[quote name="Incarnation" date="2014-02-18 15:38:14"][quote]If the users are "botting" other parts of the site, I don't think there's really any benefit. Why would anyone go through the effort of botting the gather feature? It's not like it takes a lot of effort to click fifteen times in a row. Maybe you could stretch and say that someone would want to bot the trade-in-item-for-500-treasure feature, but really the reward wouldn't be worth it.[/quote]
I think this a major one. Someone went and automated the registration process despite the fact that FR had registration closed, at least a few accounts were made. With a large number of accounts, you could create a large amount of gems a day to sell. If you had something like 2000 accounts, you could basically own the game and undercut FR's own gem selling. The easiest way to stop bots would be to stop them logging in in the first place with a recaptcha there, since if you can't login to bot they won't be able to bot at all.
I think the part that you are missing is the fact that the [i]majority[/i], not the minority, of Neopets bots have a captcha solver built in, so even if they had captcha it's no a permanent solution. You are also missing the fact that most Neopets bans are permanent, extremely frequent and they go as far as banning inactive accounts.
You are also forgetting that the person who created the registration script and probably the bots in the first place is actually a Neopets hacker so they would clearly be accustomed to breaking captcha and messing with the admins.
So in a way, I suppose I can understand the admins banning people, because if they manage to ban all of that person's accounts, presumably they cannot make a new one to script on.[/quote]
That's a good point - it's been years since I looked into botting on Neopets, so I don't doubt that the ability to solve captchas has improved. Thanks for pointing that out.
It looks like there are other solutions out there to prevent bots from logging in besides captcha, though: [url=http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/are-you-human-beats-bots-better-captcha]this article has a lot of interesting suggestions[/url]
[url=http://areyouahuman.com/site-owners/playthru/]PlayThru[/url] especially looks like it'd be a good alternative solution, and is free to boot.
Incarnation wrote on 2014-02-18 15:38:14:
Quote:
If the users are "botting" other parts of the site, I don't think there's really any benefit. Why would anyone go through the effort of botting the gather feature? It's not like it takes a lot of effort to click fifteen times in a row. Maybe you could stretch and say that someone would want to bot the trade-in-item-for-500-treasure feature, but really the reward wouldn't be worth it.
I think this a major one. Someone went and automated the registration process despite the fact that FR had registration closed, at least a few accounts were made. With a large number of accounts, you could create a large amount of gems a day to sell. If you had something like 2000 accounts, you could basically own the game and undercut FR's own gem selling. The easiest way to stop bots would be to stop them logging in in the first place with a recaptcha there, since if you can't login to bot they won't be able to bot at all.
I think the part that you are missing is the fact that the
majority, not the minority, of Neopets bots have a captcha solver built in, so even if they had captcha it's no a permanent solution. You are also missing the fact that most Neopets bans are permanent, extremely frequent and they go as far as banning inactive accounts.
You are also forgetting that the person who created the registration script and probably the bots in the first place is actually a Neopets hacker so they would clearly be accustomed to breaking captcha and messing with the admins.
So in a way, I suppose I can understand the admins banning people, because if they manage to ban all of that person's accounts, presumably they cannot make a new one to script on.
That's a good point - it's been years since I looked into botting on Neopets, so I don't doubt that the ability to solve captchas has improved. Thanks for pointing that out.
It looks like there are other solutions out there to prevent bots from logging in besides captcha, though:
this article has a lot of interesting suggestions
PlayThru especially looks like it'd be a good alternative solution, and is free to boot.
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Helmintio I'm just not sure if that can be integrated into the games. It looks more like a form based thing for logging in, though. I do love that captcha, together with Solve Media (ALL THE DOCTOR WHO REFERENCES) it's less of a pain trying to login. It only takes a few seconds, rather than a few minutes. I can only imagine how difficult it is for non-english speakers to go through with those other terrible recaptcha puzzles :|
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Helmintio I'm just not sure if that can be integrated into the games. It looks more like a form based thing for logging in, though. I do love that captcha, together with Solve Media (ALL THE DOCTOR WHO REFERENCES) it's less of a pain trying to login. It only takes a few seconds, rather than a few minutes. I can only imagine how difficult it is for non-english speakers to go through with those other terrible recaptcha puzzles :|
Participating in Trick or Treat
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Incarnation
Right - though you did have a point that a bot won't be useful if it can't manage to login, so it could be something they could add to their login process to halt bots at that point. See where that gets 'em.
Recaptcha tends to make me cringe because there are... unusual smashed together things or weird equations. I'm generally like naw, son...
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Incarnation
Right - though you did have a point that a bot won't be useful if it can't manage to login, so it could be something they could add to their login process to halt bots at that point. See where that gets 'em.
Recaptcha tends to make me cringe because there are... unusual smashed together things or weird equations. I'm generally like naw, son...
[quote name="Incarnation" date="2014-02-18 15:08:49"]Loading high quality images is not the issue. We are all making lots of requests. You'd have to be making an exceptionally large number. The size of the response received has no impact upon the number you are making.[/quote]
Oh? I was under the impression the site would really have to work to churn out every high-quality image on the pages I clicked, since loading text-only pages seems to take less work than image-heavy ones. My apologies, then.
I'm surprised my account didn't get hit for too many requests when this issue came up in the first place, because as a Snaplinks user my usual routine involved opening 15x dragons on 5x pages of my lair to interact with all the familiars. People seem to have gotten suspended for doing the exact same thing with 5 dragons, or a 200ms delay, so my conclusion was that their numerous apparel items or image-heavy descriptions somehow put them higher on FR's "DANGER" scale than my poor nondescript nudist dragons and that's how I escaped. In some ways that's actually more disheartening than anything, because now I have nothing to go on re: Avoid Being Banned/Suspended.
Incarnation wrote on 2014-02-18 15:08:49:
Loading high quality images is not the issue. We are all making lots of requests. You'd have to be making an exceptionally large number. The size of the response received has no impact upon the number you are making.
Oh? I was under the impression the site would really have to work to churn out every high-quality image on the pages I clicked, since loading text-only pages seems to take less work than image-heavy ones. My apologies, then.
I'm surprised my account didn't get hit for too many requests when this issue came up in the first place, because as a Snaplinks user my usual routine involved opening 15x dragons on 5x pages of my lair to interact with all the familiars. People seem to have gotten suspended for doing the exact same thing with 5 dragons, or a 200ms delay, so my conclusion was that their numerous apparel items or image-heavy descriptions somehow put them higher on FR's "DANGER" scale than my poor nondescript nudist dragons and that's how I escaped. In some ways that's actually more disheartening than anything, because now I have nothing to go on re: Avoid Being Banned/Suspended.
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Aequorin
Is there an ETA on when we can expect some answers or information on this issue?
Would it be at all helpful to the people trying to resolve what is going on if previously banned users actually did resume playing normally or should we just avoid it/will likely be banned again for the same thing?
Not that I will even if you say yes, but it's something to keep ind mind.
And, if I were to be banned again, would it be possible to maintain a thread of communication to resolve why my account is/was flagged or will 'you' just stop responding to my emails in one day again? (general 'you' I have no idea who I was in communication with.)
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Aequorin
Is there an ETA on when we can expect some answers or information on this issue?
Would it be at all helpful to the people trying to resolve what is going on if previously banned users actually did resume playing normally or should we just avoid it/will likely be banned again for the same thing?
Not that I will even if you say yes, but it's something to keep ind mind.
And, if I were to be banned again, would it be possible to maintain a thread of communication to resolve why my account is/was flagged or will 'you' just stop responding to my emails in one day again? (general 'you' I have no idea who I was in communication with.)
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Ankokou, we recently moved over to Zendesk and we've been transitioning emails over. If you would like, send in a fresh Contact Us and we can resume our dialogue.
edit: We = Flight Rising :)
@
Ankokou, we recently moved over to Zendesk and we've been transitioning emails over. If you would like, send in a fresh Contact Us and we can resume our dialogue.
edit: We = Flight Rising :)
[quote name="Sadistic" date="2014-02-18 16:39:57"][quote name="Incarnation" date="2014-02-18 15:08:49"]Loading high quality images is not the issue. We are all making lots of requests. You'd have to be making an exceptionally large number. The size of the response received has no impact upon the number you are making.[/quote]
Oh? I was under the impression the site would really have to work to churn out every high-quality image on the pages I clicked, since loading text-only pages seems to take less work than image-heavy ones. My apologies, then.
[/quote]
The fact that the page is image heavy is not the point. They don't want bots to operate on this site.
Sadistic wrote on 2014-02-18 16:39:57:
Incarnation wrote on 2014-02-18 15:08:49:
Loading high quality images is not the issue. We are all making lots of requests. You'd have to be making an exceptionally large number. The size of the response received has no impact upon the number you are making.
Oh? I was under the impression the site would really have to work to churn out every high-quality image on the pages I clicked, since loading text-only pages seems to take less work than image-heavy ones. My apologies, then.
The fact that the page is image heavy is not the point. They don't want bots to operate on this site.
Participating in Trick or Treat
Huh. You know, I didn't even know this was an issue. My internet connection's pretty--moderate speed, and I'm an impatient person, so usually I actually open all my dragons with familiars up in separate tabs, leave that to load while I screw around on a different site, then come back and click through to bond. I can't really figure out, browsing through things, if that's bad or not. I imagine it's not great--actually I pretty much just haven't been bonding for the past few weeks on account of figuring it's not-greatness for the site. I guess that adds another reason for familiar bonding to be tweaked, as suggested in multiple forms in the suggestions forum...
Either way I'm not overly concerned. The mods are super nice, from all I've seen, and if I make the site lag then hey I can accept being suspended for a bit. Hopefully the bot situation can be worked out soon though. Poor FRbby.
Huh. You know, I didn't even know this was an issue. My internet connection's pretty--moderate speed, and I'm an impatient person, so usually I actually open all my dragons with familiars up in separate tabs, leave that to load while I screw around on a different site, then come back and click through to bond. I can't really figure out, browsing through things, if that's bad or not. I imagine it's not great--actually I pretty much just haven't been bonding for the past few weeks on account of figuring it's not-greatness for the site. I guess that adds another reason for familiar bonding to be tweaked, as suggested in multiple forms in the suggestions forum...
Either way I'm not overly concerned. The mods are super nice, from all I've seen, and if I make the site lag then hey I can accept being suspended for a bit. Hopefully the bot situation can be worked out soon though. Poor FRbby.
Sorry to bump up an old thread, but it's still happening...
My friend got wrongfully accused of botting as well.
This makes me very paranoid and I worry I get wrongfully accused too!
I'm not sure if I want to play as much on this site now, because I'm not sure what counts as "suspicious botting activity" now? :(
Sorry to bump up an old thread, but it's still happening...
My friend got wrongfully accused of botting as well.
This makes me very paranoid and I worry I get wrongfully accused too!
I'm not sure if I want to play as much on this site now, because I'm not sure what counts as "suspicious botting activity" now? :(
Netherlands. Server time+9hrs. Do not ping me for raffles/surveys without asking!
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Manah
At this point, this is likely something you'd want to take up directly with one of the admins
in private - either in a PM or via the Contact Us.
Your friend will also want to address the issue directly with the admins.
@
Manah
At this point, this is likely something you'd want to take up directly with one of the admins
in private - either in a PM or via the Contact Us.
Your friend will also want to address the issue directly with the admins.
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