The spammers new (old) methods
While poking around the World of Warcraft LJ, I couldn't help but notice that the spammers are back at it again, and apparently using some of the old tactics that they used to use. Well, tactics that they used to use before they figured out how to script spamming hundreds of people in a split second from a level one character. For those of you who either don't remember them, or who aren't familiar, I thought it might be best to relay the information.
There are a couple of main tactics that they seem to have started employing since the new patch is squelching their ability to get to us. The first one involves random group or raid invites where the spammers invite a massive amount of people and just repeat the same text over and over in party or raid chat. While many people will not fall for this, these blind invites may prove problematic for those people who are using the LFG tool. The best suggestion I saw was to /who anyone who sends you an invitation to make sure that you aren't getting invites from level one characters.
The next tactic that has been seen was standing a character in a fairly centralized area and just spamming everyone in /say with the information over and over and over. I know I've seen that one near the mailbox in Org, and it was also mentioned that other people had seen them standing between the mailbox and the auction house so that people running by were spammed with the information.
Obviously, the only real protection is vigilance -- or getting one of those mods that completely blocks any text whatsoever from level one characters. But at least the signal to noise ratio in regards to spam whispers isn't anywhere nearly as bad as it was. (Much thanks to Blizzard to that!) Hopefully Blizzard's Federal lawsuit against that scungy gold-selling-site that I won't name because I'm not going to advertise for them will make it clear to these companies that it is game over for them.
[via the WoW LJ]
