WTF? Looks like people have also started selling these bots to generate Entrecredits! :O

See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=722687

I've been expecting this for a while.

Despite the best efforts of the admins, the ingenuity of those who will game the system can never be underestimated.

Damn. I hope this does not make our credits worth less.... It will screw up the economy

From what I've sort of gathered from reading posts in the past, the anti-bot code seems to check for speed of dropping.

If you can just run this as a background process, you could do 300 (or however many) in a day just auto-clicking slowly.

I can think of ways you could possibly detect this by looking at time intervals between drops, and doing an analysis of which sites get dropped on, but those would be easy to bypass.

I think in the long run, this will be big problem for EC.

On the other hand, this is really just the logical extension of chain dropping. If you aren't going to read the site, it is a small step to get a bot to do it.

Wow! It can drop 3 cards in 1 second. LOL! Question, won't that trigger a security warning or something. Can a human drop 3 cards in 1 second? O_o

One of the guys who was asking for (and used) a review copy of the program in that thread: http://i26.tinypic.com/2v1mf4y.jpg

http://typelife.blogspot.com/

Heh. Cute. We'll deal with it. Sadly for the current owners, the bot in question leaves a rather unique signature in the logs.

@ Phirate : Hah! That's gr8. Those people will regret.

ruby90 was using this blog to test with:

http://www.moneytubed.com/

@ Phirate: So you find it out by the speed of dropping..or something else? :P

I'm glad you are on top of it. Cheers!

Oh, question. What would be the penalty for those caught using it since you did say that it has a unique signature?

@ San Pablo City : I am guessing that either they will be penalized with a lot of credits or their account will be banned.

I just tried dropping on Typelife, and the widget font was different. Then when I dropped, it said, "Thanks?" with the question mark. When I refreshed, however, it said "Thanks!" in the regular font.

._O

Planned first-stage counter-measures are in place based on an initial assessment of the mechanism. please have patience with the widget for a few hours as we bring additional changes online.

I'd appreciate reports of strange visuals on the drop button.

Two I just dropped on after I drop, the button doesn't return the usual thanks. It sort of turns half white half gray.

Lets hope they don't discover the power of random numbers.

Well it is a weird font that says "Drop" on all the blogs I visit now, and when its under the graphic, it doesnt fit. Hard to explain. I click on it and I get some weird graphical error. When I refresh the page, it says thanks on the widget but it doesn't get registered as a drop by me

I drop on my ad inbox and most just turned half white, half gray. What's going on? Does this have something to do with the automated bot?

I just dropped about 60 cards this morning. Not a single one of them showed up in my drops log and registered. I also got the little screwy graphic kinda thing instead of the usual "Thanks"

The "half white half grey" is actually an error page but you can only see the corner of it.

Ok, we'll need a little help with this, we've just done a lot of stuff pretty damn quick, so some things will no doubt be slightly off:

1. If you're suffering some kind of weird graphics thing with the drop button, please post a screenshot
2. Drop counting may be a bit off, I'm sorry, we had to make some serious changes fast and there simply isn't time to ensure that everyone has the new stuff properly loaded and cached before deployment.

More details shortly.

In order to ensure you have the latest version of the widget code in your web browser, if you're using firefox, please do the following:

1. Go to a page with an Entrecard widget
2. Hold down control + shift and click "Reload".

I apologize once again for the inconvenience.

Phirate, here is what I see on all sites at the moment:

http://www.benbarden.com/img/20080305-error.jpg

No text on the widget. Can't click on it.

same just gray and white image and no "Thanks" being displayed.

The widget is not working right now...

Hard refreshed the page. No text (as per above screenshot)

Got an error in the JS console though:

Error: console is not defined Source File: http://entrecard.com/static/amazon/button.html?user_id=4925 Line: 82

oh good catch! thanks!

Try now?

Right, now it shows up and drops... however, we have the different font that others mentioned.

Drop text (weird):

http://www.benbarden.com/img/20080305-drop.jpg

Thanks (no difference):

http://www.benbarden.com/img/20080305-thanks.jpg

dropping on your site worked but there was no "Drop" just the yellow bg

clicking would reveal "Thanks"

My screenshots so far have been in Firefox 3 Beta 3.

I just noticed what Archon Digital said when I tested in IE7. (It really helps to specify which browser you're using, and which version - I should follow my own advice!)

Behaviour in IE7 - Blank drop text - but clickable:

http://www.benbarden.com/img/20080305-ie7drop.jpg

Behaviour in IE7 - Thanks without the !

http://www.benbarden.com/img/20080305-ie7thanks.jpg

Yeah sorry about the font change, that's here to stay. At some point I'll clean up the response font to match. Not a priority right now.

Phirate, my drops are working now using IE 7. I haven't tried in Firefox yet.

I just did another hard refresh in IE7 and that odd problem seems to have gone away. So, as the widget says... Thanks! ;)

Just got IE7 working. There's an odd layout issue on the 200px widget I'm still looking into (drop button too far right)

It seems to be working again now. Using Firefox 2.0.0.12. The "Drop" graphic seemed nice and it said Thanks! as usual when I clicked on it. It also registered fine as a drop by me. I will continue dropping and let you know if there are any more issues.

my reply at the dp forums:

"stupid n00bs. You'll all get banned for this! Don't do things like this!"

http://entrecard.com/forums/1/3752/#p=36

Hehe

haha...lol.

At least 50 drops and only 26 recorded X 3 blogs of 200 drops each maybe I should make this my full time occupation. 24 hrs won't be enough time to do the drops. I am not surprised some people opt for other methods.

@forex I apologize, we needed to take immediate action in this particular instance. What time (and your timezone) did you start dropping?

Gmt & 2 Sadly I have already dropped on the other 2 blogs Though it was long and tedious I only started checking once I read the posts on this last one. Started this one about an hour ago

On the other 2 most of the drops have not changed colour though I know I go through the dashboard thoroughly. I cannot say how many missed on those. I strated dropping about 8am GMT

Pathetic! Come on the whole purpose is to review other blogs and drop on the way out. I know we all want to drop our limit, but using a bot?

I am glad their fingerprint was left and hope they get banned from the site for 1 week and all credits removed.

EC you're doing great hang in there!

@TechBlog

I agree. It's pretty silly using a bot.

First it defeats the whole purpose of the community. Second you can only drop 300 a day that's not a whole lot to do yourself by hand. It's not like you could drop an infinite amount and rack up EC's.

Why do a few always come along and ruin the sandbox for everyone?

I think they're only ruining it for themselves.

Idiots. This is the nature of the internet: As soon as you create something worthwhile, there will be some moron somewhere that feels the need to exploit it for their own gain.

UGH! I cant stand jerks like this. DP needs needs to ban these ass-hats.

Better idea:

Any time someone uses a bot, Entrecard takes the credits they would have earned, then split them up and give to every other member of the site.

What is the point of using a bot? I don't get it. Are they hoping to get reciprocal drops from it?

Because people have seen that they can sell EC credits for real money. As soon as you find a way to make money, there will be people out there designing ways to make that money easier.

Of course, its nice to know that this system currently doesnt work and all those idiots that forked over cash to exploit Entrecard just paid money for something that no longer works.

DAMN! I just spent about 20mins trying to find out why Firefox had changed the font... I thought something had screwed up on my browser....

Anyway you can make the image look better... it moved all over.

Also... Not sure if it helps. When i made a widget I once used random images to prevent this type of thing... random file names and sizes.

Not sure if it will help.. and you prob already know.