked like a spammer to our automated systems. The squelch WILL eventually wear off (length is subject to change).

 

So, I have a few requests for all of you:

 

  1. Please don’t spam each other with the same message over and over again. That’s what spammers do, and you don’t want to copy them. If you need to get someone’s attention, you can slow down the messages. Copy-pasting the same message to people as fast as you can, over and over again, is the only way you can really hit current limits. I feel bad for anyone who gets caught and subsequently squelched, but the key is not to act like a spammer/credit seller.
  2. Secure your accounts. All of them, not just your SWTOR account. Credit spammers and sellers regularly compromise accounts, by getting into email accounts, figuring out passwords through shared accounts, or using Trojans to sniff passwords. Enable ‘Two Factor’ authentication on your email if available, use a security key for your SWTOR account, use a different password for different services, and find ways to ensure your data is locked up by more than just the username and password where you can. By having two factor authentication you make it much harder for them to improperly access your data.
  3. Please right-click and report spammers. We DO pay attention to that, and the more reports we get on a person the higher up it goes in our list of ‘Likely spam message’ for us to track and deal with. There was a brief time where right-click reporting wasn’t working properly and our CSRs weren’t getting the ‘check out this spammer and ban him’ message. That has been fixed, but that time of it being broken caused a sharp decline in people using it. It works now, I promise! Report spammers! It makes us all happier when we remove them from our game.
  4. Don’t buy credits!!! Buying credits encourages the spamming and encourages bad people to keep harming others. While tracking and busting these rings we discover links to stolen credit cards, compromised accounts, and cheating in game. This harms the play experience for other players and they do all of this because they make money. We’re doing what we can on our end but we need the players to push back too and to refuse to buy from them. With No-Cost character training we’ve removed a huge credit sink and acquiring credits has gotten much easier, thanks to the Epic Story XP Boost (12X XP) getting you to higher-end content faster. Why put your account, personal, and financial information at risk, when you can easily protect it?

 

Sincerely,

[A developer who is remaining anonymous because credit selling is literally tied to organized crime and my job is to make them angry]

 

P.S. We do read the forums and see your complaints and I want you guys to keep it up! If something is bugging you about spam in the game, about exploits happening, about things going wrong, TELL US. We do action them as we can, and those posts do make a difference. We can’t always show our work, and as far as security tasks are concerned we usually try and keep you from seeing anything happened at all, but we are there in the shadows, working to keep things right. Sorry this is the first (and probably last) post I’ll get to make on the topic, but please keep up posting about problems, keep reporting spammers, keep helping us help you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 112
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Credit spammers and sellers regularly compromise accounts
:eek:
:eek:

 

 

Sincerely,

[A developer who is remaining anonymous because credit selling is literally tied to organized crime and my job is to make them angry]

Good call :D

Edited by idnewton
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without going into too many details: If someone goes on a mission to send as many tells as they possibly can, as fast as they can, there’s a good chance they’ll wind up squelched, even without manual CSR intervention.

 

Hello Security Team! Important Request:

 

Can you PLEASE make sure that when squelched, it is clear and obvious:

1. What happened

2. Why it happened

3. What needs to happen for it to wear off

 

An example of how to achieve this, when a player is squeleched, have a message that says:

 

"Our automated system has caught you sending the same message multiple times. We are pausing your ability to whisper in an effort to reduce spam. You will be able to whisper again in (60) seconds."

 

There is a similar mechanic inplace to prevent /stuck abuse, and trying to accept a flagship transport in a spaceport, which explains it really well - but because it is in "yellow text" (game feedback) if the user has that text moved to a secondary tab they will not see it. An alternative would be to make sure the text shows up either in a separate popup like when you report someone, or at least in the same tab whispers show up in. We've seen frustration in our guild when it seems nothing has happened, and it seems like there's no warning and it takes the player quite a while to find the message hidden away in another tab.

 

Thanks! Good luck Squelching!

- swtorista

Edited by LadyAdmiral
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the update. Keep up the hard work.

 

I feel stupid I had to look up the word 'squelched'. :p

 

i felt so stupid that I wasn't going to look up the word "squelched", but then i saw your post and decided to go ahead and look it up. I will be using "squelch" in my daily vocabulary from here on.

 

Also a movie that I have yet to watch is Squelch of the Lambs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.... use a security key for your SWTOR account ...

 

Any word on when we can expect a Windows Phone version of the Security Key?

 

I want to use a security key, but:

  • I could never purchase one in my country from the Origin store.
  • The physical security key is no longer available.
  • There is no Windows Phone version of the security key.

 

It would be great if you could make one available. /hint /hint ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Can you confirm whether or not this new system will affect sellers such as myself who put messages in trade chat every 30 minutes or so to advertising the items that we are selling?

 

Would be pretty bad if I accidentally got muted for selling my stuff :confused:

 

! Devs take notice -- Important point !

 

 

This is a very good point. When I'm selling stuff, most of the time people won't buy it until several messages later, which leads me to repeat the same message. I'm not the only one. The vast majority of item sellers don't re-write their message each time.

 

Besides, this particular aspect of the spam catching strategy won't be all that helpful. I know for several of the spam sites, they put randomized numbers in certain parts of the message to prevent stuff like this. However, I trust you have a lot more information to make educated decisions than we do. Still, I hope you'll be careful to avoid 'catching' legitimate item sellers who aren't trashy cred spammers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

3. Please right-click and report spammers.

 

 

One-click Report+Ignore. It's been requested many many times. Make it less of a hassle to use the Report feature and I'll use it more often.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was a brief time where right-click reporting wasn’t working properly and our CSRs weren’t getting the ‘check out this spammer and ban him’ message. That has been fixed, but that time of it being broken caused a sharp decline in people using it.

 

I've seen players claim that incorrectly reporting a spammer for "real life threats" gets a faster reaction than reporting them for spam. Have the devs noticed this trend, and does it have any negative effect?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey folks!

[A developer who is remaining anonymous because credit selling is literally tied to organized crime and my job is to make them angry]

Please right-click and report spammers.

-eric

 

I'm sure everyone is thinking this: then make it so reporting for spam automatically adds to ignore list as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Small Suggestion :

 

Can you make the Report Spam option automatically request if you would like to ignore the person you have just reported?

 

I know a lot of people that don't bother reporting spammers and just ignore them. This fix would probably result in more people using the report function.

Edited by micnevv
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you confirm whether or not this new system will affect sellers such as myself who put messages in trade chat every 30 minutes or so to advertising the items that we are selling?

 

Would be pretty bad if I accidentally got muted for selling my stuff :confused:

Confused? Read anonymous developer's point #1.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Can you confirm whether or not this new system will affect sellers such as myself who put messages in trade chat every 30 minutes or so to advertising the items that we are selling?

 

Would be pretty bad if I accidentally got muted for selling my stuff :confused:

 

How does your situation relate to what they said? They aren't even remotely similar.

 

Without going into too many details: If someone goes on a mission to send as many tells as they possibly can, as fast as they can, there’s a good chance they’ll wind up squelched, even without manual CSR intervention.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not confused at all

You used the confused emote, :confused:

 

but almost all sellers just hit the Up key every so often when selling items. This means that the same message will be sent out each time. And even if we change the wording I would assume that the algorithm being used takes into consideration that spammers use random text each time.

Are you posting your sale messages every 30 minutes or every 30 seconds? If you send the same message every 30 seconds, you might want to slow it up a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

musco I can tell you why some people buy credits because you have these people putting idiotic prices on the gtn like an ops pass for 4.5mil. eliminate the problem with that and you are bound to end the amount I have friends I have reported for doing that as well ( buying credits for it not the ones selling it)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can security guys unconnect origin and swtor accounts please? Origin sux at security.

 

This. They've never fixed my compromised account which means the only way I can play this game is through a game card because I'm not even allowed to put Paypal connected to my account. All of this because of a breach that occurred during a time when I wasn't even playing the game, which happened specifically on the Origin side of the house.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought I noticed a little less whisper spam than usual. Good on you guys.

 

I must say the level of communication over the last month or so has been quite good. It's like you guys are getting a second wind for making the game better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Can you confirm whether or not this new system will affect sellers such as myself who put messages in trade chat every 30 minutes or so to advertising the items that we are selling?

 

Would be pretty bad if I accidentally got muted for selling my stuff :(

 

If you are really doing itnthat infrequently, I would think it is safe to assume you would be fine. But if you are one of those people that constantly spam fleet chat, maybe it would (more accurately hopefully I WOULD) snag you.

 

Just wanted to add wby limit the squelch on just tells? Why not add it to general chat as well?

Edited by lightSaberAddiCt
adding comment
Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...