Gold spammers at it again
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 15th 2008 at 5:30PM
Initially I was pretty surprised to see the screen shot. After all, this hadn't been happening much. However a couple of days after getting this, I found some gold spam in my chat log as well. I was floored. Now they're back to their old tricks, and even some new ones.
There are some tools out there to help block this. My favorite is WoW Instant Messenger, which has some built in spam protection. However this has caused a few friends that have created level one alts to get a hold of me on another server some issues. Another one that I've used before, and some friends of mine still use, is SpamMeNot. This tool uses key word searches (ie: gold, $10, free, .com) to determine if the incoming message is spam, and blocks it based on that.
Have you been noticing gold spam pop up again lately? Share your tales!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Swarfy Mar 15th 2008 5:43PM
I got three in grull's a couple weeks ago all within about 5 minutes. I haven't gotten any since though... *shrugs*
Derek Mar 15th 2008 6:02PM
My solution is easy, we hunt them down and kill them! No more spam!
dAnixx Mar 16th 2008 6:38AM
I Agree
nelfhunter Mar 15th 2008 6:07PM
This week actually I got two in a row while doing BT. I asked on vent and other fellow guildies had gotten asswell :/ stupid spammers have found a way around our system and I agree with what Derek said :p
Theserene Mar 15th 2008 6:08PM
Myself and a number of the guild had some gold whisper spam while we were doing a heroic today. It came from level 1 characters, so how have they managed to get around it this time?
baudkarma Mar 15th 2008 6:24PM
Gold farmers used to use temp accounts for their spam, until Bliz crippled the ability of temp accounts to send private messages. From what I can tell, paid-for, registered accounts can still send private messages even with a level 1 character.
So I'm guessing this is more keylogging fallout. Once they can log in on your account, there's nothing to stop a goldfarmer from creating a new toon on a random server and spamming all day long. They'll get shut down eventually, but you'll be the one that has to convince Bliz that your account got compromised, while they'll be on to the next victim.
theRaptor Mar 15th 2008 6:13PM
I got three last night while hanging around the AH.
lucifer.cross Mar 15th 2008 6:26PM
It's rather obvious when you stop and think about it. They're using stolen/hijacked accounts instead of the free trials, now.
Green Armadillo Mar 15th 2008 6:51PM
It's obvious, and yet it's not. There are 10 million paid accounts worldwide, and only a fraction of those accounts are located in the US (the exact numbers haven't been released, speculation is that over half are in Asia). How many of those are actually compromised?
Let's say you're a goldfarmer, and you have a compromised WoW account. You've got a limited window of time in which to sell all the liquid assets on the character and then get the profits into your money laundering system (or, better yet, directly in the hands of a customer) before the account owner discovers all their stuff missing. Let's say you accomplish this and have no further use for the account. Sure, why not make some level 1 characters and proceed to whisper spam? Thing is, your account is going to start eating spam reports very shortly thereafter, and I'd imagine it's not going to be long after that before a GM bans you. You might be able to whisper a few hundred people in that time if you work quickly. That's a lot of spams, but as a proportion of the number of players online on your server?
My point being, I find it remarkable that this is being accomplished in sufficient volume for large numbers of players to have experienced it personally. Either every single one of them personally wrote in to WoW insider, the spammers are able to spam a lot more people than you'd expect before they get banned, or there are a lot more compromised accounts out there than you'd expect.
baudkarma Mar 15th 2008 7:49PM
Maybe not so remarkable, it all depends on how long it takes Bliz to respond to spam complaints and shut down the account. These guys almost certainly have a script or a bot that logs in, does a /who, and starts spamming out their stuff. The actual message takes what, maybe half a second to send? The real delay would be in getting the player list, but even that wouldn't be too bad. If it takes Bliz three or four hours to respond, you've probably go a dozen realms spammed. Maybe more.
Moshnerd Mar 15th 2008 6:33PM
This happened to me about five times the other day.
Finally, my temper got the best of me. I pressed "r" and wrote, in caps of course, a rude phrase that rhymes with "duck cough." However, the spammer must have deleted his character really quickly or something, 'cause the message got sent to the poor Night Elf Warrior who was tanking Mana-Tombs for us.
Me: $%^ OFF!
Tank: Wut? Sorry :(
:S Boy did I feel bad.
Moshnerd Mar 15th 2008 6:38PM
Crap, here I go again double-posting. My bad.
But I just took a closer look at the screenshot, and that was the exact message I was getting as well. Also, the account names were always "wowgold----". I just thought I'd throw that out there.
Aaron Mar 15th 2008 6:44PM
I'm curious as to what this is like on PvP realms, do the opposing factions occasionally go to the big cities and instagib the strangely named lvl1s?
Aichon Mar 15th 2008 8:12PM
I wish, but no, I haven't seen that happen.
I haven't actually seen the tells yet either. The only thing I've seen is the /say spam that you get in the AH and by the mailbox in Org. If you take a mount and ride it down towards Razor Hill, you can sometimes see the level 1s running up the path towards Org with their funny, nonsensical names
RogueJedi86 Mar 15th 2008 9:06PM
Level 1s can't attacked unless they specifically flag up. So no go.
imtraum Mar 15th 2008 7:13PM
I'm getting around 5 in-game mails per day from gold spammers, something I hadn't seen for months. It makes me sad to see the "new mail" icon and find out it's just gold spammers. D:
imparush Mar 15th 2008 7:36PM
they use in Europe trade channel, outside AH, whisper, at mailbox, mail, lfg channel all the ways there is to spam with the stupid shit gold
CursedSeishi Mar 15th 2008 8:30PM
I havent seen goldsellers, but i saw something probably even funnier.
I saw a lvl1 crap name spamming in orggrimmar around the bank about a site for WoW hacks for like $30 lol, even comes with a "Money-back Garauntee", what do you say to that lol?
Best part is that they say it can bypass WoW's security and not be noticed, yet he is yellin this out in a crowded area, im sure plenty noticed it then!
Elroir Mar 15th 2008 8:36PM
yeah also got whisper spam today for the first time since a few months. Bot fortuneately i wrote my own addon so, theres no problem anymore =)
Eldron Mar 15th 2008 8:36PM
Back in December, I created a Night Elf druid, and levelled him around Darkshore and Ashenvale. For the first 25 levels or so, I would sporadically receive random group invites. Ctrl-click would reveal low lvl characters based in Elwynn and Westfall. I couldn't understand it, so one day, I accepted group invitation. Cue a macro containing badly punctuated and spelt adverts for gold and power levelling services, followed by a quick group disband.
I wasn't going to stand for this, so I polled my guild for the most vile and disgusting insults imagineable, made a /p macro, and would compete with any further spammers to see who could get their macros off fastest, before disbanding the group and reporting spam.
This petered out around lvl 25 or so, when I guess the spammers realised that targeting someone who had completed 1/3 of their lvling was a waster of time, as they would not be as interested in powerlvling or free gold.