Bitcoin Forum

Not going to point at anyone specific here, but I see there are a lot of trust feedbacks been given based on paypal deals.
So what happends is:
A member in DefaultTrust, lets call him Bob for simplicity, is selling his paypal for btc, so anyone, for example Alice, who sells bitcoin to him is the one at risk not Bob. So after a successful transaction, it should be Alice who leaves a trust rating on Bob as she is running a risk as Bob(trusted paypal sellers always urge the untrusted one to go first) only goes after Alice sends first, not the other way around as Bob is not running any risk which would make him to leave a trust rating on Alice. Anyway continuing, now what Alice(and most trust farmers) can do is use virwox and incur a loss of max 10% of the amount he/she traded. Say she traded 0.1 btc(which is pretty much the average amount trust farmers use) with Bob, so now converting it back to bitcoin would take some hassle + a bit of loss max 0.01.
So has this forum's trust degraded so much that one trust feedback from a trusted member costs only 0.01 for a trust farmer?

Unfortunately not all of those who belongs to the Default Trust deserve the position. Some of them doesn't fully understand the opportunity given to them to help the community.


side comment:
When you said bob I automatically thought of the bob we all know i  here lol.

Yes, some people use the trust system as a trade feedback system. It would probably be better if the reputation threads would be used for that kind of feedback. On the other hand the rep threads are barely used at all, the whole section is hardly used.

In the light of "(next to) no rules of feedback left" I think its fine. People need to read the feedback, what it was given for and what feedback the person in question usually gives, etc. It might be a bit much to ask for such investigations for someone new, but the alternative is to read a possible 80+ pages thread or to moderate the trust system.

Yeah the old members of the forum know not to trust anyone by going first and always using an escrow but say Alice does this 3-4 times, leaves the account for the trust rating to go up(now the trust rating of her account is 34-0/+4 ,which is considered highly trustworthy here). Then when she gets a chance she scams a newbie/Jr. member/ Member/Full member(these are most of the users that go blindly according to trust rating) 0.3-0.4 btc as it is more or less required by btc- paypal sellers that a newbie who is selling their btc for paypal is the one who goes first.

I am aware of the risks and I dont like them either, I just dont see it as an option to force people to understand the trust system in a certain way. This would require moderating it. The best course of action is probably to contact the person on DT that leaves these ratings and ask them consider the possible implications.

I am doing so , and wouldn't be surprised if they don't comply. Anyway just wanted to attract community's attention to this. If you too see any trust rating been given like this please PM the DT member and ask him to reconsider his feedback

How does the overall community feel about dooglus giving positive trust to a scammer ponzi who ended up stealing at least 0.1 BTC? I think this might be forgivable if it is a one time occurrence and the offending party (dooglus in this case) wee to reimburse those who lose money because of his positive trust rating (he was saying that the scamming ponzi should be trusted when this was not a true statement.

I think what happened with the scamming ponzi was a form of trust farming because someone on Default Trust gave them positive trust when such positive trust was not due. It has been speculated a couple of times today in a thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1208053.0;topicseen) that I created about this scamming ponzi that dooglus might have been selling his positive trust.

Being in the trust network means you should call them out. While you are at it feel free to look over my sent feedbacks also. We are supposed to be held to a higher standard. Look at Tspacepilot now...he is green for nothing. Give him 6 months and he will have great trust for no reason at all lol. Nothing against him, but he got free trust with no deals.

Lets keep it in one thread, shall we? Hijacking other threads - even if they might be related to the topic - will only cause confusion and rehashed arguments.

that means, if i buy btc via pp i dont deserve a rating for a successfull deal? just because a user is on DT it doesnt mean he is trustworthy. sure he ended up on the list somehow but he could still be a bad person.

i am doing a lot of deals with PP lately and i think if i dont do a chargeback (and yes i know i will not do it) i deserve a feedback for it. if its with a DT or non DT member doesnt count. i have the same standards for dealing with users if they are new or old. it doesnt matter to me.

I dont think anyone is entitled to get a feedback on the DT network for a single trade. Esp. not for 0.01 as in the example by mexxer-2.

You should always exercise caution when trading or dealing with people even if they are on DT. Loads of the guys on DT have ended up as scammers or multiple account holders. This is why I don't buy or sell anything on here.

DT is bull shit, I'm sure about 80% of them are fine but there have been lots of instances where DT members have scammed or carried out immoral practices. It's like an old boys club, lots of politics involved.

Have you read my example fully? My concern is that any account farmers can just buy big amount of paypal and suffer only a max 10% loss for any such exchange as they can exchange it right back from my service. Why should a positive feedback from different person for  every single currency exchange be needed for a deal, I think paypal to btc positive feedbacks should be limited to one per person, you can always buy the paypal from the same person, get a positive feedback which would improve your reputation but not your trust. Theoritically I can "buy" like 20+ feedbacks from members on default trust suffering only a maximum of 0.5 loss, wait for 4-5 months for the rating to grow, and make a big scam and disappear wit more than 1 whole btc.
Just one feedback from one person can demonstrate how trustful you are, for future deals. Lastly, I am not speaking for incidents when it is you selling the paypal and you recieve the feedback, it is valid, as the member from DT was running a risk by trusting you not to reverse the payment. But the example I am talking about are when Seller of paypal(DT member) sells paypal and sends only after the btcs are recieved, this has nothing to do with how much you trust someone.

The more I think about it the more I think its might not actually be a problem. When you do a deal you give the risked amount. This should indicate for other people at a later date how much the person can be trusted with. E.g. if you do a 0.01 PP to BTC trade you get a positive rating, but it also says that you trusted the person only for a big cup of coffee worth of coins. If the trust system can offer any guidance it must be that the ratings are read and not just a colored numbers are checked.

The flashy green/red/black numbers are easily modified if you seek trades with the right person, but as long as they always state the proper amount, someone with loads of 0.01 or 0.1 BTC trades would stick out.

Due to the back and forth though, it might still be worth it, hard to say whats worth a long con and what is not.

[1] personal opinion ofc.

Well I didn't expect this from you, but you seem to have misunderstood the example as well. What I am talking about here is , lets demostrate it once again:
Bob: DefaultTrust member
Alice: A likely trust farmer

Alice buys $100 in paypal from Bob, as Bob is a trusted member in the community Alice is the one who goes first. Alice is totally okay with it as her real intention is not to get the Paypal exchange , but the trust rating that comes after it. Alice sends btc, Bob sends paypal. Now what happens is Bob gives a positive feedback to Alice , and in the risked amount , he writes "0.4 btc". Now what alice does is exchange the paypal to btc again, incur a 0.02-0.03 loss and end up with a Feedback that says she has been risked with 0.4 btc. Now if she does it with the rest of her remaining 0.37 btc, she is bound to get at least 5 trusted feedbacks, taking into factor that some members may not give a trust feedback after the deal.Now the total risked btc in her account would show 10 times the amount she has actually spent making the trust rating and can easily scam anyone/any group 2-3 btc, or sell her account to someone for 1 btc.
The questions are making me itchy to name the guys on DefaultTrust who are more or less encouraging this but I am still giving them some time to reconsider their feedbacks.

I understood it, thats why I wondered whether the "back and forth" will make it worth it at the end of my post. Its a long con and it can be done with bigger amounts.

I think I was more thinking out load than making a point in any direction. I still dont think you should give away positive ratings like candy, but I also understand why people think they deserve feedback for a trade.

If you are in the DefaultTrust network and you give out trust feedback for microtrades then you will be targeted by trust farmers and you are just as guilty for trust farming as the person who is targeting DT members to trade with of trust farming.

I agree with blazed that you should be held to a higher standard if you are in the DefaultTrust network. If someone has a bunch of positive trust for microtrades and you have a high trust score then it will be difficult to tell that you should not be trusted with large amounts of money, especially considering that the comments attached to trust ratings are often vague and as a result many people will not look at them.

People should be aware that this account is a likely alt of Quickseller, he's been on a slam-dooglus mission for approximately ~2 months.


Since you brought it up, I may as well respond.  (1) I got positive ratings, not inclusion in any trust list (that I know of); (2) I also have been given "free" negative ratings with no deals: they were from a known scammer Tradefortress for what were effectively lies against me and I then acquired further negatives for "free", still with no deals, these being from from 3 or 4 of Quickseller's alts (one of them has since been removed) in an attempt to smear me away from these forums because I dared to disagree with him and call him out on his temper.  

As to my "free" positive rating, when I continued to stand up to QS' bullying, he continued to bring in more and more alts and sockpuppets to try to smear me.   When dooglus stood up to him and effectively made him account for his bullying behavior, he brought in yet another alt, which was crucial in outing his escrow scam.   Side note: you can see QS doing this same attack vectors against dooglus and Vod nowadays (although, I suspect he'll get a lot less far against them than he did against me because effectively, I'm a nobody around here and dooglus and Vod have long reputations with many backers).   QS's continual sockpuppetry ended up outing an escrow scam he was running in which he was stealing escrow fees from his customers, and several people gave me positive ratings for investigating and reporting this.  You can call that "nothing" if  you want to, but I guess I think you have to consider the standard in two directions: if it was okay for TF and QS to neg-rep me without any "deals", then why wouldn't it be okay for other people to positive rate me without any "deals".  If it's not okay to neg-rep without deals, then I could see your point that I shouldn't be positive rated just for outing a thief.

In any case, I don't really need or want the green-ratings, as you say, I don't trade around here and I have no plans to begin doing so.  But I do think that if you don't like people getting positive rated without deals, then you ought to consider whether it's okay to negative rate without deals.  Just my two satoshis.

Is this issue not partially mitigated by a quick check of the risked BTC amount?

because on this forum is allowed to buy and sell account (even hero/legendary ones with green trust), why is somebody still taking care about farming trust?

Exactly this. I'm really happy when I see DT members saying specifically on their profile that they don't leave feedback for trades under x BTC. Giving positive feedback for microtrades can really give users a false sense of security, similar to what Blazed mentioned. tspacepilot only has one positive DT feedback for an actual trade, and has 5 more positive ratings that aren't relevant to trades at all. He'll have a +50 trust score soon enough for doing one trade, and getting caught up in some drama on the site a few months ago, that doesn't seem right.

You actually make some valid points here.  Especially about DT or high trust individuals being guilty of trust farming.  Canary being the most obvious example. 

Perhaps something should be implemented that actually discourages this behavior.  Maybe something like adding an additional variable into the trust calculation.

For example: 

Current Trust Score * Farmer Rating

The farmer rating could be a number between 0.25-1.25 and would be determined by where you fall in the farmer rating scale.  You could give farmer ratings to users by using a formula something like the below once you had all the data and could set reasonable points:
# of positive feedbacks received / # of positive feedbacks left

This of course being a very crude formula and example, but you get the point.

I would defiantly support some kind of additional calculation in trust ratings that punishes trust farming. Maybe your formula could be applied to the sent ratings of those who give out much more positive ratings then what they receive. This would discourage trust farmers from targeting members in the Default Trust network who too easily give out positive trust because these DefaultTrust members' sent trust will be worth decreasing amounts as more trust farmers target them.

CITM was a unique case because he was able to abuse his position on Level 1 Default Trust. I agree that he was farming trust by adding those who left him and his business partners positive trust to his trust list (and in turn to the Default Trust network). In addition to the issues that his trust farming caused, it also resulted in many people in the Default Trust Network that had no business being there which would result in accounts being sold to scammers who left positive trust to their sockpuppets in order to give additional credibility to their scams (here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=811345.0) is an example of this), among many other abuses of their position in the Default Trust network.

Those who are in level 1 of Default Trust are the seeds of the seeds of the trust network, and they also need to be held to a higher standard for not only their trust ratings but also the trust ratings of those in their trust list. When there are problems with someone's trust ratings (be it trust farming, giving positive trust that later cause others to get scammed, or otherwise) then questions should really be asked if the trust farming (and the scams that result as a result of positive ratings) was really something that was inadvertent, or if the trust was being sold, indirectly or directly. Even ignoring CITM's trust farming of his own trust, there was far too many problems that resulted from his (those in his trust list) trust ratings.

People need to be careful with any trust based off Paypal transactions because even months down the road someone can get their Paypal transaction reversed. Months of farmed trust just to screw over tons of members; so tread lightly and do a full trust-investigation prior to dealing with anyone :)

Anytime someone mentions Paypal or Skype, I just assume they are a scammer.  It would be wise if others on this board took the same stance.  It is almost always true.

There are many ratings given for paying back loans as well. Not a big deal. Even members have given me ratings for just a single trade which I haven't asked for but I haven't given anyone any rating inspire of being asked for it as if the person goes about scamming another member, I'll be indirectly responsible for it and I don't guarantee that any member whom I trust is actually trustworthy.

In your example, Bob being a DT members dint do wrong by leaving a positive rating but the only reason why he shouldn't have left a rating is because he is on the DT list. This makes this forum look bad because it has a list which makes DT members responsible of their ratings but when we actually try to make them justify those ratings, they don't want to argue. I've seen many newbies having ratings for just one trade with a DT member and that gives them a license to scam anyone with a higher amount as they have a green trust rating unlike others who trade with other members.