Bots now spamming group chatrooms and making themselves impossible to be banned, we need a fix

[Knifey]

Hello. I am an admin on a 6000+ steam community group

I'm having servre management issues due to a recent increase in advertisement bots. They join the group chat, spam the message below and leave instantly. I cannot ban them from rejoining due to steam community functions that only allow me to ban them only when they are in the group chat. This is very, very frustrating. They also use the @all feature, taging everyone to show their crap. I was able to remove that ability from all users to slow down the annoyance

[Yesterday, 23:43]
76561198150306856:
Congratulations you won the ★ Karambit | Lore To pick up your prizeGo to our website: (insert bad link here) leave your link for exchange thereAnd we will send you your prize in 5 minutesThanks for participating @all#0 Congratulations you won the ★ Karambit | Lore To pick up your prizeGo to our website: (insert bad link here) leave your link for exchange thereAnd we will send you your prize in 5 minutesaThanks for participating

I see this message from one bot 28 times a day, there is NOTHING I can do to stop it.

Please give us group staff the ability to do the following: allow us to A) Ban members from a community via the member list, as of now I can only ban a member via a comment they made on the group page. This stops me from banning these bots from the group entirely as they only spam via the chatroom. and B) able to ban players from a chat even if they have left it. I know the names of these bots, they appear in the chatroom member list... But I can't ban them because they constantly leave.

I hope this is sorted ASAP.

[Zekiran]

Please remove the links. People WILL click on them, and then you will have been responsible for spamming just like the bots.

[KingDingo3]

Thats the same guy/bot whos spamming our group chat, same message and all, its a right pain and i think they are purely targeting either high membered groups or in paticular people who play CSGO outright. And chances are when they are found out, they delete their account and make a new one so its under a new profile url, making the cycle go on forever, its a nuisance.

And to remind people, chances are if you click the link, you'll be risking your account, items, money and personal infomation and you will never get them back, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK! and please stay safe in these trying times.

[Knifey]

I removed the links, I've been lucky enough to ban a few of these bots. But sadly they just keep coming. But if TF2's bot problem is anything to go by, this will be a very long wait.

[EmotionallyBroken]

I think there are scripts that auto ban users that post lnks or other trigger words and such you can use for exactly this purpose. Im not sure how many are compatible with steam chats, or if they're even tolerated by valve members, but it might be worth looking into.

[sudoNH 📞✔]

Hello everyone. I am an owner on a 3000+ steam community group.
This scam messages reported by @Knifey started to happen in our group in september 1st.

I totally agre with the Knifey requests:
Please give us group staff the ability to do the following: allow us to
A) Ban members from a community via the member list, as of now I can only ban a member via a comment they made on the group page. This stops me from banning these bots from the group entirely as they only spam via the chatroom.
B) Be able to ban players from a chat even if they have left it.

I want to add my request here.
C) Be able to ban or kick members of the group with User "More" menu or right click in his name. When we try to find this bots names in Manage Group Members we cannot find them. Results show nothing. We may not be able to find them in search because these names use special characters, so we are not able to kick them.

What we learned about it.
- A lot of bots renamed to Steam Awards (with special characters) before to send his scam message in chat group.
- When they join the group they immediately join the chat grop.
- Their SteamID64 are usually numbers of new accounts like 76561199********* or 76561198*********

What we done in our chat group:
- Removed permissions of EVERYONE Mention all members with @ all and @ online. A lot of damage is blocked with this.
- Removed all permission of GUESTS in our chat group except Invite new members.

[sudoNH 📞✔]

And we reported all the bots to steam

[Spoonguard]

In the meantime, you should remove the @all @mention permission from the Everyone & Guest roles in your chat-rooms to make these spambots less annoying

[sudoNH 📞✔]

Yes @Spoonguard I agree. We removed mention and this is very effective.

I just edited my post adding this text: with User "More" menu
C) Be able to ban or kick members of the group with User "More" menu or right click in his name.

[Knifey]

I made the group accept all member requests after a moderator reviews their profile. Our chat is bot free since we reject atleast 5 a day. It's the best method we have to deal with them right now

[S7H5]

It's good idea to add option to restrict from chatting accounts without verified phone or 2step verification, or special game that your group is about

[Nimarus]

This bot was in the Fallout 76 community group (about 700+ members). I quit the group and I'm STILL getting spam from that bot as if I was still a member of the dead group.

[HiFive]

This bot is spamming me in-game. The popup notifying us of our "award" looks like a Steam popup. Luckily, when I finally figured out how to "claim my prize", I got a notice telling me the page was marked as unsafe. I've gotten at least 12 notices over the past 5 days. Like others have said, this needs to be fixed.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by HiFive:

This bot is spamming me in-game. The popup notifying us of our "award" looks like a Steam popup. Luckily, when I finally figured out how to "claim my prize", I got a notice telling me the page was marked as unsafe. I've gotten at least 12 notices over the past 5 days. Like others have said, this needs to be fixed.

What do you mean it looks like a Steam popup? group announcement? or something else?

[MAXE]

all it needs, is a forum script filtering that disallow web page links or spam filtering option for the forum, just like the ones used on the e-mails where you as an admin can filter out any spam and delete/block them afterwards so that user wont be able to enter or write in your forum again!

Valve could even make it automatic, so it will sent the user abuse the spam function with a warning 3 times before the ban is activated, wich will only be able to get removed again by the steam supports !

That i think would be the right solutions to this issue here ..

[m4dEngi]

It's possible to ban those bots, but it requires another bot on your side. Somehow you can ban any user by their SteamID64 just fine, but UI part for that feature was never implemented.

EDIT: ... nvm they 'fixed' it.