I hadn't had a bot steal any of my bems for a long time until today. I actually thought Supercell had solved the problem. So sad they have not fixed this yet. I love the game but every time this happens, I'm a little more likely to stop playing.
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I hadn't had a bot steal any of my bems for a long time until today. I actually thought Supercell had solved the problem. So sad they have not fixed this yet. I love the game but every time this happens, I'm a little more likely to stop playing.
Just lost a couple stacks of bems to bots. I agree with what you said, it’s definitely something I consider when thinking about what to spend my time with. Having bots prey on my stuff is not what I consider ”fun” ...
Yesterday the bot stole from a friend's shop while I trying to buy them. So she put 10 planks, I bought them. And then she put 5 tapes, the bot got them first, again she tried to put 5 bolts, got stolen again. I looks like the bot only takes 5 tools/bems, not 10. I'm just so glad bot never invade my shop.
Lots of "myths" about the bots. The bots will buy bems no matter how many you list at a time: 1, 2, 5, 10, whatever. The bots will buy no matter what price you put up: full price, price of 1, default, whatever. The bot doesn't care what level you are, what time of day it is, what country you are in. The bot is cycling through many farms at light speed. Sometimes they will instantly get your stuff, sometimes they won't get it for several seconds/minutes. Sometimes you can go weeks or months without being hit by bots. But sadly, they have been a threat for a long time and that doesn't seem to change!
Unfortunately, bots are part of gaming life. There will always be someone that wants to try to beat the system and spoil fun for people. SC does quite a bit to combat bots, but there are fresh ones on the horizon as soon as some have been eliminated.
The only thing a player can do to help is report when we feel a bot has visited our shop. Take a screenshot to attach to your report to support. I also try not to shop from a farm that I may suspect is a bot. And if I come across a farm in the DD that I suspect, I report that.
This argument just doesn't compute. If Supercell was a bank, does this mean the bots would just be able to steal money from accounts in their bank? I certainly hope not. Banks and other companies that handle business online are able to protect themselves. Supercell should be able to protect themselves too. Because in this case, we the customers are losing money while Supercell isn't losing anything (unless people stop playing because of it). And that stinks.
As Momscar stated, unfortunately, bots are part of gaming life. There will always be someone that wants to try to beat the system and spoil fun for people.
Nick, Camilla and Frisco talked about bots earlier this year. LynnK2015 kindly provided a transcription of the video, as well as a link to it. You can see that here: https://forum.supercell.com/showthre...1#post11646957
Supercell continues to make every effort to combat the bots.
This argument does not compute... people have been robbing banks for ages. The banks just continue to change the way they deal with thieves as does supercell.
i don’t lose any money to the bots, so not getting that point either :p
Edit: ninja’d by cowslips :smirk:
It's just a malicious piece of computer code, just like computer viruses. There are thousands of those out there. We fight them, we use anti-virus software, fight robots with other robots, but they are never gone for good. Same goes for the PML friendly family of doom, an ongoing struggle ☺
Nah the BEM stealing bots never left.
Amazing that multi million dollar company refuses to do anything about it.
Maintenance updates are supposed to remove them temporarily, but we had one yesterday and it didn't seem to do anything.
I've resorted to not buying anything from the paper, as well as, sadly, selling anything in the paper either.
Really kinda ruins the game.
But hey keep collecting your fat pay cheques Supercell.
So you think if they wanted to they could do the impossible.
Sorry to disillusion you, But Supercell aren't Super enough to do that.
And if you can think of a rational reason why they might not "want them gone", please enlighten us, because I certainly can't think of one.
Per the TOS, our farms are the intellectual property of Supercell so we don't own anything on our farms. Supercell is granting a limited license to us to play the game.
Since Supercell owns everything on our farms, I think SC is outraged that people are using bots to steal their intellectual property and making a profit from their sale. And thus, I'm speculating that SC is highly motivated to catch the bots. But sadly, it's still a never-ending battle.
BTW, here's part of the TOS I alluded to in my post.
"2. Ownership
2.1. Games and Service
All rights, title and interest in and to the Service (including without limitation any games, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, documentation, in-game chat transcripts, character profile information, recordings of games played using a Supercell game client, and the Supercell game clients and server software) are owned by Supercell. Supercell reserves all rights, including without limitation, all intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights, in connection with its games and the Service.
2.2. Accounts
NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN THE ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO THE ACCOUNT ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF SUPERCELL.
2.3. Virtual Items
Supercell owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to use all of the content that appears in the Service or in Supercell games. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary herein, you agree that you have no right or title in or to any content that appears in the Service, including without limitation the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in any Supercell game, whether earned in a game or purchased from Supercell, or any other attributes associated with an Account or stored on the Service..."
https://supercell.com/en/terms-of-service/
Anybody who knows anything about the subject knows it is impossible.
They can certainly reduce it, they can close the bot accounts whenever they find them.
But there will always be more, and while they are easy for a human to spot, they are much harder for automation to spot.
It is the same with things like spam. Every email provider and forum software provider in the world is trying to eliminate it, but none succeed completely.
First, the bots have perfectly legitimate accounts, they aren't just gaining unauthorised access to Supercell's games. That much they can and do stop. But at the same time, there is no real security in the setting up of game accounts with Supercell - and nor should there be with a free to play mobile game.
Once you are in the account, all the bots are doing is what you could do, but very much faster and more efficiently. If you can't steal money from somebody else's bank account, neither could a bot. They just mimic touches/clicks/typing.
So if you stop a bot from taking from your RSS, you also stop other players from doing so.
The most Supercell can do is:
1) Run programs which look for suspicious behavior on the part of individual accounts.
2) Have some human beings who accept reports of suspected bots, check them out, and ban any actual bots.
The ability of software to identify bots is very limited; they probably catch many more bots through user reports than through their own bot-detection programs.
to counter L-bot, we have to track and know their behavior first.
what is L-bot and their purposes :
1. they can visit your farm without DD, friend, follower, following, last helper or nh fellows.
2. they're attracted if you're trading a lot of BEM. when they smell lot of BEMs being traded they will come and raiding your farm. im not telling you about placing many BEMs at the same time. BUT being traded at that time, even if you put bem on 1 box only.
3. they live because of BEMs. they're interested in BEMs mainly, SEMs too but not really. remember this. They're legion not only one, maybe hundreds L-bot or more.
4. based on my search on google, youtube etc. most of them are lvl 7 farm with L-name. That's why they aren't attracted with LEMs.
5. they can buy your BEMs anywhere. you placed it in box 1? box 10? box 100? they bought it in an instant everytime as long it is BEMs/SEMs. they probably don't scroll through your RSS. just imagine how fast they are if the scrolling through your RSS while you already waiting on X box and you still losing BEM. they just know it and take it in an instant. mimicking clicks? i don't think that they're using clicks.
** this L-bot behavior is based on my research. please correct me if im wrong.
when you place it. its already gone. L-bot was here.
Counter L-bot :
1. give privilege to block who buys from rss.
2. give list on who is active on our farm. we can see who is active at that time on our farm and we can kick / block.
3. make auto-kick/block function if you idle and stayed more than certain amount of time.
4. make trade function.
5. verify where they came from.
6. search through farm named L-bot, i believe most of them are lv 7 and with sold bem/sem rss. ban them, their friend, and their follower (after that we will see another bot name. pray for trader.) if you think that it is pointless to ban L-bot. just remember that you need time to reach lv 7 and setup everything.
tldr: i hate L-bot
Do we actually understand how any of these bots actually find or link to your farm?
(Touch wood) I have never been affected by the L or P bot, but I don’t trade or sell outside my hood. Some of my friends and hoodies have been affected. While I’m grateful to have not been affected, I don’t understand why some are and some arent
We’ve done a number of experiments with throwaway baby farms at this point. I posted this on the p-bot thread
https://forum.supercell.com/showthre...he-P-bot/page5
we’ve done a few more experiments and now that we know what the tag farms look like we’ve managed to spot them easily.
1. Some of them are level 7 and have a name starting with L, but we also found level 7, 14, 32, 22 etc with names made from simple alphabet and number combos etc.
2. Some sell tools as infection carrots almost always at full price. Others sell corn and wheat. The wheat is almost always penny wheat. The corn is sometimes weird amounts.
3. Once you buy anything from the tag farm shop, your farm is infected with script that works like Greg/tom buyer script only specific to barn and silo tools and often at a routinely used amount and coin combo like 1/270 or 10/2700 or 5/1 etc. some of the old p-bot scripts were really really huge and had tons of coin amount combos built in, but that seems to be less active than l-bot right now.
4. The script is running on a stripped down graphic free server to read tools in your rss the moment you post them, no amount of clicking as fast as you can will help IF the bot is actively running, but there are periods where it doesn’t run consistently.
5. Identifying your farm with screen shots as infected to support will help but only, in our experience, when a full Monday maintenance is run, which doesn’t happen often.
6. The bot is INFECTIOUS which means if someone you know bought from a DD tag bot, then sold tools to you .... you’ve now got the bot.
7. Sending screenshots to support of the TAG farms you find in the newspaper does help them disable that particular bot and might also stop those farms infected from it, we are not sure of this.
We’ve managed to keep our main farms from being infected by never buying full price tools unless it’s clealy a personally named farm...and never buying wheat and corn from DD.
This is not a part of gaming life. You justify this behaviour with this comment is ludicrous.
one of the best ideas I’ve seen in this post is the ability to block users buying from your farm. It’s not a player responsibility to resolve this matter.. it is SC’s responsibility. However this may be difficult to implement. I am little tired of hearing some moderators and game specialists siding with the typical SC standard response and I find this a lack of understanding on their behalf using TOS arguments. Seriously fixed the problem. You’re paid by your customers so you need to start owning the problem.
There is not the slightest hint of a shred of a possibility she in any way shape or form said anything to justify it.
I find your suggestion that she was doing so extremely offensive.
That would help, slightly, and would certainly be a good idea to implement. It wouldn't nearly do away with the problem, but it would be close to eliminating it for those who bothered.Quote:
one of the best ideas I’ve seen in this post is the ability to block users buying from your farm.
You will just have to stay a little tired then. We don't have any other answer than the "standard SC response".Quote:
It’s not a player responsibility to resolve this matter.. it is SC’s responsibility. However this may be difficult to implement. I am little tired of hearing some moderators and game specialists siding with the typical SC standard response and I find this a lack of understanding on their behalf using TOS arguments. Seriously fixed the problem. You’re paid by your customers so you need to start owning the problem.
You were accusing Cowslips of justifying illegal cheating activity, and you think that wouldn't be offensive?
Of course it was critical. If you find it offensive to be criticised for making offensive statements yourself, then these forums are probably not the place for you - and that is not a criticism of you, just a statement of fact. If you make statements accusing people of things like that, you are going to get criticised.Quote:
However your first statement and the following one were very critical, highly offensive and down right rude.
I could have just given you an infraction or formal warning for it, but decided to take the much lesser action.
And why you think my response was rude or offensive, I have no idea.
Bots should not be part of gaming life.
Stop misconstruing my statement and implying I’m saying something totally different. Quote me yes but don’t put words in my mouth and pretend I was implying that. You should not be a moderator if you continue to harass players in this way.
Pot calling kettle black much...? Asking me why I thought you were being rude. Seriously take chill pill. You’re overreacting and overreaching.
Additionally threatening me to give me an infraction and completely being rude to customers is unwarranted.
your comment “You will just have to stay a little tired then” is sarcastic and rude.
I wouldn't dream of putting words in your mouth. Your actual words were "You justify this behaviour with this comment is ludicrous". You weren't implying anything, you were outright stating that she justified it.
I haven't harassed anybody.Quote:
You should not be a moderator if you continue to harass players in this way.
I disagree. Accusing a moderator of justifying cheating is NOT acceptable. And there is no other way to rwad what you wrote, it is not overreacting in the slightest to say that.Quote:
Pot calling kettle black much...? Asking me why I thought you were being rude. Seriously take chill pill. You’re overreacting and overreaching.
Is this some new definition of the word "threatening" that I was unaware of? Because saying I could have done it is not threatening to do so.Quote:
Additionally threatening me to give me an infraction and completely being rude to customers is unwarranted.
It was certainly not sarcastic, and was not intended to be rude. It was just a statement of fact.Quote:
your comment “You will just have to stay a little tired then” is sarcastic and rude.
You said you are a little tired of us coming out with the same old statement, but there is nothing else we can say. Which means I'm afraid, you will have to stay a little tired. That is just factual, not critical of you in any way.
No matter how much we may want to eliminate them (and believe me, Supercell want to as much as the players want it), it is virtually impossible to do so. SC do shut diwn multiple instances of the bot every day, but more just keep springing up, and always will.
Every online game where bots can save players time or effort has them. Every game provider tries to get rid if them, and rightly so. But none succeed completely.
Look up the terminology and code of harrassment in any work place. The fact that I feel like I’m being harassed by you regardless of you saying you haven’t harassed me is irrelevant. Your manager if unbiased would think differently as well. You’re unprofessional in your conduct and is not becoming of the position you hold. The fact that you have threatened me for stating my opinion shows you’re are not in control and feel threatened thus overreacting and overreaching to compensate your lack of judgement and experience.
Statng you haven’t put word in my mouth is false. You misrepresented my statement and tried to influence the discussion to your advantage.
WOW this debate has spiraled somewhat since I last read it:saywhat:
Whatever the rights and wrongs of statements made by posters so far, the response from a battery of mods does seem pretty heavy handed to me just reading the whole thread again:(
Of course none of us should be posting anything that seems rude, excessively critical, threatening, sarcastic or upsetting to other forum users (I’m not beyond reproach in that respect of course), but that should extend to mods too. I’m sorry to say that when I read a mod mentioning potential infractions and saying ‘maybe these forums aren’t the place for you’ that seems covertly threatening - regardless of the intent. There have been statements on both sides that I read as a little sarcastic and rude, sadly this whole thread is now just toxic.
I appreciate that mods and games specialists do a thankless and sometimes difficult job, and without them these forums wouldn’t exist, but their interactions with forum users shouldn’t seem overbearing or harassing in nature. Of course I will wait to be told that comments aren’t overbearing or harassing, but whatever their intent (and only we know for sure what our intent was in writing a post) if they seem that way to other users, then they are. If we can’t just find a middle ground to discuss bots without so much bile, perhaps closing the thread makes more sense.
Trying to be the voice of reason here......:D
[QUOTE=porg69;11916790]Look up the terminology and code of harrassment in any work place. The fact that I feel like I’m being harassed by you regardless of you saying you haven’t harassed me is irrelevant.
[Quote]
I am only responding to thebpounts you make against me in your posts. How is that harassment?
Like all of the moderators here, I am not a professional, I am a volunteer, doing the role in my spare time.Quote:
Your manager if unbiased would think differently as well. You’re unprofessional in your conduct and is not becoming of the position you hold.
The fact here is that I have not threatened you at all. I am very sorry if you took anything I said as implying any sort of threat. The mention of infractions was not tgreating you might get one, it was just letting you know I was trying to be reasonable. And still am.Quote:
The fact that you have threatened me for stating my opinion shows you’re are not in control and feel threatened thus overreacting and overreaching to compensate your lack of judgement and experience.
Please give me some insight as to what else you could possibly have ment by those words then. I really cannot read your words as meaning anything other than saying Cowslips was justifying bots.Quote:
Statng you haven’t put word in my mouth is false. You misrepresented my statement and tried to influence the discussion to your advantage.
If you meant something else, then I apologise, but you really should have been clearer.
I just wrote to SC and asked them to look at this thread because of the posts by the moderators.
^^^ yes, an impartial 3rd party might be best. Must confess to reading the response to porg and thinking "ouch" at how it came across.
I’m keeping my comment short - I agree with mdcfc re mods reply. Scrolling back, it felt like the mod went on the offensive re porg69 comments. Regurgitating standard SC’s reply on bots is not helping either. I understand porg69’s or anyone else’s frustrations as my farms are currently infected again with the L bot for the 2nd time in less than 3 months, and messages to ingame support seem to disappear. That’s all I have to add here.
Please take this fight somewhere else guys.
Do this private.
I will accept that my initial response was pretty strong.
But given that it was a response to what I read as him saying Cowslips was justifying bots (i.e. justifying cheating), I think it deserved a pretty strong response. And I still cannot see what else he might have meant by that comment.
Everything I have written since then has been purely responding to his points about me - and yes, I agree it would have been better kept private than posted here. I probably should have responded to his first response by PM rather than a post here.
I think the point is that bots obviously are doing things we couldn't do. Namely, access the shop of a farm who isn't on their friends', helpers' or followers list. And which isn't close to them on the boat list, and outside events. A shop which isn't selling anything in the paper.
So there seems to be some sort of secret backdoor which I very much hope Supercell would close. Soon.
Haha, funny string. I agree Steve.
Back to the point, I have my first confirmed bot in a long time. Not sure if I've been lucky dodging them or they're just making a comeback. I hope they're never ignored. Should be task number 1 for the SC team.
Thanks Aardvark for posting your experience and a summary on patterns you've picked up. They've definitely gotten smarter. Mine is buying random things other than upgrade tools. And there is a picture associated with the farm - anyone else seeing that?
i did post a photo of the L-bot level 7 tag farm here....we’ve noticed that similar alphabet and numeric farms look exactly the same, even if they’re levels higher.
https://forum.supercell.com/showthre...he-P-bot/page5
I also noticed another forum person post that she found one among her Facebook friend farms when doing the random accept anyone thing that people do to unlock rss slots....and that makes me think that these cheaters are actively seeking out new farms to friend from Facebook accounts too which is nasty....i disactivated FB when supercell ID came out happily.
Interestingly, although I’ve been surfing the DD a bit less lately, I have seen less of the tag farms lately.
They are using external programs to do the robbing, smiliar to wheater bots. Yes, almost anyone can do it, but that's cheating. Normal players don't cheat, so, it is impossible for them (us).
Not impossible for a human player? Really?
Hope it's not the official SuperCell opinion, else the happy P-M-L family is here to stay.
http://i65.tinypic.com/ao3n60.jpg
As far as I am aware, each individual action of the bot is one which a human could theoretically do. I am not aware of any secret backdoor they use.
They are cheating, and a huge problem because they can act much faster than any human, and because one person can control thousands of instances of them.
And of course, unlike tge wheater bots, or the clash farming bots (both of which are still cheating), these ones have an immediate and obvious detrimental effect on the specific farms they target.
So now we’ve sort of cleared the air, and we are all sort of friends again, anyone else fancy naming their farm after the L or P bot?:)
Disclaimer: I’m jokingXD
We have to accept that it’s impossible for SC to stop people opening accounts and making them bots as fast as SC can shut down known ones. What really sucks is that as Chipfarm alluded to, they seem to somehow access farms in ways that the rest of us can’t. Surely the answer to this is to find and close whatever access loopholes they exploit to hit people’s farms. If Ajax theory is correct that they are doing nothing we can’t all do, but don’t know it, surely the onus is on SC to secure those hidden loopholes - is that really impossible?
My farm is named Lynnsanity. Just kidding.
I don't know when it happened but I've come to the realization that Supercell is putting their best effort to combat or at least mitigate the bot infestation because people are stealing and profiting from their intellectual property. Since their culture is keeping the game teams small to focus on quality, I think Team Hay Day struggles daily to allocate their limited resources to develop new content and combat the bots.
As much as I'd like to think there exists a group of specialists whose sole function is to detect bots and respond vigorously to them, I think it's a fantasy at this time because no one knows Hay Day as well as the game team.
I know you are joking, but that is actually a large part of why we don't allow them to be named. There really are genuine players out there with farms named the same.
If they can do so without affecting the players who use them legitimately, yes. But I believe it is things like you can visit any farm on the global boat leaderboard and other similar things (not sure what though?). Once you find a way of visiting a farm, a bot can do it as often as it likes.Quote:
We have to accept that it’s impossible for SC to stop people opening accounts and making them bots as fast as SC can shut down known ones. What really sucks is that as Chipfarm alluded to, they seem to somehow access farms in ways that the rest of us can’t. Surely the answer to this is to find and close whatever access loopholes they exploit to hit people’s farms. If Ajax theory is correct that they are doing nothing we can’t all do, but don’t know it, surely the onus is on SC to secure those hidden loopholes - is that really impossible?
If these farms are normal gaming accounts like mine and yours, I don’t understand how a bot can visit a farm as often as it likes? I’m limited to hoodies, friends, global leaderboards, event leaderboards, advertisers in DD, last helpers - half of those have a finite time I can visit them. I can’t keep going back adinfinitum. These bots are clearly not constrained in the same way as the rest of us. If things like the individual leaderboards are providing a conduit for bots to function, then they should be closed down! Sure there are a small handful of farms who care greatly about where they sit on the boat or event leaderboard, there are way more farms that care about being robbed by bots.
Lynn you may be right that SC is putting its best effort into countering bots. However the rest of your post seems more likely to me, they don’t have sufficient resources with the small teams they operate. Frankly in a company with a $2bn annual revenue and a $900m profit that’s actually scandalous if it is the case. Even if these bot operators are profiting from Supercells intellectual property, if it isn’t impacting on their profit margin, where’s the imperative for SC to really deal with it? Customer satisfaction would perhaps be the only imperative, and as a customer that doesn’t seem to be a leading driver in their MO.
The L bot visits our shops by farm id. Game is hacked and needs new encryption.
Banning the specific L farm that bought from our shops does not help, cause another L farm uses the same way to access our farms.
Agreed. And what’s more, they are using supercells own backdoor that they created with the Greg and Tom buyer scripts. Solution - which I have offered before - REMOVE the buyer script option so nothing can buy automatically from the shops, only user end.
Sure, this means your tofu dogs are going to sit there indefinitely but that’s kind of your problem for posting them. The buyer bots are worse.
The bot was created by greg and tom buyer scripts? Gosh, how did they exploit that?
Never sell tofu dogs, rustic bouquet, red smoothies by ten in quantity. If you want them gone from your farm, sell 1 or 2 per box, if necessary, reduce the price, it doesn't hurt if you put 20-30% discount for the item that no one wants 🤔 at least it works in my farm.
So please dear moderators, bring this message to the Supercell team, as support deletes all our messages related to the L bot.
I would like to see a button to 'report the last buyer', which would then ask for a reason and report last purchasers farm id, the text and other info (purchasers ip address, etc)
SC just need to see what farm idents, ip addresses occur most often .... maybe?
Just came across this thread and impressed myself for not being a part of it, lol!
in a previous discussion of bots, someone - don't remember who - suggested the bots were able to read server info. Best suggested explanation I've seen. Everything we do is tracked, it has to be. So, you put 5 bems in your shop, code has to account for that - coding removes it from your inventory, identifies the type product it is, attaches it to the shop, and then transfers those inventory amounts by item code to the new 'owner". Bots read the server info -again this is per the explanation I read here and it makes sense. By scanning SC server info they are able to identify the code for bems (or whatever else) and attack that "spot". All very quickly, of course. This accounts for why they can attack the shop of a farmer who doesn't sell outside their own NH. You don't have to. The bot is reading server code. If duct tape is "xy0019", to use an example, all the bot has to do is look for that entry and attack/transfer the coded amounts. What type of footprint does that transaction leave? No idea, but something has to be there to identify what happened.
I offer this not as my explanation, but as the best explanation I've seen thus far. If it's accurate, it seems like protecting the servers would go a long way towards preventing malicious entry. The servers are the one area we all have in common, they are the single area where we all intersect.
Just thought I'd post what I'd read some while back as this seems to be an ongoing issue relative to how it's happening.
Love and Kisses to All.
(Insert legal disclaimer mumbo jumbo here.)
So if the explanation is that simple, why are there many farms that have never been infected or affected by bots? Are those farmers just lucky? How can it be that a player that is very active, shops for wheat occasionally in the DD, participates in global events, and transfers different varieties of EMs to both friends and neighbors, has never had a bot visit??
And that’s the problem Momscar, nobody knows how it works - including SC it appears! I have never been affected by the bots, it appears that never selling or helping outside my hood may in some way be protective?? The BEMS etc I sell to my teammates or my baby farm haven’t attracted L or P. So if the bots are reading the servers, or using Tom/Gregg buyer script to access random farms, why not me?
the bot requires an active farm ID first - then it uses a script similar to the Greg/Tom autobuy script to automatically snatch specified items from your shop as soon as they are posted. Acquiring your farm ID is a multi prong process - they can get them from tag farms (how have they managed to identify farm ID from the sold slot of a tag farms RSS when we can’t do the same, hmmm....), Facebook, and off leaderboards.
Not buying tools wheat etc from a DD tag farm is the best way to avoid infection, but the rest is just luck.
Main forum rules 5, 6 and 7 have resulted in this thread being closed.
Discussion of how bots work, how members think they work or providing what could be new suggestions for how to get them to work was never going to last long.