LordShard
Optimzed for Opera9.00 at 1290x1024x32 resolution. Allot of people have expressed concerns that they might become banned for botting/accepting botted gold. Here is my attempt to explain what botting is, how if affects you and why you should not be worried.
WHAT IS BOTTING?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Botting in Gaia is the practice of using a program, script, macro or other code intended to automate the process of posting, refreshing, and other similar things.
HISTORY
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The very first people to be banned from Gaia for bots were using a feature in Opera(See IMG right). The feature in Opera allowed the pages to be refreshed while you were not at the computer. Some users used the macro tool present in Opera at that time to make the refreshing spam at very high speeds.Once it became apparent such things were happening people started to have their accounts banned for it.
WHY IT IS BAD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The very first reason you should not bot is the Rules and Guidelines
- Botting. Using an automated script, macro, or refreshing feature to post or surf webpages in order to generate Gold (Botting) is forbidden.... Anyone suspected of botting will have their account banned.
It is also harmful to the Gaia community.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Denial of Service Attacks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Having several users make scripts to refresh hundreds or thousands of times a second acts as a denial of service attack. There are only 65535 ports for a TCP/IP connection (What the internet uses for most things). Every time you click a link, refresh or things like that your computer sends Gaia a request. When Gaia gets the request it sends an "Ok, what do you need?" and it sits there until your computer tells it what it needs, then Gaia sends you the data, webpage, ect. A new port is opened every time until that request is finished or until it times out.
When someone sends a packet for a request then another one and another, and another, new ports are continuously opened. Gaia receives the requests and sits there waiting for a reply back that won't come until all the ports are busy and no one can fetch a page.
Similar things can happen when multiple people use bots, this is called a Distributed Denial of Service attack
Despite whether or not the DoS attack was intentional or not does not matter.
Click Fraud
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click fraud is illegal in many places. Artificially clicking (refreshing) to make money (Gaia gold). Many botters will then go on e-Bay or other websites to sell their virtual currencies which is also against the ToS. If you have played Massively Online Games you have no doubt run into what people will call "Chinese Gold Farmers" who do something similar.
Inflation
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When someone bots and is able to buy items in a matter of days that ordinary Gaians need to wait weeks or months to save up for inflation rises significantly. This can lead to items rising in price overnight 20% or more. The same thing happens when someone buys a botter's Gaia gold from e-Bay or other sites. When these people spend their Gaia gold it is slipped into the economy and wrecks havoc, rising all marketplace items faster than what should be for the number of users on Gaia.
Eventually if this trend continues hyperinflation occurs, which is caused by excessive gains in the amount of currency (Gaia gold) available to economy (marketplace).
This leaves new users and people who were honest in their attempts to make Gaia gold as well as those who do not have highly valued items needing to spend that much more time to get anything. This will lead to frustrated new users who quit.
OTHER REASONS FOR BANNINGS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People claim to not have been banned for profiting from botting/botting but they claim they have not botted.
Jakobo
The word of the day is botting, or so it seems if you wander over to a few forums on the site. A lot of people claim that they've been banned due to profiting from botting. Of course, there's only so much information we can go off of. Imagine the following scenario.
User A is botting
User A sends 1,000,000 gold to User B
User A and User B have had zero interaction on Gaia.
While I'm sure people are generous, more often than not, you can wander on over to eBay and find that exact transaction. (Usually in the form of "OMG 1mil Gaia Gold!!11" wink . However, our records don't extend onto ebay and external game currency sites. We can only work with the data we have.
User A is botting
User A sends 1,000,000 gold to User B
User A and User B have had zero interaction on Gaia.
While I'm sure people are generous, more often than not, you can wander on over to eBay and find that exact transaction. (Usually in the form of "OMG 1mil Gaia Gold!!11" wink . However, our records don't extend onto ebay and external game currency sites. We can only work with the data we have.
You say you didn't buy that 1,000k Gaia gold but someone just gave it to you as a present! If that Gaia gold was botted you were still profiting from an illegal activity! Fill out a feedback form, and hope you are unbanned with only the botted Gaia gold removed.
WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BE WORRIED
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many moderators have said that if you do not know you are getting botted gold in the marketplace you shouldn’t worry about being banned. An example would be someone selling a hockey mask for 200g (Or whatever it's current marketplace value is). The person who bought it did it with botted money, but as obviously you can see in the trade you couldn’t have known. So obviously why would you be banned for it?
When is the last time you traded someone a hockey mask for 100k or 1,000k Gaia gold even? As someone pointed out, what if it is a mule? My answer is, why do you have 1,000k Gaia gold on a mule?
I had some other really good reasons but I forgot them. mrgreen Sorry, if you can think of anything send me a PM!
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.
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
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.
BOTTED GOLD SCARE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There has been much fuss recently about Gaians being banned for receiving botted gold. Whether these Gaians realize it or not, they have created a scare among the Gaian populace. The people who are innocent will be quickly resolved via a feedback form. (Art shop keepers and the like may exhibit odd trading behavior, but quick research should show them unbanned.)-Thanks Dex_Black
THREADS YOU SHOULD VISIT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
