Serious question - Given that advertising in the LFG tool is actionable - why can you even type “WTS” in the box for the name of your group? There exists an entire list of words you can’t use for pet names, could this same filter policy not apply to the group finder tool?
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Because word filters don’t work to well. You can spell “WTS” with an infinite number of characters using ascii code.
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I mean, I’m sure it could, but just like with pet names you’d find that people become very creative with how they spell things out.
W T S
W-T-S
W_T_S
W * T * S
W_TS
.
.
.
I could go on…but at some point it gets sorta ridiculous 
Please be sure to keep reporting those who break the rules with these wts groups! The more reports, the faster they tend to get it shut down.
They even recently made it against the rules to make an account just for ads like this. Those accounts are getting closed down too.
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Primarily because we don’t have a filter that is that specific as to prohibit the use of otherwise perfectly acceptable words and acronyms.
There exists an entire list of words you can’t use for Names because those systems were built with that in mind. Those systems don’t otherwise prohibit the use of the words associated with titles like King, Captain, etc… or other word considered not appropriate for a name in regular communication, only for names.
If you’d like to see an additional prohibited list added to the LFG tool specifically you will want to submit feedback in a Community forum like General Discussion or submit a suggestion through the in-game interface option so our Developers can take it into consideration.
Additionally, as the others pointed out, prohibiting specific words/characters is not always successful as there are numerous ways around it, which will still make their way into an ad. Please report those that you find.
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Way back Blizzard tried a filter on in-game chat to block gold-sellers. It took five minutes for them to bypass the filter.
There is a filter for objectionable language on the forums. It doesn’t stop players from using alternate spellings or mis-spellings to use the words without them being filtered.
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is there any possibility that you can tell us what happens with those reports?
during the 2 weeks of Crown Chemical Co, i would queue myself, then while in queue, report report report report… the ads from the same people were still there the next day, and the next, and the next… some of them still there 6 days later.
we were having a discussion about this spam in gd, and i tried an experiment where i did nothing but report wts groups for an entire hour, just to see if it had any impact.
it didn’t.
i created an album with “progress” at various stages during the hour.
it’s fairly apparent that no amount of reporting is helping.
(i lost count when i got past about 600)
…and through the duration of the 2 weeks reporting, i noticed 2 new companies join in on the spam.
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The best I can tell you is that they are used, along with other gathered data, to take action based on what is found. As with botting and other methods of exploitation, specifically dealing with a single ad doesn’t net as much benefit as finding a means to deal with advertiser.
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i knew you wouldn’t be able to tell me much.
i guess i’m just frustrated at the situation which is clearly out of control.
…the longer those ads are left, the more people are going to figure that it’s ok to use the services.
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I’m with you, Nobully. We all very much would like to see that process go faster. It is something that they are working on but I don’t have a lot of information, sorry.
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It’s out of control due to the non-stop idiocy of people using those services, unfortunately. RMT existed before WoW and it will exist long after, but the bottom line is it is the fault of our player base who would rather engage in the illegal activities. Because there is a market for it, it will continue to be an issue. No matter what we see or report or what have you, I wouldn’t expect too much information from the staff if only to prevent what leaks they can in their constant battle against those websites/compromised accounts/botters and the like. You don’t want to tell someone what stage you’re at in storming the castle, only for the opposing force to shore up their defenses. 
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Can’t remember if I asked this already, but can’t Blizzard pursue legal action against people that use their games to generate real money for themselves?
Depends upon what country they are from. They tend to be target by foreign gangs. There have been articles in the financial world about game gold farming operations in China, Russia, etc.
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Might as well throw in some image proof of my own (with names and websites blocked out for obvious reasons):
Disclaimer: this particular image was from roughly a month ago, but I am still seeing 5+ day old ads near the end of every week.
The fact that these ads are somehow staying up for 5+ days at a time and circumventing the report auto-ignore is completely unacceptable.
There’s another strange thing going on: Despite that highlighted ad having “WTS” in it, if I attempt to search for “WTS” in the search bar, that ad does not show up, making it difficult to report when there’s just one or two of the unsearchable WTS ads hiding amongst hundreds of real groups. 
If you have a way to stop it, it’ll be more helpful than saying something is unacceptable. IF there was a way for Blizzard to magically stop this, it’d have been done so already. More to the point, the CS forum, along with the blues here, are unable to do anything about it.
There’s no magic bullet to stop this. There’s no way to filter out this as Pearl pointed out. There’s no real way without pretty much removing all forms of talking in the game whatsoever.
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The auto-ignore only works for your current log-in session. If you log out or /reload it is wiped.
If they are staying up for 5+ days at a time, report it as a bug from the in-game interface.
I noticed that myself when searching for WTS posts. If you search for [WTS it will find the ones that hide from a normal WTS search.
In that image, that 5 day old ad popped up no less than three times in 15 minutes despite reporting it every time it showed up, and that’s without logging out or /reloading.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The pictured ad does not get found by searching for “[WTS” or “WTS”. I wish I’d gotten a normal WTS ad in that image I posted above, but look closely at the spacing of the letters in the ad – it’s different from when you type in WTS in the group name normally. […don’t actually do that, just compare it to other WTS ads.]
So report it as a bug.
Personally I’m not seeing the difference between your picture and the other one posted in this thread. Search just for [W instead. Or guarantee from the body of the ad.
Reading between the lines on the Blue responses…
It sounds like they’re looking at a way to remake the LFG system to make it harder or impossible to advertise a carry, rather than playing whack-a-mole with carry sellers. Maybe the LFG system will end up looking very different than it does now. I know that it has been a pain point for a while now, but I can see where coming up with an entirely different design for finding non-random groups would be a big, involved task with an uncertain ready-by date.
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That’s the trouble with just implementing a tool to filter keywords. The filter will prevent ‘WTS’, but not ‘WTS’ (the second example includes zero-width spaces between the letters).
It’s not possible to implement a filter that will eliminate all possible permutations, misspellings and workarounds.
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Absolutely. The conversation centered around the screenshot perfectly reinforces the point of how difficult it would be to filter advertisements out of the LFG tool.
I suspect since most of us use filters when we search, which is quite a simple and quick process, many people think the answer to the advertising is as simple as someone at Blizz adding various permutations of “wts” into a text document, and hitting ‘Apply’.
Clearly, it’s far more difficult than that.
This would be great. 
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