STEAM GROUP
TF2 Outpost by Fanbyte
Membership by invitation only
STEAM GROUP
TF2 Outpost by Fanbyte
160,705
MEMBERS
4,272
IN-GAME
31,727
ONLINE
Founded
7 August, 2011
Language
English
Overview Announcements Discussions Events Members Comments Curator
This topic has been locked
Rodebm 23 May, 2014 @ 9:17pm
A way to stop autobot-phising - Mods please read [Serious Suggestion]
Well, everyone here know the misspelledsite.com/pyroman, but how to stop them?
As developer this is my humble sugestion:
The best way to stop bots is simple : CAPTCHA
"zomg please i can't use outpost anymore with those stupid letters"
do not freak out and read the complete idea.

how it would work :
-> "rank" based system, lower ranks would have a high delay (1~5 min to refresh or open another page), any try before the time ends would request a captcha.
-> users that aren't logged , have private profiles/backpacks, empty backpack would have the lowest rank (and the highest delay)
-> the rank would increase with the value of your backpack, the time of your steam account, tf2 played hours and numbers of outpost trades/posts
-> every new trade would require a captcha

Keep in mind that this would not only affect the dummy accounts, hijacked accounts would have a shorter delay, but wouldn't be able to gather data at the same (almost instant) speed as they do today.

In the other side, for the normal traders, you would be able to bypass this just by typing the captcha.

Downsides :
- captchas everywhere
- reduced by increasing your rank
- 3rd party sites wouldn't be able to gather data from outpost (sry trade.tf :c )
- a private api could solve this


Please, don't let this idea die, theses phishing bots must be stopped

ps : sry for any grammar error (english isn't my mother language)
Last edited by Rodebm; 23 May, 2014 @ 9:44pm
< >
Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
TheGhostThatWas 23 May, 2014 @ 10:24pm 
Two times I've bumped my trades today I got friend requests from phisher bots immediately. I think this does need to be addressed. I did report both of them, but more will come.
Last edited by TheGhostThatWas; 23 May, 2014 @ 10:24pm
#1
anakin whore walker 23 May, 2014 @ 10:25pm 
Quote copied directly from Sneeza.
Captcha? Hell no.

That's not a solution. That would completely ruin the user experience. Steam need to implement flood detection on friend requests, which would pretty much stop the phishers from continually adding and removing friends every 2 minutes.
#2
Currier Bell 23 May, 2014 @ 10:38pm 
We've already discussed captchas many times before, and it is not something we will consider.

The most recent being a few days ago:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/tf2outpost/discussions/0/558756256625779255/

We will not do anything to segregate users of the site based on the value of their backpack or level of activity they have on the site. Besides the benefits of premium, we do not wish to implement anything that can change a user's experience.

Also, making captchas appear as frequently as you suggest would absolutely ruin any new user's experience and drive them from the site.

#3
Rodebm 23 May, 2014 @ 11:02pm 
don't you understand that this is ALREADY ruining, not only the user experience but the user itself, each account stolen is another "legit" bot, and a VERY angry/sad user, outpost could offer the best service in the entire world, but it means nothing if there is 3rd party people screwing with everything. And ofc, an army of bot trying to steal your items and account are much more friendly to new traders than a simple captcha. The point of the rank is just to reduce the ammount of time between the requets to the server, how long take to read an entire page of offers ? at least 1 minute, so this is threshold to NOT show captchas, you can request a new page before, but then you would have to type a simply captcha.
But, in the end my opnion means nothing, i'm just a single user in the entire community.
So, why don't you ask the entire community? an open poll in the main page of outpost "captchas vs the_actual_scenery", i'm not a psychic, but i'm pretty sure that the winner would be the captchas...
Last edited by Rodebm; 23 May, 2014 @ 11:03pm
#4
Currier Bell 24 May, 2014 @ 12:23am 
We've done a great deal to remove phishing from our site, and we're actively searching for more things to combat them. We've made it to the point that phishing comments are much more rare than they've ever been on the site and we're fully aware that this is not an issue that is resolved.

However, like I previously said, we're not going to implement anything that segregates our users. We are not going to implement anything that says one person is less human than another and thus needs to be inconvenienced to open a single webpage. Captchas sound reasonable in theory but fall short in practice. You yourself said that if one person of a high enough rank falls victim then they would bypass the ranking system.

Any solution that inconveniences everyone while not solving the issue is not going to be considered.
#5
< >
Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
Per page: 1530 50

All Discussions > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 23 May, 2014 @ 9:17pm
Posts: 5
Start a New Discussion

Discussions Rules and Guidelines