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Official state on chat bots?

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Raw Matters
KRAUTZ IN SPACE
Parallaxis Alliance
#1 - 2016-11-19 22:21:58 UTC
If you spent about 1 second in Jita you just know that there are many players spamming their scams into local chat, and obviously most of them are using some kind of software to keep the character spamming. Since those people tend to be there for weeks or even longer, that raises the question what the official state on using chat bots is.

Are they allowed? Just for certain purposes? Or are they forbidden but no one has the time to ban all the people in Jita?
voetius
Grundrisse
#2 - 2016-11-19 22:32:24 UTC

The "official state" is the official stance that CCP have always maintained and that is that automation is not allowed.

If you have a reliable method of detecting bots you should let CCP know by petition and not put it on a public forum where the botters will see it.

But to answer your implied question of "Why aren't CCP doing something about blah blah", they do. I was in Jita local one time and was surprised to see Peligro talking in local. Someone asked him what he was doing there and he said "I'm here for the bots".
Eternus8lux8lucis
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#3 - 2016-11-20 01:18:46 UTC
Ive always been curious about chat bots myself since the entire Google chat bot thing. But mostly just to mess with people not to spam, but to actually chat and "talk" to people in local. This for me would be a much more useful "chat bot." Twisted

Have you heard anything I've said?

You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?

That's right.

Had to end sometime.
Scipio Artelius
Weaponised Vegemite
Flying Dangerous
#4 - 2016-11-20 01:22:10 UTC
MicroSoft should have put Tay in Jita. She would have been scamming everyone in twitter before they could corrupt her.
Eternus8lux8lucis
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#5 - 2016-11-20 01:57:47 UTC
Scipio Artelius wrote:
MicroSoft should have put Tay in Jita. She would have been scamming everyone in twitter before they could corrupt her.

Which MMO could build the best chat bot? Chat bot fight club!!Twisted

Have you heard anything I've said?

You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?

That's right.

Had to end sometime.
Hal Morsh
Doomheim
#6 - 2016-11-20 02:16:43 UTC
I do know some bots delay intentionally waiting for local to speak, either that or someone was using it as a tactic. But I believe in bots enough.

Oh, I perfectly understand, Hal Morsh — a mission like this requires courage, skill, and heroism… qualities you are clearly lacking. Have you forgotten you're one of the bloody immortals!?
Raw Matters
KRAUTZ IN SPACE
Parallaxis Alliance
#7 - 2016-11-20 07:57:19 UTC
A very simple way to detect chat bots is to measure the time in between messages. A simple bot spams the message precisely every x seconds, and no human being can repeat a message over an hour so exactly to the millisecond like a bot can.

So CCP could do it like this:
1. Log Jita chat.
2. Every hour for every player wo wrote more than 10 messages, calculate the average delay between messages and the maximum deviation from that average.
3. Ban all that have a maximum deviation of less than a second, as those are obviously bots.

It will not get sophisticated chat bots, but it will still get like 90% of the bots we currently have in Jita.

Since this is a very simple solution that CCP could easily implement, but within all those years it has not been done (even though many other anti-bot features have been implemented), I have to assume that CCP does not forbid simple automated chat repetition.
Zimmy Zeta
Perkone
Caldari State
#8 - 2016-11-20 08:06:56 UTC
Raw Matters wrote:
A very simple way to detect chat bots is to measure the time in between messages. A simple bot spams the message precisely every x seconds, and no human being can repeat a message over an hour so exactly to the millisecond like a bot can.



https://media.giphy.com/media/l41lUJ1YoZB1lHVPG/giphy.gif

I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of the post above and sincerely hope you didn't waste your time reading it. Yes, I do feel bad about it.
Eternus8lux8lucis
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#9 - 2016-11-20 08:23:46 UTC
Chribba was working on some chat bot ID program for Jita a while ago but I havent heard anything about it since.

Have you heard anything I've said?

You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?

That's right.

Had to end sometime.
Havenard
Havenard Corporation
#10 - 2017-01-05 06:09:04 UTC
Spam bots in Jita and other trade hubs are a common ocurrence, and as Raw pointed out, you can tell many of them from the timing between messages, like Jackie Loves is doing here spamming every exactly 29 second: http://i.imgur.com/e2FLNJ8.png

This isn't the first time I see bots like this, but despite the obviousness, reporting those bots feel like a futile action. We keep seeing them with their automated spam even days after the report. This makes me feel like CCP either don't care about those bots or is very ineffective at verifying those reports.

And of course, there are market bots. There have been people on Reddit reporting that they use market bots for years without ever being caught. Those are particularly annoying, as they actually interfere with your ability to have a healthy, human interaction with concurrent marketers.

CCP should be more interested in sanitizing their game from this automated plague. As far as I know, EVE Online has no anti-cheat system whatsoever. Of course, it was designed in a way that it is not possible to cheat, but as we can see it's still possible to automate.
Shu t'Me
#11 - 2017-01-05 07:33:00 UTC
Alas, if only we had the ability to block people in chats that we didn't want to see messages from.


........


Oh, wait. We do.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2017-01-05 08:41:56 UTC
Raw Matters wrote:
A very simple way to detect chat bots is to measure the time in between messages. A simple bot spams the message precisely every x seconds, and no human being can repeat a message over an hour so exactly to the millisecond like a bot can.

So CCP could do it like this:
1. Log Jita chat.
2. Every hour for every player wo wrote more than 10 messages, calculate the average delay between messages and the maximum deviation from that average.
3. Ban all that have a maximum deviation of less than a second, as those are obviously bots.

It will not get sophisticated chat bots, but it will still get like 90% of the bots we currently have in Jita.

Since this is a very simple solution that CCP could easily implement, but within all those years it has not been done (even though many other anti-bot features have been implemented), I have to assume that CCP does not forbid simple automated chat repetition.


Roll

CCP is very proactive in terms of finding botters and banning them.

Now, as the first response indicated, if you think you have something report it via the in-game tools. No need to start a thread on this.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Lan Wang
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2017-01-05 09:05:22 UTC
Raw Matters wrote:
A very simple way to detect chat bots is to measure the time in between messages. A simple bot spams the message precisely every x seconds, and no human being can repeat a message over an hour so exactly to the millisecond like a bot can.

So CCP could do it like this:
1. Log Jita chat.
2. Every hour for every player wo wrote more than 10 messages, calculate the average delay between messages and the maximum deviation from that average.
3. Ban all that have a maximum deviation of less than a second, as those are obviously bots.

It will not get sophisticated chat bots, but it will still get like 90% of the bots we currently have in Jita.

Since this is a very simple solution that CCP could easily implement, but within all those years it has not been done (even though many other anti-bot features have been implemented), I have to assume that CCP does not forbid simple automated chat repetition.


bots are a bit smarter, if a bot is as predictable as above then it would be banned for the above reason. ive seen bots in other games which pick a random amount of time delay before performing a task to make it more human-like

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
Saveritas
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#14 - 2017-01-05 09:08:50 UTC
Yeah you have no idea how easy it technically is to make a macro with a semi-random delay within a range that is user-defined. Finding the obvious chat bots is easy, but you'll never get all of them.

Regardless; they should do more about this in Jita. 95% are obvious bots.
ISD Dorrim Barstorlode
ISD Community Communications Liaisons
ISD Alliance
#15 - 2017-01-05 09:24:44 UTC
Read the EULA. Answer is in there.

ISD Dorrim Barstorlode

Senior Lead

Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs)

Interstellar Services Department
Amanda Creire-Geng
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#16 - 2017-01-05 09:42:19 UTC
Raw Matters wrote:
A very simple way to detect chat bots is to measure the time in between messages. A simple bot spams the message precisely every x seconds, and no human being can repeat a message over an hour so exactly to the millisecond like a bot can.


Because as we all know, computers are completely incapable of generating random numbers, otherwise bots could harness this power to make your detection method laughably ineffective.
Atomic Zed
#17 - 2017-01-05 11:59:23 UTC
Shu t'Me wrote:
Alas, if only we had the ability to block people in chats that we didn't want to see messages from.


........


Oh, wait. We do.


^
And you're even in range to execute this function...

Just another forum alt...

Ahoy to GM Archduke...
Memphis Baas
#18 - 2017-01-05 14:04:49 UTC
Reporting them feels like a futile action, because, I mean, they're all in Jita, all in one place, it's not like "Jita" is unknown to CCP.
Othran
Route One
#19 - 2017-01-05 16:19:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Othran
Memphis Baas wrote:
Reporting them feels like a futile action, because, I mean, they're all in Jita, all in one place, it's not like "Jita" is unknown to CCP.


Its not futile, I can assure you of that.

As I said in another thread, spamming local with a macro isn't necessarily a banstick offence. Spamming abuse, yeah sure - spamming whitespace/images, that'll get you muted for a couple of hours/days. Spamming scams which nobody falls for? Not so much.

CCP (AFAICT) want to see the bot earn some iskies (EULA violation) and then want to see where the iskies go as most of the bots are throwaway alpha (trial as was) alts registered to another email address.

tl;dr - patience is the key, bans do happen if you report it and wait.
Memphis Baas
#20 - 2017-01-05 16:37:12 UTC
CCP's efforts in the past have been on two fronts:

- ban macro users / botters
- change the game to not require botting

The local spam in Jita is, basically, advertisers who are driven to use bots just because the local chat interface is so not suited to actually advertising (scams or not).

I'd like to see a system where you put your ad in (link to your scam contract, link to your 3-ship game, begging sob story, whatever), and it gets repeated automatically by the system. Maybe a clickable scrolling or full page thing with those big in-station (and outside-the station) screens that we can't seem to get rid of.

And build an ISK sink into it: like taxes and broker fees that depend on how often you want it to repeat, how many days it should be advertised, how widely it should be displayed (Jita station, Jita system, region-wide, etc.), the advertisers should PAY for the service. I'm pretty sure they'd love to have their scam spam be visible region-wide, if only they could.

Make an actual advertising system, is what I'm saying, and build an isk sink into it.
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