farbot.com

One of the most annoying parts of EVE Online isn't so much the learning curve or brutal dog-eat-dog world. It's the nonstop gold (ISK) farmers and other ads hitting the chat channels in the game. CCP makes it extremely easy to get a 14-day trial account, so easy that you don't even have to do something like click a link in the email they send you to activate it before logging in. Just submit the web form, scoop up the email, and then log right in. For spammers and bot users it really couldn't be easier.

While I haven't subscribed to EVE yet, I'm leaning in that direction. This is one of the big things about the game that gives me pause. Not because it's hard to ignore someone in the chat channel -- because it's not hard to do that at all -- but because the fact that the developers haven't gone just a few extra steps to make it just as spammer-unfriendly as signing up for any free service online. This tells me that spammers, and bot authors, aren't really seen as bad things by those developers no matter what the EULA says. Remember, it's not what you say as much as what you do. This is a worrisome realization.

This is why it comes as no surprise to me that a new advisory has been issued by CCP not to download a specific macro for the game (or any for that matter) offered by alleged ISK farmers. The macro contains malware of some kind, so they're asking end users not to download and use it. How do end-users find out about the malware? In automated chat channel spam messages, of course.

Seen on Massively.

From Aeropause.