Autobuyer Alert

[+Phantom-]

Great, now I won't get anything at all. Normally I only get a few items. lol

[1lewysgal]

I KNEW something was going on! Last restock, I got nothing!! I hope they change that code soon so the AB's will be disabled again! It's so sad that people have to cheat like that in a game that was designed for kids!

[Shadowfox]

Oh well, there goes ANY chance of me getting that chocolate avatar.....

[novachoek]

Yeah noticed it to in bakery, i used to get 4-5 cakes a restock now its even hard to get 2

[hynfaeries0]

I also noticed the lag. I was restocking wight when neopets warped the codes and I made like 300k that day, but now, it is so hard.

[gigabyte]

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

Examples (I was messing around with Photoshop):







You should get my meaning.

Last edited by gigabyte on Fri Jul 16, 2004 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Valé]

Arghhhh! Kill the Auto buyers... I can't get my hand on anything...And even when they freeze the old one, I wasn'T good at it! (I mean buying...)

[shapu]

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

Examples (I was messing around with Photoshop):







You should get my meaning.

Yeah, but some of those are awfully hard to read. The advantage to the current system is that it's only semi-hard to read.

But if you could increase the contrast just a little bit, we'd be in full agreement.

[gigabyte]

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

Examples (I was messing around with Photoshop):







You should get my meaning.

Yeah, but some of those are awfully hard to read. The advantage to the current system is that it's only semi-hard to read.

But if you could increase the contrast just a little bit, we'd be in full agreement.

I made a few new ones:






Ok. These aren't really easier to read, but you do want to foil autobuyers don't you?

[Mark]

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

Examples (I was messing around with Photoshop):







You should get my meaning.

Yeah, but some of those are awfully hard to read. The advantage to the current system is that it's only semi-hard to read.

But if you could increase the contrast just a little bit, we'd be in full agreement.

I made a few new ones:






Ok. These aren't really easier to read, but you do want to foil autobuyers don't you?

Of course we do. But if we can't read the text, what good is it then? lol No one would be restocking.

[atomicblonde]

The other thing to do would be to add a *ton* of different fonts like the ones in the new security codes. The only wee problem with the colours would be from colour blind people.

[Messiah]

I'd just like to point out a few things:

don't worry, the autobuyers will be taking a break this days waiting for the restock code to change as the login one did. ^_~

Firstly, an Optical Character Recognition system has already been created for the Login Codes. If this same code was to be applied to the Restocking code, it would require very little modification to work with the Three Character code (Assuming it is shortened to 3).

If they were to introduce the new code into restocking, it would give Autobuyers an even larger advantage than they have now; the codes have a relatively-large chance to be difficult to read (For example, the 'F' in the raised font is difficult to distinguish). The OCR reads these flawlessly and without additional effort.

Nextly:

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

This really won't stop autobuyers aside from the few hours required to code an OCR to work with the new images. An intelligent coder can easily distinguish the distortions, and write code to make up for these losses in quality of the original image.

The Random Colors don't mean anything -- Look at the login image (Both old and new). Random shades of gray were used, and that did not discourage OCRs one bit. It is quite easy to compare contrasts to see which is the color meant to stand out, then use that. Noise, again, means nothing. Both of the previous login images have random gray noise in the background. Distortions are also overcome with smart coding, as you've seen from the Latest Autobuyer.

[shapu]

It's unfortunate, but Messiah is right. All a decent coder would have to do is isolate the characters, even the ones above, and import them into the ABer as a font, and there you go - even slanty warped letters are bypassed.

The only true way to defeat an autobuyer for any length of time is to combine the noised characters with an intelligence test. For example, have a series of questions in screwed-up font, associated with images of certain pets. Have the font ask the question: "What color is this pet?" or "What pet is this?" Make sure the images for the pets all have the same filename, and you might stump the ABers for a little while.

[gigabyte]

I'd just like to point out a few things:

don't worry, the autobuyers will be taking a break this days waiting for the restock code to change as the login one did. ^_~

Firstly, an Optical Character Recognition system has already been created for the Login Codes. If this same code was to be applied to the Restocking code, it would require very little modification to work with the Three Character code (Assuming it is shortened to 3).

If they were to introduce the new code into restocking, it would give Autobuyers an even larger advantage than they have now; the codes have a relatively-large chance to be difficult to read (For example, the 'F' in the raised font is difficult to distinguish). The OCR reads these flawlessly and without additional effort.

Nextly:

Neopets should have randomized backgrounds and noise in part of the background. The text should be semitransparent, so autobuyers would be confused and think that the code is noise. Lastly, the color of text should be randomized too because, then, autobuyers wouldn't know what color to look out for. Oh! The text should be warped!

This really won't stop autobuyers aside from the few hours required to code an OCR to work with the new images. An intelligent coder can easily distinguish the distortions, and write code to make up for these losses in quality of the original image.

The Random Colors don't mean anything -- Look at the login image (Both old and new). Random shades of gray were used, and that did not discourage OCRs one bit. It is quite easy to compare contrasts to see which is the color meant to stand out, then use that. Noise, again, means nothing. Both of the previous login images have random gray noise in the background. Distortions are also overcome with smart coding, as you've seen from the Latest Autobuyer.

I admit that that is true, but since it takes time to develop autobuyers, maybe Neopets should respond to this with a daily change. This might inconvienence restockers, but it would also discourage autobuyers. A exremely wide range of randomized types of codes might work, but would be inpractical. There's nothing an intelligent programmer can't do (as stated in your message), but the reason autobuyers are possible is that they take the time to program. If that time is significantly less than the time available to use the application, coding autobuyers would be more trouble than it's worth. There have been many advances in Neopets code to foil these coders, but this is the time for another advance to come. To conclude, I would like to remind everyone that nothing is impossible in the eyes of coders if they put their mind to it.

[Chaud]

What's an autobuyer