Suggestion on preventing PM advertising

[NotMyWay]

Recently, i recieved 2 advertising PMs, one of which was for an "x-trap workaround" (most likely intended to hack accounts), and more recently and advertisement for some website that supposedly "gives money for viewing advertisements". (i dont believe it, and couldnt be bothered). As it seems that such people have a post count of ... ... about 3, and are probably new comers whose primary intention was to advertise, I would like to suggest that if it is possible, maybe a system can be implemented such that users cant send PMs until they have maybe about 10 posts, or if the account is about 1 week old? (because i understand that some users only post in MoS/guild forums, thus having low post count). Thank you.

[Yosei]

Nice idea ^^

[Dezza]

But what happens when someone joined specifically to send a ligitimate message to someone? Perhaps a better idea, if it could be implemented, would be to have a mangled-letter type verification field for users sending PM's if they have <10 posts||been a member <1 week.

[Ulrike]

I like the typing verification idea. I heard it's easy to implement

[Lady-Loki]

I would go with "Member since . . . " because if it were post count hotn6c would be in big trouble but he has been on these forums for a long long time.

[Ralath]

I'm not sure the letter verification thing would work because from what I can tell, the people who are sending these messages are real people so they can actually identify the letters.

[Hyper]

I would go with "Member since . . . " because if it were post count hotn6c would be in big trouble but he has been on these forums for a long long time.

But 10 was the suggested post count, and that is like 10 minutes-worth of posts. =\

Having to type a verification would KILL Val and A_Fail. LOL

[walnut]

is there anyway to block them or report them or something im getting those stupid buy/sell silver ones now too.

*yawns* sick enough of those in-game without having them here too

[Blaaaaaaaah]

is there anyway to block them or report them or something im getting those stupid buy/sell silver ones now too.

*yawns* sick enough of those in-game without having them here too

To block them, click their profile and go Add -username- to Ignore list. You can check your ignore list by going User CP > Buddy/Ignore list down the left.

But if there's people pm'ing you with advertisements, please forward the PM to a moderator/admin and we'll handle it. We don't see your PM's so we don't know when the bots are PM-ing people.

There is also a report button on the bottom left hand corners of posts if you see bots advertising on the forums too.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

But yeah, this is a necro'ed thread so I'll have to lock this. You can start a new thread with a question if you want next time. =]

Edit:

As for the original thread question, we have discussed it in the mod forums back then but we forgot to give you our feedback for it, sorry for that.

We decided that we won't be implementing any system of some sort for that.

Having a limited post count before sending a private message will encourage people to post spam posts on the forums. If they're advertisers, it's extremely easy to do this. All they have to do is post their advertisements on the main forums before they go and target individuals and PM them. Also, I know there are people who join here for the guild forums but rarely posts in the main forums, and they may need to use the PM boxes to pm their guildies, so it will be inconvenient for them. There are also some people who may need to register on the forums to PM one of the mod's urgently on a few occasions, and they are people with legitimate and important PM's, so it would be really inconvenient to do this.

Putting a limit according to registration dates will not work properly either. There was a bot that posted one advertisement once. I did not ban it because I wasn't sure if it was a real bot, so I just gave it an infraction. 3 days later it came back to spam again - bots do come back, they can easily register, wait a few days, before they spam.

I think putting limits on sending PM's will create too much hassle for the PM bots that we get once in a while. If they do come, you can easily block them like the way I mentioned above, then forward the PM to any mod/admin (preferably any on during that time) and they will get perma-banned instantly.

Though we may reconsider this if we get lots of spam bots. As for now, we decided that the number of spam bots we are getting isn't really "critical" so such systems/limits on PM boxes can wait.