Autobuyer Alert

[gigabyte]

What's an autobuyer

An autobuyer is a program that buys rare items for you from the Neopian either when you are doing something like sleeping. It gives people who restock legitimately a hard time because the high rarity items are 'snatched' by autobuyers.

[Mystique]

frankly speaking, since they started changing the whole restock procedure by adding more and more features, they never really beat autobuyers. they still can't tell an honest restocker from an autobuyer and chances of honest restockers been frozen are still around. all these changes just serve to impede us restockers further. of coz, i can and has already adapted to it but in the case of autobuyers, it feels like going back to square one. personally, i would have preferred the restock system to be as it is 2 years ago.

[gigabyte]

frankly speaking, since they started changing the whole restock procedure by adding more and more features, they never really beat autobuyers. they still can't tell an honest restocker from an autobuyer and chances of honest restockers been frozen are still around. all these changes just serve to impede us restockers further. of coz, i can and has already adapted to it but in the case of autobuyers, it feels like going back to square one. personally, i would have preferred the restock system to be as it is 2 years ago.

I didn't restock that long ago because it was so hard to land a big profit then (regular 8min. restocks and such). They were gone so fast that when my slow connection finally loaded the itens, the good stuff was gone.

[everconfused]

frankly speaking, since they started changing the whole restock procedure by adding more and more features, they never really beat autobuyers. they still can't tell an honest restocker from an autobuyer and chances of honest restockers been frozen are still around. all these changes just serve to impede us restockers further. of coz, i can and has already adapted to it but in the case of autobuyers, it feels like going back to square one. personally, i would have preferred the restock system to be as it is 2 years ago.

I didn't restock that long ago because it was so hard to land a big profit then (regular 8min. restocks and such). They were gone so fast that when my slow connection finally loaded the itens, the good stuff was gone.

I think I had 1 week where I actively tried restocking. Mainly because I was going for the packrat av and decided to try to get a few things for my gallery - using my main account to restock of course. I'm on dial up so it was really hard! When the codes first came out, I just went to a shop (think it was toys) just to see it. Well, first of all I had graphics disabled so I stood a chance of getting something, anything in a restock. So of course the code didn't show up (Duh me!). OK, put graphics back on, and the code took forever to show up. By that time, nothing was left. That's when I decided to just not even bother trying to restock. Now I'm glad I made that decision.

When TNT did the recent mass freezings and changed the code again, there were innocent people frozen for using an ab. My guess is they went to a shop had hadn't had the new code put in place, something (a bot?!) was triggered by the person using the old code and Bam, frozen.

They can keep changing the code as many times as they want. Unless the code is changed every single day, which sounds like a nightmare, there's going to be ab. I don't get cheating on a game personally.

TNT has been trying so hard to make things fair for restockers with the code, then changing the code. I give them credit for this. It stinks for TNT, as it's something that takes time and energy away from other important things that need doing/fixing, it stinks for the honest players (can't get anything or are accused out of hand by others of using an ab if they DO get something good - I've seen people demand a screenie or are told they're reporting the rs'er) and doubly stinks if you have a slow connection - your chances of making it past the code page are so slim it's ridiculous. All this grief because some people are lazy/greedy.

The post talking about all these OCR programs that can read login codes scares me. Why? Yes, Neopets is a game. But what scares me is if people are willing to go to the trouble of making a program and changing it so it can read a game login, to me that looks like practice for going after some real life stuff -- like online credit cards, banking, paypal, etc.

[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.

I hate to quote myself, but check out the new restock security system.

Sounds like somebody's been reading my posts. *cough*neopetssecuritydidagreatjobonthisone*cough*

[Morningstar]

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.

I hate to quote myself, but check out the new restock security system.

Sounds like somebody's been reading my posts. *cough*neopetssecuritydidagreatjobonthisone*cough*

shapu, when I read your first post, I said to myself "What a great idea!" And now Neopets has taken your idea and run with it? Hey, they ought to at least give you a Neopian Times White Weewoo Plushie for your excellent suggestion. Or better yet, make up a PPT item and give it only to those PPTers whose suggestions they put into use.

Hhhmmm, there are lurkers among us.

[shapu]

Hey, I may not always be altruistic, but it'd be awfully selfish to ask for anything neopets team is welcome to look at my gallery wish list at http://www.neopets.com/~Tuonos for ideas for things I suggest for the greater neopian public that link again is http://www.neopets.com/~Tuonos. I mean, after all - I'm a giving guy and I hope the Neopets team is too.

[TheClone]

lol @ Shapu.

I like this new way, a lot of the others on Neopets don't. One thing that's fairly obvious is that the image quality is awful. I had a hard time telling the difference between Blue Tonu and a sploch of something blue on the background.

[Shoyru_Lover]

I wonder how autobuyers are able to bypass the magic code... does anyone here know?

[shapu]

This is what FirebirdGM said about how the autobuyers worked:
They bypassed Kauvara's code by taking a survey of the various colors of the pixels of the top row or the first column of the code image...and then they'd assume that those were all equal to some color. So the image becomes two-color (the new background color, and the color of the letters). Then an optical character recognizer would read the image, and enter it, and bladow...the item is purchased. Even with all of the steps, it was still quicker than human hands in a lot of cases.

[Shoyru_Lover]

Ahh ok I see. Thanks for that =] I'll make a posting about this and see what else can be found out.

[mizzy]

This code is really bad I was a bad restocker anyway... now I'm badder than bad... *runs to gameroom*

[neo_grl]

This is what FirebirdGM said about how the autobuyers worked:
They bypassed Kauvara's code by taking a survey of the various colors of the pixels of the top row or the first column of the code image...and then they'd assume that those were all equal to some color. So the image becomes two-color (the new background color, and the color of the letters). Then an optical character recognizer would read the image, and enter it, and bladow...the item is purchased. Even with all of the steps, it was still quicker than human hands in a lot of cases.

you also said this in another thread. but anyway, there have never been multiple colors in Kauvara's magic code. It has always been white and a shade of gray.

[shapu]

Actually, I said it in this one - I think there was a forum rollback a few hours ago.

[TheClone]

Well, if people are refreshing every minute during the restock, then when there finally is a restock, you're going to have hundreds (cough, thousands) of people (er... and autobuyers) all trying to buy ANY items at the same time. That is going to flood the servers.