Bitcoin Forum

Lately, I've been seeing a guy post the same message over and over.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5084776

This is a known scam, where they will ask you to deposit onto their website to supposedly receive 'free' bitcoins.
I knew from the start that this was a scam, but I took the bait, just to find out how they were scamming people. (with throwaway login data of course)

They're posting this quite regularly and I don't want people to fall for it.

I want to post this message on all the posts I come across, before reporting them:


Am I allowed to do that, since I'm just going to copy and paste the same message?

If the quoted message is 100% yours it shouldn't be a problem for you to post it anywhere you see fit. If another user sees your post and remembers seeing the same post somewhere before and decides to do a search for it he will find that you are the original author so you are fine.

If posts are repeating it will be more efficient to report them to the moderators (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4846982.msg43714464#msg43714464).

I mean, the replies will just end up being removed with the thread altogether anyway.
Just want to make it as hard as possible for these scammers to reach possible victims.

I'll just mention that it's a copy/pasted message, that should have me covered.

Yes, of course I'll also report them, that's a no-brainer. But before they get removed, there could still be victims

I don't see any problems doing this. I've actually had several (warning) posts being removed by the mods along with the ones from the scammers (6 to be exact - according to BPIP) when doing something similar.

@TryNinja

Aha okay, that's good to hear! I just wanted to be safe doing this, since copy/pasting is just about the biggest offense here on this forum.
Don't want to risk losing my account over it.

I think that some members may distort such initiative into semi-legal filling messages process for signature campaigns.
In my opinion it's easier to report moderators or at least add a unique comments to your quotes, so that they are wouldn't be full duplicated.

On one occasion, I saw a profile that has just posted the same message on about 10-15 different boards (local language boards included), with what was a clear phishing link. What I did back then was report it to the moderators, and post on each board just after the scammers post, to warn the others. Once the scammer’s posts were deleted, mine were either also deleted by the moderator, or I went and deleted them myself, until they were all erased from the forum. All in a short timespan.

Duplicate own posts is a violation of paragraph 12 of the rules of the forum. It can also be equated to copying/pasting of someone else's posts (p. 33).

This spam has been going on for a while :(

First, there's this:
Hilariousandco's quote was aimed at a spammer, and although it's not technically plagiarism, it's just spam on the forum.
In your case, although posting the same thing more than once is against the rules, you are doing the forum a service, so it shouldn't be a reason to ban you. Check cryptodevil's post history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=224980;sa=showPosts;start=1020) for example.

Update: Xal0lex quoted the same post, but I'd like to emphasize that it's being pulled out of context. Check this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4846982.msg43712454#msg43712454) to see the spam-context.

Copy and pasting is certainly against the rule that by now is known. But copying and pasting your own message is not my knowledge not a crime

But rather than doing it wouldn't it be a better option to just quoting yourself

against the rules

common sense and human analysis should find it okay and almost worthy of merit

@LoyceV

Yeah I know, I've been seeing that same thread pop up almost every day for the past week or so. They do get removed eventually.
Now, I didn't actually find much information about the scam itself through Google, that's why I went through the effort of actually pretending to join.

You basically always win like $500 dollars worth of Bitcoin with your first roulette bet and then they try to scam you through the live chat.

I'll definitely make a dedicated thread about this in Scam Accusations.

@Xal0lex

That seems like a very literal interpretation of the rules, I tend to agree with LoyceV on this one, but I don't know, you're staff...

Edit:

To respond to @Veleor

I don't count these posts myself for my signature campaign, since I 100% expect them to be removed when posts are counted.
Guess I can actually write a unique comment every time, it's definitely worth warning people for it IMO.

Just in case, you can quote yourself.

Yeah will do, I'll also just add a small disclaimer at the end. That should probably solve it as well.

While xaolex is technically correct - which is "the best kind or correct", couldn't resist.

This does not apply to this situation IMO. You are clearly not doing this to bump your post count for payment, and if that is a concern you could PM the account manager and clear that up. I don't think you should need to as you said if you post your message and then report them, Mods should delete both, but to be sure mention your message in the report so it is cleared as well.


Agreed. If someone doing this were banned under Plagiarism, I would expect this to be the 3rd time I've seen such a Ban reversed, as the situation would warrant it.

In the end you could follow LoyceV's suggestion probably the best one, or for fun while you perform this service why not ad this to the bottom; feel free to tweak the wording

"Scam spam reported XX times"

I was also thinking of suggesting this. That's what I do when I have to post something similar which I already have posted. In this way, OP will not be acused for plagiarism in any way.

You can also left the commentary for the forum staff, eg:
"Moderators, please delete my warning message when the post of <user> will be removed".

Already found a better solution. I just made a post in Scam Accusations and I'll just point people towards that post whenever I see this scam again.
No need for me to copy/paste that entire message ;)

Locking this topic, since it's solved.