[nige1]

A program could automatically flag possible abuse, for later investigation by BBO officials. for example ...

• Monitor chat for abusive terms. Frequent offenders might merit further investigation as possible abusers.
• Monitor results for ridiculous scores. Not just stupid contracts, Really extreme results. (e.g. 7NXX-13 -- as described in a previous thread). A pattern of such behaviour might cause the culprit to be investigated for disrupting the enjoyment of others.
• (More controversial) Introduce "diagnostic" hands (e.g. Peeker's hands with off-side singleton kings, Miracle hands where 7N makes on 4 finesses and a split, Death-trap hands where in spite of game-values, you can make nothing. Mad defensive hands where peculiar leads work). When a player regularly gets such hands right, he could be investigated as a possible cheat.

In the poll, you can tick more than one option.

[Fluffy]

So you monitor them, and then what?. ave you acomplished anything?. No. You ban an account, and they make another. Its useless.

[JmBrPotter]

 Fluffy, on 2012-January-20, 06:19, said:

So you monitor them, and then what?. ave you acomplished anything?. No. You ban an account, and they make another. Its useless.

Sr. Merino,

It need not be entirely useless. BBO can obtain the IP addresses that originate an offending user's transactions (perhaps the _unique_ MAC address assigned to each piece of equipment from which offending users' transactions originate as well). Habitually abusive members might be shunted into a special club containing ONLY abusive users.

A new user with MAC addresses associated with a previous abusiveness might be shunted into the "Abusers' Club" as well. A new user with IP addresses substantially overlapping an historic abuser might also find himself teleported into the "Abusers' Club".

This approach will certainly require some record keeping and may have labor intensive components (Chasing down IP and MAC addresses assiciated with abusers may involve detective work analogous to running a hacker to ground, I'm unsure.), but it COULD be done. Obviously, an "Abusers' Club" member COULD buy an new computer (or install a new internet interface device on the old computer) before creating a new ID. If such a person cleaned up their act on their new computer, they could avoid the "Abusers' Club" on their new equipment. This is OK with me. If they reform their behavior, their past can be forgiven. If the behavior remains unchanged, they'll soon enough land in the "Abusers' Club", again.

There should probably be a reinstatement/probation process available to "Abusers' Club" members who wish to rejoin the larger community. This might be a result of a mistake (e.g., two people using equipment at the same public computer pool like a public library) or of a user's intent to correct past mistakes.

[daveharty]

All of these things, as well as your location and credit card activity, are already monitored. The only way to disrupt their plans is to wear a San Diego Padres cap lined with tinfoil.

[Phil]

 JmBrPotter, on 2012-January-20, 07:22, said:

It need not be entirely useless. BBO can obtain the IP addresses that originate an offending user's transactions (perhaps the _unique_ MAC address assigned to each piece of equipment from which offending users' transactions originate as well). Habitually abusive members might be shunted into a special club ONLY.

Can I kibitz? This would be hilarious to watch.

[Hanoi5]

 daveharty, on 2012-January-20, 08:04, said:

All of these things, as well as your location and credit card activity, are already monitored. The only way to disrupt their plans is to wear a San Diego Padres cap lined with tinfoil.

Check

[mycroft]

Cue the Machlin story where he tells of another TD (I think Spider) quietly seeding all the players with reputations for sharp practise into one section while selling a 5-section pair game. The looks on people's faces as they figured it out, he says, were priceless.

[Edit: and Padres? Why? Would a Golden Seals cap work, or do I need a special tinfoil for the defunct?

Oddly enough, I was thinking of caps just yesterday. I'm flying to DC on Sunday, which, I'm told, is a big day for that wussy version of football you southerners play, what with the extra down and the 10 fewer yards to score and all. I was strongly tempted to get a Stampeders cap (they were on sale) and wear it down, and give it to one of the people I'm meeting just to watch their brains skip a gear.]

[barmar]

We already use techniques like these when we ban players who are reported to abuse. So the only difference being proposed here is that BBO should do proactive monitoring in addition to reacting to abuse reports.

[FrancesHinden]

 JmBrPotter, on 2012-January-20, 07:22, said:

Sr. Merino,

It need not be entirely useless. BBO can obtain the IP addresses that originate an offending user's transactions (perhaps the _unique_ MAC address assigned to each piece of equipment from which offending users' transactions originate as well). Habitually abusive members might be shunted into a special club containing ONLY abusive users.

So you're in trouble if you share an IP address (very common) or a computer (very common) with, say, your husband...

[barmar]

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-20, 16:05, said:

So you're in trouble if you share an IP address (very common) or a computer (very common) with, say, your husband...

Only if you frequently get suspicious results when playing with them, or one is kibbing another table playing the same boards.

[Antrax]

 JmBrPotter, on 2012-January-20, 07:22, said:

This approach will certainly require some record keeping and may have labor intensive components (Chasing down IP and MAC addresses assiciated with abusers may involve detective work analogous to running a hacker to ground, I'm unsure.)

You're thinking about it a bit too romantically. Take as a given that it's impossible to ban smart users and focus on getting rid of stupid cheaters.
(As an aside, don't think a MAC address is set in stone. If you rely on MAC filtering for your home network, know an attacker can choose his)

[JmBrPotter]

 Phil, on 2012-January-20, 09:36, said:

Can I kibitz? This would be hilarious to watch.

Sure! Maybe, we allow unlimited kibitzing including unlimited kib chat to table and players!

[JmBrPotter]

 Antrax, on 2012-January-21, 01:15, said:

You're thinking about it a bit too romantically. Take as a given that it's impossible to ban smart users and focus on getting rid of stupid cheaters.
(As an aside, don't think a MAC address is set in stone. If you rely on MAC filtering for your home network, know an attacker can choose his)

Antrax,

Thanks for that. I do use MAC filtering (with an unbroadcast SSID and a strong password and an encryption method) as part of my security.

[onoway]

I likely wouldn't know a cheater if I tripped over him but abusers and the people who consistently abandon tourneys when they are going to get a bad result are highly annoying. Those ones get new ids when they are banned by the TDs so not really much to be done about them. Maybe design an electric shock for bad behaviour so they get zapped when they log back into BBO, the strength of which depends on how bad the transgression. I'm not really in favor of big brother, so prefer that BBO continue to struggle to contain the ones that get reported rather than patrol the halls looking for issues.

The really weird contracts 7ntXX-13 Does this come up a lot? I notice this in the results maybe once a year..once at a table I was kibbing when a player threw a tantrum about his p with then stomped off. All very dramatic:) Also, some beginners don't realize (or forget) that their scores show up/affect the scoring for other tables and sometimes clown around. Perhaps there should be some mechanism to alert the yellows in such a situation so (if) they would be able to cancel the wildly aberrant score out? Come to think of it, that might also take care of some cheaters...

[inquiry]

 onoway, on 2012-January-22, 11:45, said:

I likely wouldn't know a cheater if I tripped over him but abusers and the people who consistently abandon tourneys when they are going to get a bad result are highly annoying. Those ones get new ids when they are banned by the TDs so not really much to be done about them. Maybe design an electric shock for bad behaviour so they get zapped when they log back into BBO, the strength of which depends on how bad the transgression. I'm not really in favor of big brother, so prefer that BBO continue to struggle to contain the ones that get reported rather than patrol the halls looking for issues.

The really weird contracts 7ntXX-13 Does this come up a lot? I notice this in the results maybe once a year..once at a table I was kibbing when a player threw a tantrum about his p with then stomped off. All very dramatic:) Also, some beginners don't realize (or forget) that their scores show up/affect the scoring for other tables and sometimes clown around. Perhaps there should be some mechanism to alert the yellows in such a situation so (if) they would be able to cancel the wildly aberrant score out? Come to think of it, that might also take care of some cheaters...

A long time ago, I use to use bridgebrowser to find every 7nt contract bid on bbo, and then looked at all of them down something like 10 or more. At that time, one could find well more than 100 7ntxx down 13 contracts in a three month period in both the main room and tournament play. You could add another few hundred down 10, 11 and 12 combined that were clearly bid with no intent of making. We would ban repeat offenders who did this as best we could. Since Stephen Pickett has stopped updating bridgebrowser with bbo hands, I have stopped looking for such violators. IF this happens to you, you should report it to your TD and or to a bbo yellow. Clearly, a filter could be established to catch these as well, but I don't believe one exist.

[mgoetze]

 Antrax, on 2012-January-21, 01:15, said:

As an aside, don't think a MAC address is set in stone.

No, it's not. I'm also pretty sure that a Flash application cannot access hardware information like this, so it's irrelevant anyway.

[scarletv]

 inquiry, on 2012-January-22, 20:32, said:

A long time ago, I use to use bridgebrowser to find every 7nt contract bid on bbo, and then looked at all of them down something like 10 or more. At that time, one could find well more than 100 7ntxx down 13 contracts in a three month period in both the main room and tournament play. You could add another few hundred down 10, 11 and 12 combined that were clearly bid with no intent of making. We would ban repeat offenders who did this as best we could. Since Stephen Pickett has stopped updating bridgebrowser with bbo hands, I have stopped looking for such violators. IF this happens to you, you should report it to your TD and or to a bbo yellow. Clearly, a filter could be established to catch these as well, but I don't believe one exist.

I face such bidding and play quite frequently in my Indy tournaments. Really destructive bidding and playing too. I would say I see about 1-2 boards a month and there are not too many tourneys I am running. We do not have it in our German tourneys, where the fluctuation of players is not that high and they are grouped in pairs anyway. I think it is pure destructive behaviour without any personal reason as pairs change each board in my Indy's. They are not necessarily new members at BBO, the last one I saw had about 4000 logins. They mostly dissappear before the end of the Hand and have to be subbed so I wonder if it is THAT easy to identify them. I don't think I see all cases but when I identify them I am blacklisting that player for my tourneys. But is that enough?

I just asked a yellow if it makes sense to report to abuse as this is additional effort and I have problems to send mails to BBO anyway (not supporting Umlaute for reply mail). I am sure most TD's dont. Therefore I would very much appreciate if that could be done by an automatic Job.

Concerning cheaters I am very often confronted with suspicions. Sometimes it is easy for me to decide but more often I feel helpless. Cheating is poisoning the atmosphere no matter if with or without reason. But I found it obvious that some players do no longer participate when kibbing is forbidden. For me as TD I wonder what is the best approach to handle with suspicions. Reporting, testing, discussing Hands with experts? Automatic tools like prepared hand-tests could be of real help.

[helene_t]

I don't think it would be cost-efficient for BBO to scan proactivilly. Too many false positive findings which turned out to be misclicks, statisticial flukes, extreme hands made up for teaching purposes, subtle clues that are actually AI although they look like cheating etc. As for abusive language the situation would be even worse.

[manudude03]

Maybe there could be an automatic flag for scores above 3000. If one appears, have it so a yellow has to approve the result.

[scarletv]

A real time approval might be too much workload for the yellows? Additional the score is not always above 3000.

 helene_t, on 2013-July-29, 06:10, said:

I don't think it would be cost-efficient for BBO to scan proactivilly. Too many false positive findings which turned out to be misclicks, statisticial flukes, extreme hands made up for teaching purposes, subtle clues that are actually AI although they look like cheating etc.

When doing a kind of report it would never make sense to trigger on single events. As you say can be misclick or wrong judgement or whatever ... But when a players appears let's say >5 times a month it should be easy to identify a problem with this player. Reasonable dataset like excluding teaching tables assumed.

A small number of destructive cheating players can and sometime does destroy the atmosphere and I think it is necessary to keep them to a limited number. I think the abuse team is already working on that problem and we would face a bigger one without their effort. I just wonder how the effort could be minimized by automatic tools not enlarged.

 helene_t, on 2013-July-29, 06:10, said:

As for abusive language the situation would be even worse.

I absolutely agree