Bots Can Message You Via Mail Now...

[Cthulhuu]

No one has posited the theory of corporate espionage or malfeasance, yet.  Someone clearly has access to sensitive & confidential information from either the company or their games.  If you never really speak with anyone in game, don't buy illegitimate gold/products (only buy gold from NCsoft), keep to yourself, not respond to these spammers, and are actively blocking them on a daily basis, yet the harassment exponentially grows and continues towards you on multiple characters on the same account, then I would posit that someone has compromised their corporate system and sensitive information.  The much uglier option/theory is that this may be sanctioned by the company itself to help increase revenue by outside entities that appear to be removed from the corporation.

 

At the very least, these spammers are gathering player information that should not be available to them if the proper protections were in place to protect the company's customer/consumer.  We've already seen an exponential increase in fairly sophisticated gaming mechanics by bots in arena that should not be possible unless you are manipulating gaming code/files in the program(s), etc.  It is not unreasonable to think if they can manage that that they could not also manipulate other aspects of the game code to acquire information from the market, player base, etc.  

 

If the company can not fix these critical issues, which they have currently shown they can't at present, but are continuing to "work" on, then it is a fairly sophisticated problem beyond the usual or ordinary explanations that people post about in these forums.  Hopefully, this is the case and not just negligence on the company's part to manage their own sensitive system/information.  Regardless, its a very serious matter and the implications and repercussions could clearly transcend the game world/community to a real-world security/financial issue.

[Lorahar]

only way i found to make the damn thing dissapear was to receive the 1copper thing

i hope i dont get screwed for this..

there should be an option to delete the mails with attachments or something

also i couldn't find a way to block the mail

[Cthulhuu]

I have to agree about the current spam mail issue with there seemingly being no way to block the sender or how to deal with it once its in your in-box.  For a game that has been out since 2012 (and in-development several years prior) to not have some basic protection functions for the player/consumer is very troubling.  The possible answers could be even more concerning as to why these issues have been allowed to continue and transcend to multiple regions and markets globally without proper redress.

 

It should not be a financial issue, as the mail system was already developed, and should have been a simple inclusion to the system long ago before it ever reached the NA/EU market expansion.  We are seeing bots make it to high level arena/dungeon with seemingly no useable action against them, or at certain well-known areas in-game.  A moment of a physical GM's time to actually log-in and observe would go a long way toward helping curb the issue, and there is no evidence of that happening.  A company worth this much money can afford to actually do this, there is really no excuse not to.  Yet, their focus appears to be against some folks who exploited the Unreal Engine mechanics in a few areas, instead of actually going after the gigantic real-botting issue that's in every ones face on a daily basis.

 

At this point you really have to ask yourself why after so many years it continues to happen, and no one can think of an actual practical solution?!  If it has been allowed to continue for this many years, then I posit that there is some secondary gain for the company to allow it to continue, and then deflect attention away from it instead of actually solving the problem. 

[chinmi]

wow, the gold seller were so nice, they give you free money now !! you should love them more :)

[GnatB]

2 hours ago, Cthulhuu said:

A moment of a physical GM's time to actually log-in and observe would go a long way toward helping curb the issue, and there is no evidence of that happening.  

 

I disagree.  It would do almost nothing.  For all we know GM's are banning them, and they're just springing up again.  There is almost certainly a continual chain of them working their way up to the better bot locations.  Anything other than an automated solution will never effectively solve an automated problem.

[Cthulhuu]

I can understand and agree with some points of an automated solution, such as we see in papers like: "Identifying MMORPG Bots: A Traffic Analysis Approach" (http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/pub/bot_identification.html).

 

However, there also needs to be some active human-computer interaction, along with some inherent responsibility from a company for their product.  We also know that certain bots are reported by multiple people, and yet are seen on a daily basis with no apparent action taken.  It takes some time to get these bots to end game areas/levels, its not instantaneous, and has been discussed multiple times on these forums and elsewhere that the same bots persist despite complaint.

 

Unless there is an active investigation from the company or a law enforcement agency to track the individual(s), there is really no excuse to not investigate and take immediate corrective action.  If need be, an actual human-computer interaction in-game would likely resolve the matter quickly.  This used to be the norm in games and had a positive impact in helping to curb bot activity.

 

Until there is an effective automated solution and policy in place, I do not think it unreasonable to have an actual GM monitor certain well known botting areas and to possibly take corrective action against them.

 

[Meerkat]

Top six pages spam

@Hime slumbers peacefully,

The darkest of nights

[Oasis]

I found a workaround I think until they can fix the issue. You look the bot up in the friends list dialogue box (F4 button) and then block the bot that sent the mail. The mail in your inbox is then transferred to the blocked tab and is no longer in the Mailbox tab.

[puddlee]

Create a pre-written ticket asking them to delete the mails (do not accept the mails since you can get banned for that), and every *cricket*in time you get a mail just create a new ticket paste the pre-written message and done. My guesses, after a couple thousand tickets they will get enough of it to do something about it.

 

Btw this is *cricket*in retarded NCSOFT. How many ppl will get banned because in order to get rid of these mails, they accept it not knowing that this can get them banned. Amazing...I dont have any words for your competence...well I have but...

[OneYouHate]

On 2/26/2016 at 5:17 PM, Lorahar said:

only way i found to make the damn thing dissapear was to receive the 1copper thing

i hope i dont get screwed for this..

there should be an option to delete the mails with attachments or something

also i couldn't find a way to block the mail

 

I made a report player ticket about one, and asked if a GM would remove it, got a response this morning via email, that the spam mail is now gone. No reason to risk my account by accepting 1 copper from a Spam mail leading to a RMT site. Hopefully we can get a function to the mail that will let us report-block-delete in-game spam with the click of 1 button, untill then I'm going to leave them untouched and file a ticket for each one that shows up