Bitcoin Forum

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my thread. Today I am going share something which is really important for our new members IMO. I have read some thread on scam accusation where some of our community members being scammed during purchase goods, coupon, gift card or any other currencies from locked thread. As an example someone made post on the forum to sell gift card, coupon, currencies or anything else and locked the thread. At that situation you purchase something from him/her but got scammed then you have nothing to do IMO. Because already his/her thread has been locked and you can't claim about your issue by giving reply on that thread. Same kinda things have already happened many times and by using this process scammers take fund from multiple people  just in 1 Day. But in return they don't give the purchased product.

I will suggest them to use our forums escrow service who are really keen to purchase any goods, coupon, gift card or anything else. Otherwise there is a high risk to lose your fund.

Sometimes people are just so careless with their money or simply don't know what they are doing.
When someone is trying to sell something and locks a thread, to me that is a red flag right away?
Why would he/she lock the thread? They are probably trying to hide something or avoid some nbad feedback about their service

I do not believe a locked or open thread determines a scam or a fishy deal, for example if you bought goods or whatever from a locked thread, such individual can also start up his or her own thread in the accusations board with a link to the initial thread stating his or her experiences.
Even if it's much better to carry out such transactions probably on a thread that's "alive",it shouldn't or doesn't make any much of a difference

The majority of users being scammed from locked or self-moderated threads are newbies. They are likely to be unaware of what locked or self-moderated threads even mean, they are very likely to not know the Scam Accusations board even exists, and they are almost certainly not going to check it before they buy or trade. Many scammers selling from locked threads also use auto-buy links - this is deliberate so people can buy from them without signing up to the forum, as if you don't sign up you can't see the scammers' red trust or the "Trade with extreme caution" warning.

If the thread remained open, these scam warnings could be placed in the thread to make them as obvious as possible. Scammers know this, and so they lock their threads. There are very few legitimate reasons to lock an active sales thread.

Even if the thread was opened and you get scammed through the offering on the original post, there is still very little you can do. The forum does not regulate scams and the most that can happen is the scammer gets red tagged.
Never enter any transaction without a trusted forum member acting as an escrow.

One thing that can mitigate this is to see the user trust.
And if newbies get scammed by a user in a locked thread, they should use scam accusation board to ask dt to tag that user as a scammer.

When someone is selling a product legitely then they no need to hide themselves from other opinions under locked thread or self moderated thread so people who have some common sense will save themselves.

You can still report post, which is direct contact with forum staff, that can solve this situation quickly.
This gives scammers a little bit more time, than warning from others in thread but could be easily denied by staff with technical measures.

   

Some might argue that self-moderated thread is useful if their thread was being trolled by some members. And it's quite easy for those whose post got deleted to start a new thread compiling what kind of post that OP deleted, though this decrease the publicity of such caution. Nevertheless, I do agree that marketplace is safer if OP can't start their own thread as self-moderated one, unless you're very trusted and has been known in this forum for years.

People claiming that they want to stop trollers never delete their comments,just proving that they were legit is enough so this is just an another excuse from scammers.

Most users especially newbies are ignorant of how the forum works probably have not yet understood the locked thread sign and don't want to reply so the just get the information. That why it's important to always understand the forum

Scams or potential scams are not moderated. Reporting the post won't achieve anything.


True. The recently implemented feature for self-moderated threads where it states how many posts have been deleted would help with this. The OP (if legit) could quite easily keep a summarized list of all the posts he is deleting to avoid accusations of deleting legitimate criticism.

scamer just want customer money without sending product op seller. when customer want to claiming they dont have to do anyting, coment or sharing proof when got scam. but we can post here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0 subforum scam accusation by give proof as posting new thread.

Hey you’re right many newbies often buy from closed threads and they end up loosing their funds, but I feel they need to take responsibility for their actions. There is a simple rule which I advise for any kind of trade you do here, go to user profile check their trusts, and inside that see ratings if there’re negative ratings simply avoid the user. Lastly choose a smart escrow like Monbux or SebastianJu who’ll help you in case of a dispute.

Here is a perfect example of such a scenario where a scammer takes advantage and keeps his thread locked:
OP got scammed by someone who was already identified as a scammer by the community but I think the victim did not check out the scammer's trust ratings, so he just went ahead and made purchases
Since the thread was locked, it was not possible to make warnings.

In the end, OP lost his money;
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5121760

In addition, they are newbies. Most of them are people who visit the forum through the first result of Google search. "The first result is always trusted." Because of this, there is a need to trust that account, especially if s/he uses Auto-buy sales URLs and has no knowledge of the currency. "Using PayPal scam cases is less."

Also, in some cases greed is motivated and in this case, all warnings will not work.

Some of this scamming could be mitigated by displaying default trust to guests, or preventing guests from even viewing topics by red trusted members in the relevant trust-enabled boards. This is something theymos has mentioned in the past, but I believe he wants to see how this new DT1 voting system works for a while first.

As you say, however, we can't protect everyone all the time, and some people will get scammed no matter how many warnings are in place first.

The second factor contributing to the perception of risk is the number of people who will be affected by the buying decision bluestacks (https://www.bluestacks.onl/).

Basically there's nothing to do for a buyer if he/she purchase anything from a locked thread and got scammed. Its better to stay far from this kinda locked thread otherwise there's always been a chance to be get scammed. Most probably new users fall on this kinda trap IMO where they run for the lucrative packages and discounts. They always should keep it on mind that where anyone offering you unrealistic profit packages there's possibly you can lose your money. Even you can't be able to make claim because of locked thread issue.

Well this type of issue can be addressed by the forum modators I think threads that has such content like sell of anything to the forum community and gets lock should be delete to prevent people from still picking interest in it

I think it will not be fair to put every responsibility to moderators hand where they got the hard work to control the entire section. At least if we try a little from each of our sides then its going to be easier for them too. Intention of my thread is to educate people who like to buy goods or anything else from forum and its really don't makes me feel good when I see this issue related claim.

Its simple that if you want to sell anything honestly here on the forum by submitting sell announcement thread then why you need to lock it. So if we stay far from those locked thread and don't take any service then automatically this kinda issues will be solved. I always believe "prevention is better than cure"

That's pretty bad too because you lose proof of the scam. I know that the forum doesn't moderate scams, but they should probably make exceptions for cases as blatant as this, or at least prevent manual locking of threads in the marketplace section. This way, someone could at least leave warning messages for people who don't know how the trust system works.

But yeah, it's sad how people are falling for such blatant schemes in the first place. If they're naive enough to fall for something like this, I don't think there's anything anyone can do to protect them.