Security Update - Q3 2018
Hello intrepid capsuleers, and welcome to another update from Team Security on the fight against botting, RMT and other nefarious activities.
As always, we’re very aware that the fight against activities that harm the economy of New Eden is a key issue in the eyes of the community – it’s also a priority issue for us too.
We’ve been pretty busy over the spring and summer working on all manner of things, including GDPR Compliance for CCP as well as hunting down many a scumbag in EVE for the rule breaking activities mentioned above.
Here’s a quick update on the raw numbers since June 1st in terms of action we’ve taken against accounts associated with activities in breach of our EULA.
- 1469 account bans for account hacking
- 3388 account bans for botting related activities
- 4953 account bans for RMT related activities
The ongoing fight to keep New Eden clean continues, and we’re giving no quarter when making sure that we do this.
Come to think of it, neither are you guys!
We were super happy with the level of engagement we saw when we collaborated with the Customer Support team to run the two “Whack-a-bot” events during GM Week, and it was great to see capsuleers from all over the cluster come together to help purge the scourge of botting from New Eden.
Here’s a couple of our favourite images from the events:
Taking The Fight To RMTers
We’ve also been looking to take the fight to point of sale and support for RMT operations in recent months too.
The biggest problem for RMTers is advertising their services and finding their customers. Doing it in game is risky, and they’re easily caught by vigilant members of the community, so they take their business to the wider internet, specifically to e-store platforms and social media channels.
There, they get access to many customers, easy payment platforms and they can market their ill-gotten gains.
With the help of our legal and sales teams, along with assistance from many capsuleer reports of scumbags selling ISK and assets on the internets, we’ve successfully shut down more than 115 RMT groups that are operating on social media in the last couple of months and are planning on also looking to shut down RMT stores on eBay and other e-commerce platforms as we move forward.
The war on RMT is never going to end, but so long as there’s a fight to be had, we’ll keep hitting them as hard as we can.
Policy Updates
As part of ongoing work to keep support for our pilots up to date and relevant, the Customer Support team are currently in the process of reviewing their internal policies and documentation around in game harassment, anti-social behavior and real-life threats.
This will more than likely involve some internal clarification on how to handle these cases, along with more visible updates to the CCP Event Code of Conduct.
The landscape of the internet is always changing, and it’s important that at CCP, we keep our policies and guidelines up to date so that we can protect our staff, and most importantly our community, when issues like this arise.
What Can You Do To Help?
Do not bot or RMT, don’t tolerate it in your corporation or alliance, and most importantly – keep the reports coming!
Even if you think something is minor, report it. A simple bot or RMT report can cause a chain reaction that leads through a spiderweb of transactions to a huge botting or RMT ring that we can smash with the banhammer.
While we don’t send individual responses to every report, they’re all taken seriously and are thoroughly investigated to see if they’re credible.
As we’ve said previously, multiple reports from different sources are also incredibly valuable for cross referencing behavior and allowing us to action on them faster.
Two Factor Authentication Helps!
We’ve said this before, and we’ll keep saying it – 2FA helps!
You can help to keep your account secure by using it. It’s a huge boost to keeping your characters and hard-earned assets safe.
Most importantly, put 2FA on your email address. The point of entry for the 1469 compromised accounts mentioned earlier in this blog is the email tied to the account.
In Closing
We’re always looking for new and inventive ways to hammer those who choose to engage in these kinds of behaviours into the ground.
We’re super happy that you guys enjoyed our contribution to GM Week, and we always value community assistance and contribution to these efforts, so please keep the reports coming and we’ll continue the fight.
