Taking Down a Credit Selling Ring

[Ichikai]

Can we expect less useless credit sinks in the future now then?

[Papazmurf]

I'm happy they took out one huge ring, but it's probably one of tens or hundreds. Hence no noticeable change in spam on fleet.

[gocard]

I have it from sources within Bioware that this is the man responsible for the credit ring: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts_(Silk_Road)

[wiredgutter]

Nice Eric! Thanks man

[Madistein]

I logged in today and still saw the same amount of credit sellers that I have always seen. Did not seem to stop or slow them down at all.

I know what would. Hire chat monitors. oh wait, that would actually fix the issue.....

[DawnAskham]

Sounds like a press release from some random law enforcement agency busting some random drug ring and seizing tens of millions of dollars in contraband, only to still see drugs readily available all over the country.

 

And while I'm not advocating doing nothing, seeing my server is still full of chat bots spamming links for credit selling sites, and the game is still filled with ridiculous numbers of bot friendly chests providing easy credits to these ilk, sadly I don't believe this will make much of a difference.

Edited May 6, 2015 by DawnAskham

[king_nile]

This is much appreciated! However, I hate to say I am rather proud of how long my ignore list got. I guess I can start removing all the nonsensical spammer names on that list now

[The_Wulff]

I logged in today and still saw the same amount of credit sellers that I have always seen. Did not seem to stop or slow them down at all.

I know what would. Hire chat monitors. oh wait, that would actually fix the issue.....

 

The point is not to remove the spammers. The point is to have people report the spammers so they can start observing them and looking at ip addresses and accounts mailed to/from and tracking where credits move. If they take out the f2p bot there will be another in it's place within the hour if they take out the entire ring they need to re-sub. To get to the high credit farmable areas they need to level all the way up and they need to stockpile enough credits to start selling again. You do this enough times to the spammers and they will start to see that selling in this game isn't worth the trouble. Sure it is no fun having to click report then click ignore but it helps stop the problem rather than cover up the symptoms.

[Isxossk]

Hey folks,

 

Over the past few months there have been many issues with Credit sellers and Advertisers. As you have noticed lately, we’re communicating more about what’s going on behind the scenes, so this is another area where we plan to keep you informed.

 

Last week, we took action against an entire selling ring. Over multiple weeks, we investigated and compiled evidence about a large Credit selling ring which spanned across hundreds of accounts and a variety of servers. To help thwart any possible reactions from this group, we simultaneously actioned every account in this Credit selling ring. In total, we banned hundreds of accounts and removed over nine billion credits from those accounts.

 

Thanks to all of you who have been diligently reporting those pesky spammers and other characters acting suspiciously anywhere throughout our game. They are very persistent, but we will continue to aggressively remove credit sellers and advertisers from our game!

 

-eric

 

I've been reporting every credit seller I see as spam and then ignoring them. Is that what we should continue to do? Also, after reading your update today, I logged on and was immediately greeted by two credit spammers. I reported both of them but I got the message "You cannot ignore any more players" (this shows how much I've done this). Is there a way to increase the amount of players we can ignore or add a "date ignored" so that I can easily go in and remove old ones? Just really annoying to have to get the spam.

[MasterFeign]

I do hope that all those credit farming "businesses", "just lay down and die" as HK would say. I hope they feel completely humiliated for all their "hard work" now into dust in the wind.

[Grayseven]

This might explain why there weren't toons camped out at the Elite mobs at the Black Hole recently, as well as seeing more chests in game.

[Icykill_]

Hey folks,

 

Over the past few months there have been many issues with Credit sellers and Advertisers. As you have noticed lately, we’re communicating more about what’s going on behind the scenes, so this is another area where we plan to keep you informed.

 

Last week, we took action against an entire selling ring. Over multiple weeks, we investigated and compiled evidence about a large Credit selling ring which spanned across hundreds of accounts and a variety of servers. To help thwart any possible reactions from this group, we simultaneously actioned every account in this Credit selling ring. In total, we banned hundreds of accounts and removed over nine billion credits from those accounts.

 

Thanks to all of you who have been diligently reporting those pesky spammers and other characters acting suspiciously anywhere throughout our game. They are very persistent, but we will continue to aggressively remove credit sellers and advertisers from our game!

 

-eric

 

Thanks Eric for the info... I know a lot of us have been complaining about these credit spammers... It's good to see our reporting them hasn't been invane

 

Would it be possible to stream line the processes so that the pop up doesn't come up after you click report spam... It's just a QOL improvement that would make reporting faster

[Icykill_]

I've been reporting every credit seller I see as spam and then ignoring them. Is that what we should continue to do? Also, after reading your update today, I logged on and was immediately greeted by two credit spammers. I reported both of them but I got the message "You cannot ignore any more players" (this shows how much I've done this). Is there a way to increase the amount of players we can ignore or add a "date ignored" so that I can easily go in and remove old ones? Just really annoying to have to get the spam.

 

Hi Eric,

 

I also have this issue with my ignore logs filling up from reporting spammers

 

Also could we make the ignore feature account wide... With 19 toons it becomes tedious everytime I log in I have to report/ignore the same spammers again

[Sith_Master]

Bioware is ramping up their image as the months progress towards November / December. Don't want to have a "broken" product once the next movie hits theaters and the influx of new F2P and subs floods the game.

 

It's still commendable and I'm glad that BW is taking the efforts to make the game better.

[HotSake]

Hey folks,

 

Over the past few months there have been many issues with Credit sellers and Advertisers. As you have noticed lately, we’re communicating more about what’s going on behind the scenes, so this is another area where we plan to keep you informed.

 

Last week, we took action against an entire selling ring. Over multiple weeks, we investigated and compiled evidence about a large Credit selling ring which spanned across hundreds of accounts and a variety of servers. To help thwart any possible reactions from this group, we simultaneously actioned every account in this Credit selling ring. In total, we banned hundreds of accounts and removed over nine billion credits from those accounts.

 

Thanks to all of you who have been diligently reporting those pesky spammers and other characters acting suspiciously anywhere throughout our game. They are very persistent, but we will continue to aggressively remove credit sellers and advertisers from our game!

 

-eric

 

In the meantime, how about silently filtering out their spam? A simple regular expression would catch all of their messages since there's a limit to how much they can obfuscate it and still gain customers. Notice that the URL is always httpcom with spaces and nonalphanumeric characters in between each character. That's prime RegEx material right there. If you fake the chat message back to the spammer so that they don't realize they're being softbanned, then you can cut the spam for regular users while still allowing the spammers to incriminate themselves.

[Banthabreeder]

Not to be sarcastic, but tell that to the 3 spammers that hit me when I logged onto the Bastion today. Over and over. To be honest, it really doesn't look like anything has been done. Perhaps this whole credit spammers are much bigger then we/you realized. Congrats though on who you did take out. Keep it up and maybe someday well only be hit by 2 credit spammers over and over instead.

[Barnard]

More lip service from BW today. Logged in to emails on just about every character and there is 3 people on both fleets spamming still.

[JediRelentless]

Hey folks,

 

Over the past few months there have been many issues with Credit sellers and Advertisers. As you have noticed lately, we’re communicating more about what’s going on behind the scenes, so this is another area where we plan to keep you informed.

 

Last week, we took action against an entire selling ring. Over multiple weeks, we investigated and compiled evidence about a large Credit selling ring which spanned across hundreds of accounts and a variety of servers. To help thwart any possible reactions from this group, we simultaneously actioned every account in this Credit selling ring. In total, we banned hundreds of accounts and removed over nine billion credits from those accounts.

 

Thanks to all of you who have been diligently reporting those pesky spammers and other characters acting suspiciously anywhere throughout our game. They are very persistent, but we will continue to aggressively remove credit sellers and advertisers from our game!

 

-eric

 

Thanks BW. Great news. I hope you're also taking action against the players who are buying credits from sites like this.

[rhinoceroseosei]

"What does the scouter say about the credit level?" (sorry if someone's already made this joke)

[PetFish]

This is great news, man, seriously.

 

All I can do is keep reporting them, that's my contribution, then it's up to you guys to take the next step and I'm so happy you're making the effort.

[Papazmurf]

This is great news, man, seriously.

 

All I can do is keep reporting them, that's my contribution, then it's up to you guys to take the next step and I'm so happy you're making the effort.

 

I'm with you on that. Every time I see them I hit ignore than report. I just wish there more staff to really manage those reports quickly and efficiently.

[Yomitako]

They're still spamming like crazy on Bastion. Logged in, and immediately reported 3 gold sellers within 10 seconds. While I appreciate the efforts in taking them down, you can't let up on these spammers for a second, otherwise all of this work will come undone.

[AdrianDmitruk]

Nice to have some form of evidence all those spam reports were acted upon.

 

Any word on making the report spam function more efficient? Like one-click, ignore-and-report? Reporting spam deleting the spammer's messages from your client's chat window so we can more easily see the legit chat? Getting rid of the useless "Your spam report has been sent" clicky window and/or replacing that with flytext, a system message in the chat window, or some other non-gameplay-intrusive confirmation that our spam report was sent?

 

I know I brought up these kinds of quality of life improvements to the report spam function at a Community Cantina last year--sadly the devs seemed pretty shocked how bare-bones their own spam reporting tool was compared to other games. Any word on improvements? Those of us who helped you guys with the bust by reporting would sure appreciate it if the spam report function was made more useful and/or less intrusive to us as well.

[Zharik]

They're still spamming like crazy on Bastion. Logged in, and immediately reported 3 gold sellers within 10 seconds. While I appreciate the efforts in taking them down, you can't let up on these spammers for a second, otherwise all of this work will come undone.

 

The Ebon Hawk too... in fact it is really worse today than any day last week... odd.

[sxykitten]

to bad it has no effect on them they can easly start a million accounts and repeat same process. this has taken you what? 8 months since last actual ban on a credit seller. dont know about everyone else but this seem half assed.