Scammers Use Symbols and Special Characters in Advertisements to Evade Reports

Scammers Use Symbols and Special Characters in Advertisements to Evade Reports
Scammers advertising boosting services in the Group Finder may have found a new way to bypass automated reports. Many recent listings use symbols and special characters to mask common trigger words like "wts", "boost" and "leveling".

If Blizzard's reporting tools rely on keyword matching, these alterations could make the ads slip through detection, which means that player reports are more likely to be ignored by the system.



Note: By default, clicking on "Report Advertisement" hides the group listing and submits a report automatically. However, if you're using the Premade Groups Filter addon, you may want to disable it if you're planing to mass report bad groups. When enabled, the addon adds extra steps to the report process, requiring players to select a reason, category and optionally provide details.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Scammers Use Symbols and Special Characters in Advertisements to Evade Reports started by Lumy View original post
Published on 2025-07-29 10:23 PM
14 Comments
Comments 14 Comments
  1. Rathwirt's Avatar
    "new" way lol.
  1. inyu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rathwirt View Post
    "new" way lol.
    I was wondering the same lol I have seen this kind of advertisement for months if not years already.
  1. MrLachyG's Avatar
    they've changed the report categories there recently, I don't remember seeing those exact 4 before. another good way to spot and report boosting groups is searching for "thic"
  1. thilicen's Avatar
    They have been doing this literally since gold spammers in vanilla.
  1. Mysterymask's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by thilicen View Post
    They have been doing this literally since gold spammers in vanilla.
    *Since spam filters on email have been invented

    Let's not pretend this is some new spam meta they've been doing this for decades
  1. Puri's Avatar
    I am not sure if this is anything new.
    Also in your literal screenshot there are 5 listings without any special chars, so what makes you think they are automatically filtered out in the first place?
  1. AudibleEscalation's Avatar
    OMG! These wily hackers are using government-level cybersecurity tricks!
  1. RobertMugabe's Avatar
    I think this is whatever if its in the Custom section. Not that many people look over there and tbh ads like these are just sketchy af and probably not that many people are gonna risk going to these sites anyways (especially since there are legit and known boosting services out there that abide by the rules).

    As for the Dungeons and Raids section, honestly what they could do is to simply disable Text input. Just add more checkboxes and whatnot to the creation dialog of a listing and that's it, where you can directly specify if you need more DPS, tanks, healers. Maybe for Raids add keyword selections similar to what exists for M+ where you can tell that skips will be made, doing only last 2 bosses etc.
  1. Lumy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by inyu View Post
    I was wondering the same lol I have seen this kind of advertisement for months if not years already.
    I report ads regularly and only recently (about 1 week ago) I've noticed these new ones using symbols and special characters. All of the characters advertising in this way are on fresh accounts, with the level 70 achievement being obtained exactly 1 week ago.
  1. meheez's Avatar
    This is not scamming.
  1. ZynnlolGaming's Avatar
    We need the old 1 click auto report back with the addons Premade Groups Filter, i believe it was blocked by some blizzard API change a while back.
  1. Mastacow's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by meheez View Post
    This is not scamming.
    Right? This is not a scam. you get the services you pay for. its just not something the "community" agrees with.

    It wouldn't exist if it wasn't being purchased constantly
  1. Brazel MMO's Avatar
    Do the last 2 categories really need to be there? Are they adding swatting to the game now?

    Considering they can't block spammers that have been in /2 for literally years now I doubt this will work
  1. kranur's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by meheez View Post
    This is not scamming.
    Was about to say, this is just advertising services by bypassing the rules, not necessarily trying to scam people.

Site Navigation

Social Media

Services

My Account

Support

Advertise

Resources

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

Our Communities

© 2023 Magic Find, Inc. All rights reserved.