Security Update - Q4 2018

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Greetings once again, glorious capsuleers and welcome to the last security update for 2018 as we give more information on the ongoing fight against dirty botters, RMTers and other nefarious fellows who are attempting to infiltrate the EVE Universe.

This quarter’s report comes at a time when discussion regarding botting among members of the community is at an all-time high. It’s also a time when we’re receiving an elevated number of reports against those believed to be using various methods of client automation.

As always, we’re acutely aware that the fight against these kinds of activities remains a key issue for our players. It remains a priority issue for us too, and we’re looking at more and more ways to slap these guys around and boot them out of New Eden.

Here’s a quick update on the raw numbers since October 1st that charts the action we’ve taken against accounts associated with activities that are in breach of the EULA and ToS.

• 2316 account bans for account hacking.
• 4009 account bans for botting related activities.
• 2595 account bans for RMT related activities.

The fight continues, and with a renewed focus on stamping this kind of activity out, we’ll be moving into 2019 with a more savage approach to getting pilots who RMT, bot or otherwise abuse the game and its economy out of New Eden.

FW Bots

This quarter we’ve had a bit more focus on faction warfare bots, as the clear majority of these are linked to already known RMT groups who are habitual re-offenders in New Eden. Several of these groups were last cleaned up in September but re-emerge from time to time in an attempt to make more cash.

The biggest weapon against these types of group is to remove the demand - Don’t buy dirty ISK from third party sites, and you won’t end up being caught up in the ensuing ban wave.

Market Botting

We’ve also started looking at market bots in more detail too and going forward we’ll have a zero-tolerance approach to these. We’ll also be changing our policies on how we deal with these types of bots. Starting 2019 we’ll be deleting market bot characters as part of the clean-up procedure.

Anomaly Botting

One of the largest sets of reports that we get is on 0.0 botting – typically groups of Gilas, Vexor Navy Issues, etcetera. It’s often tough to tackle these types of reports, but we’ll be putting more focus on these guys in 2019 with more robust banhammering, and additional changes to how anomalies work, similar to what was shipped this week with the December Release.

Courier Mission Bots

We’re also actively looking at ways in which we can target these groups faster and more efficiently. We’ve smashed a few rings of courier mission bots recently and want to make sure we can continue to stamp these guys out.

What Can You Do To Help?

Don’t use client automation, and don’t RMT. Don’t tolerate botting or real money trading in your corp, alliance or coalition. Most importantly, if you see it happening – REPORT IT.

Even if you think something may be a minor offense, report it. As we’ve explained before, nailing a single botter, ISK buyer or ISK seller can lead to a chain reaction that unveils an entire RMT operation that’s sinking substantial amounts of ill-gotten gains into the economy.

While we don’t respond to every individual report of botting or real money trading, they’re all taken 100% seriously, and are thoroughly investigated for credibility.

Multiple reports from different sources also remain incredibly valuable and allow us to cross reference behavior and nail these guys faster.

The main thing we want to emphasize though is that without a demand for RMT – without pilots in EVE buying dirty ISK from these guys, these guys can’t operate.

Aside from reporting botters and real money trading, the biggest help you can provide is not to buy from these scumbags.

Enable Two Factor Authentication!

Here at CCP, we know how much effort goes into growing and maintaining characters, as well as gathering all the assets that pilots end up with after a long an illustrious career as a capsuleer.

Protect it all. Enable two factor authentication on all your EVE accounts, and on the email accounts that are verified against them.

You can help keep your accounts secure by using 2FA, and reduce the risk of becoming one of the 2316 mentioned earlier in this blog by protecting access to them

In Closing

Every report makes a difference and every one of them is taken seriously.

Due to the sheer number of reports that we receive, sometimes it takes a while for us to get through them all, but they’re all investigated thoroughly to make sure we can act on any behavior that breaks the rules.

The unfortunate nature of botting and RMT is that it’s much like fighting a hydra – when you chop off one head another appears to take its place because these guys have the incentive of making real world cash from behavior that’s actively harming New Eden.

Keep the reports coming thick and fast and together we can keep up the fight against behavior that has no place in the universe we all love.