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FOMG! I got banned for teh botting! |
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Ok, seeing as how this s**t is now floating ALL over Gaia, I thought it may help to gather some info into one spot for easy viewing.
Apparently everyone is now scared that they're all gonna get banned for trading with other users, or buying things from the marketplace, or accepting donations. Not true. Not true AT ALL.
If we banned everyone who ever came into contact with botted gold, the Exchange would cease to exsist.
Here us a link to Admin Jakobo's, recent journal entry explaining this even more:
http://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/?mode=view&p=4384205
Here are some quotes from other mods further explaining this:
terradi To get banned for botting or glitch exploit means that you were not just selling and buying things normally. It means that there is some pretty specific evidence that points towards you being guilty, not just an innocent bystander who got in the way. We're not perfect. But we're not nearly so flawed as to ban hundreds upon hundreds of users without some compelling evidence. It's possible that innocents did get mixed into this, and if that's the case the feedback forms are available to them, as they have always, always been. If they can prove that they're innocent they'll get unbanned. It sucks that they had to get banned but .. it's temporary, it's fixable, and they are in the very small minority in being innocent. Warning would do absolutely nothing. Gold would flow and the more botted, falsely acquired gold gets out, the more damage it does. Think about it for a second: a million in botted gold is that much more going into the economy and upping prices. Still wonder why the donation letters are up to twelve thousand gold? Those bans were looked into and made as fair as possible after careful review. Suspending accounts for a little while via ban or via freezing trading and the rest of it, then coming up with the exact same conclusion would mostly just upset users and put them in awful suspense while they waited for the permaban that would be coming to come down on their accounts.
Noraboo Awkwardo Sorry to bother you about this, but all this news about banning for proffiting from botte gold is really, really worrying me. From what I understand, if you get a direct trade with botted gold in it, you're pretty much a goner. But is it the same in the marketplace?
You see, I'm a huge vend whore, but now I'm very worried about even using the vend since I'm afraid of getting botted gold from someone for an item I'm selling. If that were to happen, would I still be safe? I mean, I know little to nothing of my buyers and it wouldn't be possible for me to either, so I wouldn't imagine it would be fair if anything happened. But does this scenario work the same way in the vend as it does with trades?
Or better yet, am I at all safe vending in the first place?
Many many thanks. heart You don't have anything to worry about with vending or exchanging. ^^ Since you would be swapping items for gold and vice versa, all the trades would be fair and mutal on both sides. Even if you traded with someone who was botting, you wouldn't get in trouble because they'd be using the botted gold in a legitimate exchange (they'd still be in trouble though XD). Works the same in both the vend and regular trades, since no normal transactions could be considered profiting in anyway.
Noraboo Awkwardo Noraboo Awkwardo Noraboo You don't have anything to worry about with vending or exchanging. ^^ Since you would be swapping items for gold and vice versa, all the trades would be fair and mutal on both sides. Even if you traded with someone who was botting, you wouldn't get in trouble because they'd be using the botted gold in a legitimate exchange (they'd still be in trouble though XD). Works the same in both the vend and regular trades, since no normal transactions could be considered profiting in anyway.
Wheeee.
Yay!
That totally makes me feel so much better. I have another scenario here, since I actually have another mule that I do some vending with.
So if something I sold on my mule was bought with botted gold, and then I moved my vending profits for the day on my mule to my main, would I be in trouble then? I hope the question is clear. sweatdrop Question makes perfect sense, and you'd be fine if you did that. ^_^
I honestly can't tell you how much this helped me out. I was on the verge of quitting vending altogether for awhile since I feared losing my two years of progress on this account. Thank you so very much.
heart No problem. Please pass this info on to other users if you have the chance. Unfortunately there's a lot of rumor and fear spreading in Q&A and SF, most of it false, but it spreads fast and scares people. sad
Yuzi_K Coffee Slave Yuzi_K These recent bannings aren't a reason to be concerned about with vending or trading, because they involved users who purchased botted gold via ebay and other sites- a ToS violation. You mean All of them? o__o To quote Jakobo, "99.9%"
terradi murdererdelacroix *gives example similar to one someone else gave* Player A bots gold and buys an item from player B. Player B donates to charity C. Charity C gives gold to players D, E, F, G, and H. Players A through H are banned, no questions asked. That's unfair to the max. If that was how it happened it would be unfair. However it isn't. I've posted this on so many threads .. possibly this one too a few pages back but: If everyone who got ahold of botted gold or hacked gold was banned the Exchange whores would cease to exist because with that high traffic of buying and selling they'd inevitably acquire hacked or stolen items sooner or later. To get banned for botting or glitch exploit means that you were not just selling and buying things normally. It means that there is some pretty specific evidence that points towards you being guilty, not just an innocent bystander who got in the way. We're not perfect. But we're not nearly so flawed as to ban hundreds upon hundreds of users without some compelling evidence. It's possible that innocents did get mixed into this, and if that's the case the feedback forms are available to them, as they have always, always been. If they can prove that they're innocent they'll get unbanned. It sucks that they had to get banned but .. it's temporary, it's fixable, and they are in the very small minority in being innocent. Warning would do absolutely nothing. Gold would flow and the more botted, falsely acquired gold gets out, the more damage it does. Think about it for a second: a million in botted gold is that much more going into the economy and upping prices. Still wonder why the donation letters are up to twelve thousand gold? Those bans were looked into and made as fair as possible after careful review. Suspending accounts for a little while via ban or via freezing trading and the rest of it, then coming up with the exact same conclusion would mostly just upset users and put them in awful suspense while they waited for the permaban that would be coming to come down on their accounts. [/$.02]
terradi Our_Organic_Chemical @w@
Okay. I'm really paranoid now.
On my other user name, I have a shop and sell more than one item a day regularly. What if I already have some botted gold on that account? All of my most expensive items (asside from the OMG on my head) are on that account. Buying and selling normally isn't going to get you banned, regardless of whether someone buys something from you with hacked gold.
Loki omg! If you are conducting normal/fair transactions with the marketplace, other users, or whatever, than you have nothing to worry about. No one is being haphazardly banned. Here is a quote I think may help to clear some things up: Ai Leen Hello everyone, I'm formerly known as A.L._Eileen, an omnimoderator currently on extended break. Botted Gold - Omnimoderators do not ban you for receiving botted gold right off the bat. When we are first alerted to the situation, as someone suggested in the first page, we do the Gaian version of freezing your assets (You are able to post and you are able to PM though). A careful, thorough investigation follows. It takes a lot more than receiving gold from some stranger to justify a ban. If you've been banned, you've been doing something with your gold that was very suspicious. Botted Items - Are treated in the exact same way as the gold. Trade/Vend - Jakobo and the other mods are right. Trade/Vend/Marketplace is absolutely fine. I'd even go so far as to say that it's safer than forum based transactions (like the Exchange or Breedables). (Don't freak out and swear off the Exchange now sweatdrop ) Shops - Run a shop? Keep accessable records. A thread on Gaia is a good way to go: I especially like the GGN guild system for this. Make a post in the thread detailing what was sold, for how much, by whom, to whom. This way there's an unalterable timestamp. If you're feeling super paranoid, use the url bbcode to insert the customer's profile link, or just take a note of their user number. Unbanning - Yes, there is a possibility we will make mistakes. It's a human system after all. sweatdrop I can tell you though that the system we have works really well. It's an extremely rare circumstance in my experience that a banning was wrongfully applied. If you believe you have been wrongfully banned though, the procedure before I stepped down was to send a message via the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page. Be honest with everything you tell them! The Best Way To Make Sure... ...you don't get banned wrongfully is to never ever ever ever ever EVER share your password or your account with a friend, relative, or aquaintance. I have run into situations where I've had to ban Gaians because their best friend/sister/significant other/cousin's classmate got a hold of the account, and used it to do really nasty things. Please note that once someone is sitting at your computer and is on your account, we have NO way of telling them apart from you...computers do not currently transmit biometrics...and we've seen some people who look like absolute saints in posting do some nasty things, so we can't just base it on personality in post histories! If you're going to be away, log out. And please for the love of all that is... don't have your password be something easy to guess. If people know you like anime, for example, please don't use 'Inuyasha' as your password. Don't write your password on a Post It that's stuck to your monitor either! Don't write it at all! A hidden piece of paper with the info is a higher security risk than your memory. That goes for you too, Mr. I-wrote-it-down-on-a-.txt-or-.doc-file! The admins went through the trouble of making sure that no staff or admin knows your password, you have to keep up the security on your side too! If you don't get what I'm saying yet: Your password is your Gaian life! Protect it!If you have questions about other things on this subject, let me know via PM, if I can answer, I will. The mods care about you guys, that's why we took the job, and why we were offered it.
Fleep Here's the story as I understand it: Within the last few months our admins/omnis/mods/gaia-gnomes caught some MAJOR botters operating on the site, and anyone they made a large donation to (we mean large) was considered as profiting from botted gold. "Profiting from botted gold" is an umbrella term which basically means you intentionally got gold in a way that's in violation of our ToS, e.g., running a bot, getting a large amount of gold from a botted account, buying gold off of eBay, selling firstborn children for Gaia gold. (Does it sound that inplausible?) Understand, of course, that we KNEW these guys were botters - the kind of folks who sell Gaia gold on eBay and generally upset the economy, make babies cry, and so forth. So if we noticed that a botted account gave you, say, 100,000 gold, we see: wahmbulance wahmbulance wahmbulance So a handful of users ended up getting banned when they shouldn't have. Around June or so, we started accepting ban appeals - allowing people to argue their case for unbanning.
There, hope that clears some things up!
 badloki · Fri Jul 21, 2006 @ 09:18pm · 3 Comments |
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