Lets talk about spam bots (and how to get rid of them)!

Many of us have been consistently getting friend requests from spam bots, and it's becoming more and more frequent as of late. I get one probably 4-5 times per week. It's pretty simple to just decline each one, but with no easy way to report them, they just come back the next day. Here I will propose some ideas for combatting these bots.

• First and foremost - give us an option to report these players as a button on the invite card, or allow us to select and copy their name for ease of use of the report button that already exists.

• Show us the level of the invitee. Similar to player cards when mouse-overing a friend. I should show all that same information. Seeing an invite from a level 1 can greatly increase the discretion players have when accepting invites.

• Limit the number of pending invites to something low like perhaps 3. It is unlikely that a legitimate new player would have more than three friends to invite. Even if they do have more than three friends to invite, I think 3 is a reasonable number, and it could be coupled with a friendly message like "Sorry , but to prevent spam bots, you may only have 3 pending invites at a time." As soon as someone accepts, you are free to invite another.

• (Probably the most effective and easy to implement one) Revoke the right to post hyperlinks in that chat until the user has played at least one game with the person they are chatting with. This way spam bots couldn't send phishing links or elo boosting links to strangers. The links may still appear if you want, but don't make them clickable, or issue a warning to the user that this link may not be trustworthy.

Nobody likes spam.