EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi,

So I'm not a new player, but I am new to recruitment... not on this character obviously. I've had one obvious spy attempt to join; -4 sec status, he'd been in about 20 different corps since 2009 and had gone back to the default corp each time, suggesting repeated kicks from corp. Those I'm not so worried about. I'm worried about the less obvious spies.

Last night four people requested to join; both of them one covoed me and mentioned he had a buddy who also wanted to join. Now this could be just a co-incidence, but my scam-sense is tingling. Sure they could both genuinely be people who have buddies who also want to join... or they're all spies and they're planning something. I have the API keys from one character, and am waiting for the others. I plan to look over them in EVEMON to look for any irregularities

So... what can I do to spot spies, and what techniques to spies commonly use to subvert the usual detection methods? Afaik our roles are pretty tight; new members can only access one tab in the corp hangar which contains only ammo and drones e.t.c so I'm not worried about that, just about letting them in in the first place.

Searching the eve forums proved very useful too; it looks like one of the characters in question was recently purchased on the bazarr. And his friend has kills on the killboard of a hostile corp. So those two aren't getting in at least.

Get the names of all alts they have on on the same account, and check the corp history of their character and all the alts. Then, check killboards for their character and all the alts. If they killed anyone friendly to you in the last year, be suspicious. That is unfortunately everything you can do to gather "hard" evidence. If their main is on a separate account, you're out of luck.

You can also interview them with questions that would be hard to BS for a not-too-good spy. Stuff like "what do you think about :insert enemy here:? They sure are the worst people ever, aren't they?" You can also substitute the name of the enemy for any random unrelated corp and that way see if they're just trying to tell you what you want to hear. You could also make it look like you're really relaxed and happy with him, and tell him about an upcoming (non-existent) op against the people you suspect he's spying for, and see if they react

There are also certain "tells" that bad spies have. One is unusually high knowledge of game mechanics for a "newbie" character. Another is unusually high knowledge of your corp's or your enemies' history. Same goes for "I know nothing about you, but I want to join you because you're cool".

If you let a suspicious person in, keep an eye on their killboard, and on how often they log in. Keep an eye on how much they're interacting with other corp members. All of these can be a warning flag.

In the end, it comes down to "be paranoid and trust your spidey senses." Good luck!

Gyah!! That was unintentional, I swear. I only do horrible puns on purpose.

There are, of c ourse, exceptions. I was just citing some indications that a character might be a spai, no "solid" reasons.

Also: saying WoW has better graphics than Runescape is like saying a Reaper is prettier than a Bantam.

Eve is full of people with questionable backgrounds looking to do something different, bought characters and vets who are bored with their main's ****** corp and want to talk to someone else, so from only a cursory examination it can be very difficult to tell who is a spy and who is just some benign weirdo.

Rather than over-examining the information that is available to you before they join it's probably more producitve to monitor their behaviour after they join.

Ask what they are doing and then confirm it, if they say they are running missions have the CEO or a director check that they are in a missioning ship in a mission system, if they say they are mining make sure they are in a barge. Do they log in for long periods of time but rarely say or do anything, do they actively avoid participating in any kind of corp operation? Both of those things are typical spy behaviours too. Voice comms are important too, spys will log in to voice comms and then just sit there for hours listening for something interesting.

There are some alternative recruiting methods that help - but will have an impact on the size of your corporation and/or may not be practical for a lot of people.


1) Only recruit people you know IRL. That way - you know them and more importantly ... you know where they live ...

2) Recruit from a source external to EVE - that's how the Goons do it - and they've got a ton of people. They're requirements ... from what I've seen in their You Tube videos are something like:

a) you must be a member of the web site Something Awful
b) you must be sponsored by someone that is already a member

3) Now another thing you can do - if you get large enough - is have someone you know well act as your recruiter - who is good at it. That person's job is not merely to recruit people - but to evaluate them. This job requires a lot of people skills. Also - you can have Trainers who are in charge of indoctrinating new people (to your corporation) into your groups way of doing things - and while they're at it - getting to know these people. Also - you can have people in your organization who are NOT official officers - but whose job is to go around befriending people and acting as casual trainers while also screening people, testing their loyalties and such. Here, they might, in an alleged private conversation possibly taking place extra to EVE, make negative remarks about the corporation and fish for people willing to help them pull a scam on it. Of course that last has to be done carefully. The correct response of a loyal new recruit would be to inform one of the corporations officers of such a contact (which could also come from a character external to the corporation). If they don't rat on the guy - then you may want to get rid of them. The biggest problem with all of this stuff - is that it takes real people skills to pull it off and a lot of people aren't either going to be up to it or willing to do it for you.

4) Another tactic - is to assign people to units. They have a unit leader who is their mentor and commander - they do what he says and have access to things that he controls - but which are limited to that unit. These unit commanders get familiar with their people - and should know them fairly well. They are responsible for what their members do. When going on an operation - only those who have a reason to have access to the over all plan know what's going on - with each sub group only informed of what they require to fulfill their part in the operation. The hard part here - is that "units" in MMO's are very difficult to form and maintain. This works really, really well when it works - but mostly it won't as people don't log in at the same time, they don't want to be limited to being in a unit and they leave constantly. The most common way in which this works - is when you have a group as in #1 above who have been playing games together for years and know each other very well. They bring new people into their group on a trial basis and end up rejecting a lot of people for any number of reasons besides spying.



*shrug*

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Backyard Adventures 4 starring Griff Hardstone, coming to an adult video store near you!