The spammers new (old) methods
by Krystalle Voecks 
May 27th 2007 at 7:05PM
There are a couple of main tactics that they seem to have started employing since the new patch is squelching their ability to get to us. The first one involves random group or raid invites where the spammers invite a massive amount of people and just repeat the same text over and over in party or raid chat. While many people will not fall for this, these blind invites may prove problematic for those people who are using the LFG tool. The best suggestion I saw was to /who anyone who sends you an invitation to make sure that you aren't getting invites from level one characters.
The next tactic that has been seen was standing a character in a fairly centralized area and just spamming everyone in /say with the information over and over and over. I know I've seen that one near the mailbox in Org, and it was also mentioned that other people had seen them standing between the mailbox and the auction house so that people running by were spammed with the information.
Obviously, the only real protection is vigilance -- or getting one of those mods that completely blocks any text whatsoever from level one characters. But at least the signal to noise ratio in regards to spam whispers isn't anywhere nearly as bad as it was. (Much thanks to Blizzard to that!) Hopefully Blizzard's Federal lawsuit against that scungy gold-selling-site that I won't name because I'm not going to advertise for them will make it clear to these companies that it is game over for them.
[via the WoW LJ]
Filed under: Tips, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RogueJedi86 May 27th 2007 7:29PM
They've been doing it in /say in cities. And a bot goes by the bank in Stormwind, spamming in /1, /2, /3, and /6(Guild Recruitment Channel). I've noticed they log on and off every 30 seconds or so, resuming spamming, for reasons unknown. And of course a few companies still do it in whispers. I won't name any names.
YPEELS40 May 27th 2007 7:46PM
Funny how many months ago.... Pre TBC .. I spammer was spamming in Ironforge.. So i made a macro for him and spammed him with curses.. He must have reported me cause I got a warning for it =(
CaseyJonesspeeder May 27th 2007 9:14PM
That's genius, YPEELS. I'm glad for the most part, that the whispers have stopped. I don't spend a terrible amount of time in the main cities, so it's not as bad.
Oldbear May 27th 2007 10:49PM
I used the wonderful and quick "right-click"... Then noticed I can use it to invite... The spammer didn't seem to want to group with me... Even when I asked him about 5 or 6 times... It just kept declining... Even when I whispered back and invited it again... The spammer just logged out... How rude
IKT May 28th 2007 12:11AM
right click > report spammer > no more bad stuff yay
protoshoggoth Jul 8th 2007 11:03AM
"I used the wonderful and quick "right-click"... Then noticed I can use it to invite... The spammer didn't seem to want to group with me..."
Hm. If a hundred people saw the spam, and they all did that, would the spammer have to manually decline all one hundred invites? Cause that would really be a shame, if so.
dzd May 28th 2007 8:13AM
The newest version of SpamSentry actually has a feature that will reject group invitations unless the person has already whispered you or they're on your friends list/guild roster.
Gungolf May 28th 2007 9:55AM
Oh, comeon, that would be so ironic if spammers would have to install SpamSentry to get rid of groupinvitations... ;-)
Incredible how many people in main cities complain about "that lvl 1 spammer" and "get him banned", "make him stop" - obviously too many people don't read the patch notes and don't know about rightclick-report which instantly ignores the spammer.
Juliah May 29th 2007 2:44PM
On my server, they've been abusing the Guild Recruitment channel.