Why are ingame mail spammer reports ignored

[b-morgan]

I have customer service help request entries going back into December 2015 that are still open. Even worse, the spammers reported in December 2015 are still actively spewing their garbage.

 

If customer service is too busy to manually handle these reports, perhaps some development effort should be spent automating the suspension or deletion of these accounts after (what has to be) some large number of complaints.

 

The same automation should be applied to ingame chat spammers. I seriously doubt that with a large enough complaint threshold, there will be any "false" actions taken.

 

Can someone from customer service please explain why their current method of handling these spammers is the best solution?

[gocard]

Completely agree that reported mail spam should trigger (after a certain threshold, say 25 reports by different people in a 24 hour period) something. The safer effect would be to delete all mails sent from that account to different accounts (so don't delete stuff the user sends to his alts). And it still accomplishes the same thing (not being bothered by spammers)

 

Anybody mailing that many people is clearly a spammer.

Edited January 8, 2016 by gocard

[Thoronmir]

The same automation should be applied to ingame chat spammers. I seriously doubt that with a large enough complaint threshold, there will be any "false" actions taken.

I believe the system is automated to "squelch" chat spammers who receive a certain number of reports. Squelching, as I understand it, prevents the character (perhaps the account) from using public channels for 24 hours.

 

I base all this on hearsay. As a paragon of chat propriety, I've never fallen victim to the dreaded "squelch."

[Erevan_Kindelar]

I had a couple of discussions with CS staff over the Christmas break, regarding a specific group of spammers who were operating on Red Eclipse for several weeks in spite of several reports for each spammer just from myself.

The conversations went something along the lines of

"6 reports in the last 8 days, and this character is still sending me spam emails";

"we are working on the problem, but you should not see any more spam from that character";

followed by no more spam from that character, but the next day there was new spam from a new character.

Rinse, repeat.

F2P accounts and disposable email addresses make for a game of whack-a-mole that Bioware have mostly given up on.

The only solution I have been able to come up with is to make Ignore (and Friend) lists legacy-wide, and to extend the blocking effect of Ignore lists from chat and group finder to include mails as well.

[b-morgan]

F2P accounts and disposable email addresses make for a game of whack-a-mole that Bioware have mostly given up on. The only solution I have been able to come up with is to make Ignore (and Friend) lists legacy-wide, and to extend the blocking effect of Ignore lists from chat and group finder to include mails as well.

 

It is a game of whack-a-mole only if Bioware insists on using a manual solution. Automation can solve this problem.

 

Account wide application of ignore (and friend) lists would be a welcome addition, but should not be required to automate the suspension / deletion of automatically identified spammers. The players are the ones bothered by this spam, the players are the ones reporting this spam, so let the players drive the removal of the identified account(s).

[foxxecho]

Enough is enough with the mail spam IMO.

 

I only want mail from people on my friends list, in my guild, my alts, or official mail from "the game".

 

End of story. If I want to do business via mail I'm confident me and the other party can handle adding each other (if only temporarily).

 

In my mind there is no reason not to do this.

[Falensawino]

I can tell you reporting doesn't work.

 

I never add spammers to my ignore list so I can manually right click and report them every new message they say in chat.

 

Many hours later that spammer will finally stop sending messages. Unfortunately a new spammer always comes to take his place almost immediately.

Edited January 9, 2016 by Falensawino

[Lindraskada]

there was an interesting discussion when WARHAMMER AGE OF RECKONING came out where Mark Jacobs was offered a 6 figure (i think ?) figure to look the other way from gold spammer companies to operate and he told them to feck off

 

none of the other major companies at the time ever commented on it ..(but surely were approached?!..) . Since then Blizzard took Peons4Hire to the cleaners , but still im always a bit suspicious

 

/tin foil hat

[CrazyCT]

I'm firmly of the opinion that Bioware just see it as a winless fight - they can employ someone to stand all day banning accounts, while the spammers just create new ones. In the end, you're still gonna get mails about it, and they'll be spending more money for no effect. I know some people thinks it's a massive PITA to click a little button that says delete (it's right up there with being "forced" to read that one line of foreign text and having to complain about not using English in fleet chat) but I find it pretty easy to just click on that little trash can once per session. Edited January 9, 2016 by CrazyCT

[RunningJester]

I will have to say that with all the issues/bugs that BW needs to fix, I could not care less if they never worry about gold spammers. What is the big deal? it takes 3 seconds to delete all the mails in your mail box.

[foxxecho]

I'm firmly of the opinion that Bioware just see it as a winless fight - they can employ someone to stand all day banning accounts, while the spammers just create new ones. In the end, you're still gonna get mails about it, and they'll be spending more money for no effect. I know some people thinks it's a massive PITA to click a little button that says delete (it's right up there with being "forced" to read that one line of foreign text and having to complain about not using English in fleet chat) but I find it pretty easy to just click on that little trash can once per session.

 

That's a good point. Just deleting is much easier. I feel silly now being compelled to report still for basically no reason.

 

--I shall tell myself that I am not conceding defeat to those spamming sobs, just tactically retreating!

[Holocron]

The mail spam reporting button is only there to make us feel good, it doesn't actually do anything, or get any credit spammers removed. If by the off chance it does work, CS won't remove a spammer unless 3 or more people report them, so your single report will not auto flag it in the system.

[b-morgan]

Reporting currently "doesn't work" because the reports go to a human (or two) who have to manually act on the report.

 

I'm proposing that the human get replaced with algorithms that delete characters / accounts automatically when report thresholds are met. Now reporting will do something (and do it well).

[CrazyCT]

Reporting currently "doesn't work" because the reports go to a human (or two) who have to manually act on the report.

 

I'm proposing that the human get replaced with algorithms that delete characters / accounts automatically when report thresholds are met. Now reporting will do something (and do it well).

 

The problem there is that all it takes is for someone to take offense, even if it's just that you "sucked" in a Ranked WZ, and get 2 of their guildmates to report you as well and you're auto-banned. And don't say people wouldn't do that, there are enough ***** out there that would.

Edited January 9, 2016 by CrazyCT

[gocard]

The problem there is that all it takes is for someone to take offense, even if it's just that you "sucked" in a Ranked WZ, and get 2 of their guildmates to report you as well and you're auto-banned. And don't say people wouldn't do that, there are enough ***** out there that would.

 

This should only be done for mail. If an account sends out mail to X people (different accounts) in a Y period, and Z people report it, it's spam. Come on. The only people who mass mail in this game are spammers.

 

I'm sure there's an X, Y, Z that will be 99.9% correct in identifying spammers with 0.000001% chance of false positives. No honest player is mass mailing people.

Edited January 9, 2016 by gocard

[Zerileth]

I will have to say that with all the issues/bugs that BW needs to fix, I could not care less if they never worry about gold spammers. What is the big deal? it takes 3 seconds to delete all the mails in your mail box.

 

I've actually gotten used to it. I think i can delete in 1 second. There's other more important items, I think, for Bioware to focus on. I used to report, but there's no point. And after you finally accept it, it's really no big deal. I can actually tell these days when I get one before opening the mail. Then it's open, click box, delete, move on. I get garbage irl mail too. No biggie.