I wonder if it would be possible / worthwhile for the admins to make a GA page that very clearly states, "This is not a give-away. Any account that makes an entry will be suspended." in 8 or 10 languages. And then suspend those accounts for a month or six or something. I expect that only bot accounts would enter, and then those accounts would be temporarily cut off.

Or, would this hurt the site's income?

2 years ago

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Using a honeypot GA to identify and suspend bot accounts...

View Results
would be worthwhile, to have fewer games won by bot accounts
would be worthwhile, just to see how many active accounts are bot-run
would be worthwhile, because fewer entries increases the odds of **me** winning
would be a gloriously futile gesture
would not be worth the development time
would create a storm of complaints that the admins shouldn't have to deal with
potato

They may become annoying like those thread-like ads on reddit, and it will be easy to tweak the bot around them unless they do something special with the programming, but I'd be interested to see how many they'd catch initially. I remember there was a necro thread about a large number of accounts being suspended for botting. I don't know how they caught them, but maybe they could do another similar raid.

2 years ago
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I don't think this will work because bots will always find a way to bypass such check giveaways.

2 years ago
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And non bot people that simply don't read.

2 years ago
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^this!!

2 years ago
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I would be very angry of you for saying that, if I could read

2 years ago
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View attached image.
2 years ago
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2 years ago
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Indeed a gloriously futile gesture. Just add an exception to the bot, tell it what words to look for and voila.

2 years ago
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Enhanced SG offers a button to enter GAs straight from the list, so that's a really risky way to filter out bots.
I would rather suggest one of the following:

  • adding hidden GAs[simple display=none, or other css magic]. Bots generally rely on parsing the page source
  • same but with a hidden fake entry button
  • Changing API and capturing all requests to the old one.. Yet this approach is also prone to mistaking scripts for bots
  • Perform data analysis and look for accounts active 24/7[In a meaningful way, not a tab left open and refreshing hourly, like it can be configured even in some vanilla browsers]

Edit Or just make a fake announcement and see which users stop using the site waiting for an updated bot ;)

2 years ago*
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I actually love the first one. No humans get affected, only bots.

2 years ago
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I feel like it's pretty easy to tell on the backend who's using a script due to the speed of entering, uniform times between entries, and other patterns of entering. Having a honeypot might just catch people who didn't read or couldn't understand (like if English isn't their first language) the description. You can easily see someone comment multiple times on newly created giveaways within milliseconds of each other.

2 years ago
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It would be simple to put randomized wait times in bots. The 400pt cap creates a situation where there's no urgency, no loss of efficiency in the daily running of such a script.

2 years ago
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It's funny that you point out the issue of English not being a user's first language in some cases, as I suggested in the original post that the GA description be in 8 or 10 languages.

Or maybe you are just proving that even people who can read simply don't! 😉

2 years ago
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I used English as an example. There are more than 8-10 languages being spoken here as first languages. Things can easily get lost in translation.

2 years ago
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2 years ago
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No, fake giveaways are clearly against the rules, I would expect admins/mods to abide by the same rules they are expected to enforce :P

2 years ago
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To me, that's like saying police shouldn't exceed the speed limit, kick in any doors, or handcuff any non-consenting people.

2 years ago
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And they shouldn't! Unless it's a matter of life and death, thankfully, bots aren't a life or death matter, as annoying as they might be...

2 years ago
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AFAIK, currently for the first offense botters get just a temporary suspension, not a perma ban. If this is still the case, then the policy seems to me more like an invitation "feel free to use bots until we catch you for the 1st time (and that will most likely take a long time)", than an attempt to catch bots or to get us to investigate and report suspected bots. Correct me, if I'm wrong, please.

EDIT: Then still the problem is, that using some sites you can get to a high level for just a few bucks, buying newly released games with keys dumped there at 1% or less of their nominal price. Even if those are eventually added to the no-CV list, this usually takes a long time, and still makes maintaining a high level account incredibly cheap. What we would really need as the 1st step, so the people would even care about loosing their accounts, is adopting the same approach as Steam, and not giving CVs for GAs which are not giving +1 on Steam until they possibly reach the +1 status.

2 years ago*
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Sounds like a poorly thought out witch hunt to me

2 years ago
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We know about bots, but are there real witches though? lol

2 years ago
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2 years ago
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Maybe SG secretly does this already...!

View attached image.
2 years ago
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This suggestion sounds eerily familiar. I could've sworn Fitz10000, Fitz10001, Fitz10002, Fitz10003, Fitz10004, Fitz10005, Fitz10006, Fitz10007, Fitz10008, Fitz10009, Fitz10010, Fitz10011, Fitz10012, Fitz10013, Fitz10014, Fitz10015, Fitz10016, Fitz10017, Fitz10018, Fitz10019, Fitz10020, Fitz10021, Fitz10022, and Fitz10023 have all suggested this in the past.

2 years ago
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And always associated with Manhattan? That is uncanny!

Oh, wait... what's with the one from the 10th district of Prague?!? Wheels within wheels...

2 years ago
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Sounds like a good idea, the giveaway itself doesn't have to be fake even. Tho other commenters are right, it would punish people who don't care to read or can't read, then it will become hard to differentiate between them and bots.

2 years ago
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