Bitcoin Forum

I never quite understood this. Several posts with DOXing stay up and are never removed. Isn't it hard for mods to see when a user is trying to damage someone's reputation with baseless accusations and when it's actually information to built up a scam accusation case? But even if it's the later, why should a forum indexed by search engines and well ranked in terms of SEO allow that? Is bitcointalk.org encouraging mob justice? Is the forum Satoshi created for discussion about bitcoin to take place in endorsing taking conflicts about an e-currency into real life, perhaps even with violence and life ruining tactics (that could even target the false person)? I'm sure you realize allowing such a thing can be abused by people with very, very bad intentions.

This forum should have a zero tolerance policy against this. Besides, it's even against  (https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/faq/?hl=en#do_your_statistics_cover_all_categories_of_requests)google's policy to allow such a thing. 8chan was briefly de-listed (https://medium.com/@infinitechan/google-is-not-your-friend-5a6636af0651) from google for not following it. If Theymos cares about ad revenue and the future of this forum he should really consider this.

To my understanding the forum allows stuff like that to be posted because they believe in free speech, and releasing a user's public info falls under that, as long as the information was legally obtained and is/was publicly accessible.

But in lots of the doxxing cases I'm not so sure that all the information was obtained in legal ways, however I don't think those posts are ever removed either.

Because these forums don't care about doxxing, unless it's posting Theymos' dox.

Absolutely no idea. If i was admin, I would be banning anyone who tried to Dox anyone and all scammers I can get my hands on. ;D

A dox is just an aggregation of publicly available information and as such not a violation of any rights. Theymos said in the past that he is strongly against e.g. the release of social security numbers and will go against that.

Except most of the doxes here include non public information

It doesn't say that in the article. Clearly it says:


The actual answer is that they were removed for hosting CP:
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3gs638/censorship_8chan_removed_from_google_search/

I don't know of any website that was delisted from Google for simply hosting dox.


It doesn't say that either. What you should have linked is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

Google will remove pages that contain certain personal info like SSN's. They will not take down a dox that is just a persons name, phone number, dob and address. Trust me many people have tried.

Personally I think doxing is a last resort, and that the threat of doxing someone is usually worse than the actual act. Typically if you let the person know that you have their dox that will stop the problem right there and you won't need to post the dox unless the problem continues. I don't think it should be outright "banned", but I certainly do not like that people are doxxing others over small personal matters. Thats totally not cool and not even effective at all. You should try to resolve the situation in other ways before resorting to doxxing.

Ok to address Blazr's points,

8chan was de-listed, without receiving a notification from google as to why. Saying that the same could happen might be a stretch but I wouldn't consider it impossible.


Sure, but the FAQ I linked to actually mentions that google delists websites for alleged defamation, hate speech, impersonation as well. All of those could be part of doxing, the fact that it's user submitted content doesn't change much from their perspective.

The right to be forgotten is a completely different procedure, supported by the EU. Where google removes search results from showing up per request if and only if the party making the request can submit the necessary evidence, which is not an anonymous precedure.

Isn't Google more flexible with forums/social media and other sites based on user generated content? The most that will happen is that they'll stop linking to the particular thread where the defamation, hate speech, or impersonation is happening.

I think the risk of being permanently de-listed from Google is very low. It's not a factor that should influence any decision or change in forum policy here.

It also has nothing to do with the topic at hand, because the judgments until now are only against google as a search engine, not e.g. against the newspaper with the actual information.

I don't know why it's allowed to release someone's personal information on the forum (though Badbear and Theymos have criticized this). Even members threaten other members out here like personal threats to their life and that's as well considered 'freedom of speech'. If this way someone is harmed in their personal life, it won't be a good thing for this forum. Doxing should be banned IMO.

It shouldn't be allowed.

If a silly forum argument has someone so fired up that they feel the need to doxx the other, then that's a good sign to take a break and go do something else.

Even if there is a "legal" reason (e.g. theft) to find someone's identity, and you are that good of a detective, then call the police and give them your discoveries. Bringing it onto the forum is just immature and petty (and can cause damage if you accidently doxx the wrong person).

-BPB

Thanks for your input Cobra. We don't get a chance to hear from you that often so I believe that your presence highlights the importance of the issue.

If you dox is from the correct people and obtained from legal sources then there are arguments in favor.


But if you can't prove that the dox info is the person behind the account, then things are problematic. If you accuse him from crimes in public and can't prove he really did them, then the one committing a crime is you, spceially if you contact the people from his work accusing him

Dox stay up because it is typically meta data. If information about you can be found on social media/google, whatever, its not private. If someone has to steal your medical records from a hospital in order to release it, then that is not allowed, nor is posting someone else's social security number. As far as baseless accusations and such, it is up for individuals to determine what is baseless. If people want to post about their businesses here without needing Bitcointalk to fact check, verify their claims, etc, then they need to be willing to do that themselves when people ask. Bitcointalk is not affiliated with google in any way, ads are all done in house.

Theymos' dox are floating around somewhere in meta, rules don't apply differently to moderators/admins.

My 45 day ban a while back would beg to differ.

Dude is a coward and a profiteering hypocrite IMO.

EDIT: And if you wonder why I'm so personally bitter directly with Michael, it's because he allowed Josh Zerlan to dox me using private information in BFL's customer database while Josh brazenly lied about it being public information. Oh, and where is BFL today ? Hmm...

The problem isn't the act of doxing for the most part, it is the factual doxing the correct person. I have seen so much wrong information posted it is unbelievable.
No SSID and other sensitive information should ever be allowed and doxing should only be the last resort.
IMO, no doxing should be allowed from an alt. or new account. If you post it and are wrong, you should suffer the consequences.

This forum allows a lot of stuff that should not, selling/buying accounts, even default trust ones, doxing people, some scams, some not, like ponzies and other ponzi related ´´games´´ and yes i know it´s to gather all ponzies in one place but is still kind of ridiculous. They are very strict about people spamming or posting useless stuff but not so much when it comes to scammers since they are never banned.

I see come contradictions in what SaltySpitoon posted.

1. 2.
What I gather from this is that information that could somehow be publicly available, are allowed to be posted here. But in quote #2 it's stated that non-public information are not allowed. But what falls under your definition of non-public information? What if the doxed person claims none of the information released were publicly available?

I also didn't see the issue about false information being released. (Guess that would fall under the up for individuals to determine what is baseless logic?)

There is generally a huge contradiction. Either the admins are ALL willing to post their entire 'dox' information (as its all public record anyway, right?), or remove doxes when they serve no purpose / done maliciously. They'll say "but I'm anonymous", then.... surely everyone else wants to be?

yes, by allowing users to post what they want, they are allowing mob justice

---

also if u want to a forum where the admins run it as if its their personal coffee shop there is always hackforums.net

I don't know anything about your ban, but I have personally seen two or three threads with Theymos dox in them on this site with no consequence to the OP or anyone else involved. I would expect that it was something else that you did. I don't have the info to know for certain, but that would be my first guess based on the info given.


Not that I necessarily disagree, but there isn't a screening process. Who should be in charge of fact checking to make sure the right person is doxed, and that the information is accurate? If you do post inaccurate info, I suppose you lose credibility? Thats something of a consequence.

This one would take a really really long time to explain. These are all things that have been greatly debated. I'll give you the short answers, but you would have to check hundreds of pages of discussion to have a complete scope of the debate. Buying/Selling accounts is something that staff can't enforce a rule against. If we do, people will just go off site and do it without our knowledge, and then people will be under the impression that it doesn't happen, so bought/sold accounts will be able to do more damage. Out in the open, everyone is aware to take proper precautions when dealing with someone. Staff are not responsible for scams or scam attempts. Do your own due diligence when trading. Ponzis aren't a "scam" if you know that you are investing in them. No one is being tricked into depositing money into LUCKYPONZI thinking its a cloudmining site. Do what you want with your money, let people do what they want with theirs. And spam is indeed our prime directive. A moderator's main job here is to help keep the board as clutter free as possible for thoughtful discussion.

Social Security numbers, Unrelease medical records, etc. It sticks out pretty well when someone posts something they shouldn't have access to. Your name, address, phone number, etc are the common bits of information that I see. If you can find the info in a phone book (if they still existed) with a google search, on social media, whatever. Its not private information. If information is illegally obtained, then its not acceptable.


The strange thing is, tons of people interact here on a daily basis and don't have their dox posted. There typically is a reason, or at least a percieved reason why people post each others dox. P.Gage is the only person I know of who has posted all of their own dox. I like to think most people here respect each others privacy until there is a reason not to. So when you say its contradictory that the Admins don't offer their information to everyone, that isn't applicable in the slightest. It would be more apt to say that if the Admins are accused of scamming and then delete their dox, that is a contradiction.

So you've generally agreed that people do not want to be doxed, regardless of if they've done anything wrong or not.


And then answered the point of doxes on here - to be malicious. Has there even ever been a non malicious dox on here that wasn't designed to cause harm and to do anything helpful? And when those malicious doxes have been proved to be malicious, you guys still leave them up.

So looping round again, would the policy chance if the doxes of every staff member were subsequently accumulated? ...The point of that question is to provoke some sensible thinking on the issue, rather than to threaten. Buuuuut if that question could even be remotely be perceived as a threat, the answer is yes and the policy needs to be changed.

The ban text was for Trolling.

Outrageous.

I have created a poll (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1184202) on the matter.

I did a search on the forum for his dox on the forum.

"Pages: [1]
No results found
Pages: [1]"

Again, if you try posting his dox on the forum you will be automatically banned. Try it in the Staff sectin.

And there the problem is:
1. The person posting the said dox is fully responsible.
2. A throw away account doesn't suffer much consequence. Somewhere around 0%.

I understand your point about account selling saltyspitoon, i have seen it a few times but im still skeptical about it, i understand the forum cant stop people from selling accounts but forbidding it would make it way harder for people to sell accounts and im sure less acounts would be sold. A lot of accounts are sold without anyone knowing even here in the forum. I understand that people, almost everyone that invests in ponzi schemes know what they are dealing with but that doesnt mean it should be allowed.

Yeah, I'd generally agree that people do not want to be doxed. The people that are doxed are generally those accused of scamming. Every scammer says they are innocent, those wrongfully accused can generally clear things up pretty easily.

Are lawsuits anything other than malicious? Should they still happen even though they are "attacking" someone? Its not a black and white question. There are certain cases I've seen where the people very obviously deserved to be doxed. Generally if you commit a crime, (Scamming is the major one here) people dox you. I'd say fair is fair.
Nope, there is a meta thread in meta named something along the lines of Staff Member information, or Staff Dox, and it has info about 3 or 4 staff members, including volunteered information. Again, that thread has Theymos' dox in it as well. Even though people can't find these threads, I've posted in them personally, so they weren't just threads I've seen in passing.


Tricky one, again that comes back to a plethora of other issues. I don't really have a solution for that one, all ideas that I can think of would be far worse than just how it is now.


Again, this is another issue, but Bitcoin in general is about financial freedoms. We don't feel the need to tell people what they can or can't spend their money on. If you want to put your house as collateral in a poker game with a pair of twos, maybe I personally would advise against it, but anyone is welcome to make whatever stupid payments for anything that they want. The ponzi section got its own section because "legit" dice/poker sites and such said that the ponzi listings were flooding the section and they couldn't get in any discussion over the flood of ponzi spam. Nothing more, nothing less.

It wouldn't make a difference. Even if account sales were banned it wouldn't stop it or even barely put a dint in it. All that would happen is accounts will be sold off site. At least it's safer here as you can use an escrow, but when people are selling them via skype or their crappy sites they set up many people will just get scammed.

Who cares if someone gets scammed doing something against the rules? If account selling were banned why care?

People don't deserve to be scammed, but it's not against the rules so it's besides the point. Banning account sales changes absolutely nothing at all.

Well I meant if selling accounts were banned.

I know what you meant but people still don't deserve to be scammed. There would also be those who get scammed because they're unaware that account sales happen when they blindly trust an account so it will give people a false sense of security.

Weak.

How? If you're not willing to remove or even mod edit proven wrongful accusations or even archive them, what can anyone do?


Yes? They're how normal people without moderator powers IRL enforce their rights. Malicious prosecution will get your ass handed to you so the answer is absolutely yes and to try and compare a lawsuit to a dox is just silly. A dox is there to damage the other party, it serves no purpose.


That's a weird way of looking at it. Approximately 20% of the US reports having been abused in one form of another, Assuming a 1:1 abuser victim ratio, would it be justifiable for one of those crazies to run over 5 people with the excuse that they were trying to kill a child abuser? My point is you're justifying anyone and everyone being able to be doxed without cause, because there will be some people who "deserve it".


So I just spent 30 minutes looking for these threads by all sorts of keywords, search engines etc. I even looked through all of your posts back to 2013, its not there. The closest I could find was a 2011 thread where people put their real names against their pseudonyms (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8954.0;all) and some very basic information (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=512193.0;all). So it looks like someone has either deleted, delisted or archived these actual doxes.


That is my point, if they're not findable then they're not damaging or a problem to anyone. Trying to compare that to people posting infinitely more complex doxes along with doctored, false and private information alongside fabricated and malicious claims is just condescending. Its also likely illegal that on notice of the offending content, the forum refuses to remove it.


How about archive doxes once they've served (if any) their purpose or been proven to be false?


tldr: Admins felt that a basic thread listing who they were was offending enough to archive or delete, yet won't consider archiving or deleting known malicious or false doxes of others.

You are the people I was refering to.


While account buying/selling is sort of off topic, its not about whether people get scammed buying/selling the accounts, it truely is about it being unenforceable. People could buy/sell accounts on site with PGP or whatever else. Those that would be at greater risk of being scammed, are those that believe account buying/selling doesn't happen because it is against the rules, and trades blindly with those they have traded with before.



Why should I be responsible for fact checking and what makes me reliable enough to do so? What if someone pays me off to remove their info whether its correct or not? What if I remove information that is correct and it leads to further issues, am I responsible? These issues can all be removed by having people do their own work.


Dox gives accountability to the person behind the name, not a pseudonym.

Lucky for us, this is an online forum and running over someone in a car is difficult. My point is, when people dox someone, there tends to be a reason. If they post the wrong dox, they have personal motivation to correct it. If you had scammed me, and I blamed John Doe from Uruguay, posted their info, and it was proven to be incorrect, why would I not try and find your true info and remove the false info? Theres no rational reason to post false dox intentionally, its completely counterproductive. If someone makes a mistake in doxing and its proven wrong, I would think they would try to correct it immediately if not sooner.


I found three or so mentions with basic keyword searches, Theymos, Theymos Identity, Theymos Dox, Staff/ Staff Member Dox etc. You can also try google if you would like, there are a couple threads that come up that way too. There is also a false dox on Theymos accusing him of being a senator or something like that (skimmed but didn't read). You must not have been searching very hard, as I wasn't.


Again, read what I said earlier. No one wants to post false Dox. There is no rational reason to post false dox. If a mistake was made, the person posting it would want to correct it asap. There is absolutely no logical reason to post false dox and stand by it. If I scammed you and you posted my dox, would you take my word for it if I told you it was false?

I'll reply to the rest of your comment later as it appears we're not speaking the same language. There is every incentive to post false information alongside a dox, or to post non public information and claim its a dox. Watch this:

"This scammer SaltySpitoon, sold me a bitcoin miner 6 months ago and now I don't want it. He is a scammer and he shot my chicken in the face. I want my money back or I will post his information". And then that gets indexed by search engines. If you pay me, I get money. If you don't then I post your dox alongside my false information and your real name (Ytlas Nootips) is forever tainted even when you conclusively prove I just made that up and you don't even have a chicken.

But again if someone did the above with an alt account to a staff member they'd be banned and the thread deleted. You know that's exactly what would happen, we can even run the experiment if there are any admin volunteers.

So salty...

why dont you respect his opinion then and just stop posting a link to his address?
its his property and he can do anything he wants here: in case you forgot

You are saying what would someone's motivation be to falsely accuse someone, I was addressing why would anyone ever post incorrect dox. If I scammed someone, and they posted the dox of Sally from Latvia (not me by the way) I'd be tickled that they are blaming someone else. So as far as IDing the wrong person, I mean there is no reason why anyone would do that intentionally. No one moderates false claims, it again is up to individuals to clear there own names. So in the case above, you post your counterstory, if I'm falsely claiming that I should get my money back, I lose my credibility. Your argument could be said about scam accusations and all other things. It is the cost of doing business pseudononymously. It comes back down to what recourse people have. Hurting people's means of personal investigation means there is no recourse for anyone.


Thats why they call me "Salty"Spitoon, but really I try not to call names, what I meant is that just because you couldn't find the threads, doesn't mean others couldn't.

the correct way to deal with something like this is to discuss the problem. not cry and repost over and over again: thats childish...

and its his server: his decision whats saved there ;)
you are free to make your own forum and post any dox you wish.

Did you not find it ironic that the post in this thread containing a link to Theymos' dox was deleted ?

How do you reconcile that with Theymos' dox apparently being "easily located and available for all to find and see elsewhere in these forums" ?

---

Not at all, I find it funny that people think that they can mass spam something and think that they wont be banned or at least have their posts deleted for spamming. As I said, there are a few threads in meta discussing Theymos' dox as well as where to find it and links, etc. Its not a secret, he has posted a lot of the info himself. If we all start posting "Bananas are vegetables" and people start having the post removed or are banned for repeating it, does that mean Bitcointalk has an agenda against lies about Bananas?

The results would be the same if the link was about an Alt Coin, Bananas, or Theymos or anyone else's dox for that matter.

*edit* just like the person who was just banned for having their message deleted 3+ times and they kept reposting it. It has less to do with the content, and more to do with the spam.

Could you please be a mensch and kindly post links to the threads ? I was not able to find his dox using the searches you described.

... or are you merely referring to the name "Michael Marquardt" being allowed to be uttered in these hallowed halls ?

What I find most ironic about this is that someone must've went out of his way to program the forum detecting and instantly banning users for posting what's essentially a link. There must be no other case that this is happening. I've seen this forum being flocked by xrumer bots trying to promote stuff completely not related to bitcoin, such posts wouldn't get removed until a mod saw them. Yet you make such a huge exception only for what's the alleged dox of a bitcointalk staffer because it's spam.

And please don't get me wrong. I like this forum and admire theymos, I'm not willing to attack anyone here. But a forum mod supporting doxing directly contradicts what this forum is doing with this certain link. You might as well accept that SaltySpitoon and stop trying to dodge this argument.

Have you completely missed the point?  If one tries to post that blockchain link, THE FORUM SOFTWARE AUTOMATICALLY BANS THE ACCOUNT.
This is the error message you get upon hitting "Save": https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png

You claim that his dox are posted on bitcointalk?  Link?

There is a link blacklist tool used for a lot of the common advertising spam links. It just needs to be annoying enough to add it to the list, and its added. Id imagine the link that people keep posting was flagged enough as spam to be added. If Theymos has scammed you and post his dox, you won't be banned, nor will you be banned for posting anyone's dox with the exceptions given earlier in the thread.

The only reason I care about this thread is because I see this every day with a different cause and it bothers me at the core. Something is corrupt or wrong because every time someone posts it it gets deleted! But it keeps getting deleted because people keep posting it, and it becomes spam. "Hey guys post this just because" is a good way to make something spam. Like I said, "Bananas are vegetables" if people decided to run with it, I wouldn't be surprised to see "Bananas are vegetables" to become something people are auto banned for as well.

So, are you a "The chicken came first", or "The egg came first" kinda guy ?

Its a no win situation for me, I can post the links, and then you or someone else will go spam in that thread until the thread is deleted or you are banned, furthering your "cause". You can choose to believe me or not, I don't especially care. I've pretty much elaborated on anything that could be construed as a constructive question or debate, so its up to you to either get it or not. I'm not the morality/policy police. Not my job to make you happy about the policies here. If I can help you understand why they are in place, great, if not, no point in beating a dead horse.


Generally I'm a case by case sort of guy, but being around here for years you start to see trends.

More bullshit.
Try posting the address alone -- same results.
The script looks for [relatively short, from the few tests I've done] strings that make up the address & the bitcoin addy in the link.


::)
Everything I say could be verified by anyone willing to make & lose an account.  Reproducibility is mine.

You ask to be trusted.  In a thread where your honesty is called into question.  SassySpittoon! :D

Ok, that sounds more fair. But it brings up some other points of mine. Anyone can come here and claim that theymos has scammed them right? Would the claim be enough? Dismissing the claim would count as censorship according to the 'deleting doxing is bad for freedom of speech' mentality.

I've been saying that allowing doxing can be abused because according to the current views (you seem to have) on this, (and correct me if I'm wrong), someone could use bitcointalk to post a scam accusation claiming that he was scammed by someone and include his dox (Motivation to do this could be anything from hate, trolling to actual scamming).

In that case, will you question the validity of his claims? If there's no factual proof of the scamming taking place should the dox remain up? Would you accept counter claims by the accused?

And finally, since I don't see this forum having any handling of takedown notices, is there any way someone could get his dox removed from bitcointalk aside from legal action?

This gets absurdly complicated. I can't speak of actual laws, which are obviously largely ignored in this thread. But the sheer complexity that this reaches is the reason I think doxing should be entirely banned, (ideological and moral reasoning aside).

SaltySpitoon, you are severely misinformed on this matter and I'd like to request that you stop speculating, especially since you have the moderator distinction. I respect you and trust that you are not intentionally providing misinformation.

My account, TradeFortress, was banned for mentioning that theymos bans anyone who posts his dox, and a popular bitcoin website where you can find such dox. That reply in this thread was deleted and I received a ban for "trolling". As I'm sure you can understand, there can be no justification that discussing theymos banning people for posting dox, in a thread about "non-consensual release of personal information" is "spam" or "trolling".


My understanding is that you are allowed to make an alt account to post in meta and appeal your ban, which is what I am doing.

The automatic ban is not for links, etc. It is for a 10 digit Google voice number in any substring, along with other strings of text and/or numbers. The automatic ban triggers even on substrings -- eg: "dasdasfasf1234567890fsdfds" would be automatically blocked and banned, if 1234567890 was the forbidden number.

I am not sure of your knowledge of the GLBSE fiasco, but back in 2012 when that happened there were numerous semi-substantiated accusations that theymos scammed by failing in his fiduciary duty as a GLBSE stakeholder. I, a GLBSE user who lost money in its shutdown, will be permanently banned if I make a scam accusation against him and post his dox.

Finally, to further refute your "it's banned because people spam it", which is a ridiculous fallacy: There's no undeleted posts about his dox in this forum. Your claim would be proven if you post his dox once, and your post doesn't get deleted. If other "spam" posts get deleted, sure, that will in fact prove your point. The fact is, theymos is blanket banning the posting of his dox, AND selectively banning people who mention the blanket banning of his dox.

Let me make that clear: If theymos has scammed you and you post his dox, you WILL be banned. If you even MENTION that theymos bans people who posts his dox, you can be hit with a 45 day ban for "trolling". SaltySpitoon, you're clearly unaware of what actions are actually being undertaken here. Please don't speculate like you have been and claim that as fact.

Same here ::)

Oh man, this keeps getting more and more complicated.

With TF risking to push this argument one step further, I'm starting to question the credibility of what SaltySpitoon said. I'm aware that he's an individual holding his own opinions but it's unclear if he was speaking representing the forum's administration board here.

Could we perhaps get a word from theymos on the matter?

- Appeal to Closure
- Argument from Consequences
- Argumentum ex Silentio
- Essentializing
- There Is No Alternative

You can clear your own name on here, I'd lose my credibility on here, but no one coming from off site is going to read through 20 pages of abuse from a cloud of shills to work out who was right. Especially when trust ratings aren't shown to non logged in users so even the crazies seem moderately not crazy.

You would be permanently damaged and you're saying there is no way for anyone to fix it. I mean, now we're talking lawyers to get such a simple thing fixed.



Yeah, lets see if admin accounts can get auto banned :/

I'm confused.
what's the point of asking about theymos' dox when the U.S government clearly knows who he is and where he lives? don't tell me you want to send him a postcard or something.

I believe we should not try to dox anyone unless they have done something really wrong.

Admins claim that their own doxes are feely posted on the forum so they can leave everyones doxes. Yet no one can actually find those doxes (meaning they're worthless) and anyone attempting to post them gets auto banned.

I think the point is that if true we have a double standard is all.

I can't find a post where theymos posted all of his information, but theymos did confirm bits and pieces here and there. and he published a few information himself.

so saltyspitoon is telling the truth

though I won't post all of that here because it would serve no purpose.

EDIT
some of them are outside of meta.

Whelp, that's that then, we can finally close the thread.
Thanks for vouching for salty & offering 0 evidence, random Anon from the interweb.

That's mainly my point, but there's no need for "if true". It is true, and you can easily prove it yourself -- right now.

Try posting a specific 10 digit Google Voice number, or a specific street address. You will see https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png with an automatic permanent ban.

Thinking outside the box here, perhaps a good start is for someone that has found the information on these forums, to make a post in this thread - aggregating all known other links - so it's easy to locate, and we can stop having this silliness with Thermos banning accounts posting his information, that is already, apparently, easy to find here.

It would effectively end the issue once and for all if certain digits and strings are verboten on these forums.

So if I were to post either of those I would be insta banned from these boards?

I think TF(?) are just trolling. see the image he posted.

@Xian01
I hope you are not expecting me to do that because I won't. I will be contradicting myself if I do that.

Probably not. Look how the username in the picture is "Bitcoin Forum"; that makes it almost certain that TF edited the page before screenshotting it/edited the screenshot, so that also means that he probably just edited the text box.

There is actually an account that is called Bitcoin Forum, but its not been used since 2011. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=34167

If you're going around posting people's personal information for no real reason other than just to annoy them, then that's trolling, which is not allowed.

Dox is currently more-or-less allowed for two reasons:
- It is sometimes useful when dealing with scammers for the community to collaboratively investigate the scammer. There have been a few cases where these collaborative investigations have led to good results.
- It is very difficult to define a consistent line between reasonable public information and non-public dox. For example, on Reddit the admins will sometimes delete posts which reference someone's real name even when this name can be found on the first page of a Google search for their pseudonym, which is ridiculous.

This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time. The current rules are sub-optimal, I think, since it's too easy for innocent people to be hurt. But at the same time I don't want to ban "personal information" entirely, due to the above two reasons. Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

I would support that entirely. Also, it would eliminate all of those newbie accounts that are created for the sole intention of writing one post.


Yeah, I saw that account and that's why I said it was probably fake.

People would just copy and paste info into boards viewable by everyone.   :-\

If accounts did that, then it would be a pretty simple matter for mods to delete them, right? If they were pretty obviously posting the info so that the whole forum could see it.

Yeah. Its actually a very good idea as long as "investigations" isn't indexable by search engines. Can put it as a subforum in scam investigations and any doxes outside of there are easily admin'able.

So I take it you're going to retroactively remove all of Josh Zerlans posts pertaining to my dox then ?

Pretty sure I was right. Are people posting Theymos' dox to help in their accusation against him, or just to be annoying? Though I classified it as spam instead of trolling.

{ self moved to a new thread } (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1185511.new#new)

@SaltySpitoon: I disagree. That's not what happened in my case. You gave relatively specific directions to where you believed theymos's dox could be found, because you seemed to believe that people have posted his dox w/o real consequence. I gave relatively specific directions to where theymos' dox could be found to correct your information, with the impression that what you posted was OK.

Neither of these circumstances involved trolling, or posting it for the purposes to annoy someone. This is looking like theymos is indiscriminately banning people, excessively I would say, in order to assert his power and prevent his dox from being disseminated -- not for moderation principles of trolling, spam, et al.

I would imagine people are attempting to post Thermos' dox because of the Streisand Effect that he has created, and to demonstrate him having his cake and eating it too.

A formal declaration of Shenanigans is being made about Theymos' dox being available on these forums, unless that information is stored as an image that has not been OCRd, or in a non-publically accessible section of these forums (the Mr. Marquardt doxed on these forums with a .gov email is not the same individual in control of these forums - Theymos is much younger)

Doing a specific keyword search on these forums yields no results. Blurred out the keyword for obvious reasons.

https://i.imgur.com/47M6dT7.png

Additionally, doing a Google search with "site:bitcointalk.org", these are the only two meaningful sources of information I can locate.

"My real name is in my PGP public key (Michael Marquardt), though I prefer not to use it in online communications."
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8954.msg129776#msg129776
https://bitcointalk.org/docs/ulbricht.pdf

I don't think this information should be prohibited from being posted, nor do I think that the access of such information should be restricted to certain user groups. As the disclosure (or threat of disclosure) of such personal information gives an incentive to (potential) scammers from attempting to steal from others.

There is really no such thing as  "main" account, therefore the prohibiting of the release of personal information from a "sockpuppet" account would be unenforceable. However I do think that an incorrect dox (that is the result of doing little/no due diligence to confirm it's accuracy and/or other gross negligence), or a dox of someone who there is not significant evidence against that they have stolen significant amounts of money (or have stolen any amounts of money from the person posting the dox) should be considered to be causing "serious trouble" and they and their alts should receive negative trust so others should be warned against trusting them with potentially sensitive information.

---

Regarding themos's dox: I do think that theymos does have the right to protect his privacy. I don't see any major issue with theymos using some kind of automation/scrypt to prevent his personal information from being posted as this is little different from him using the same criteria manually to delete posts (this is assuming that the automation/scrypt does not count towards any page counts for advertising purposes).

If you were to get scammed by the owner of a website/forum, then it would probably not be a good use of resources to post the personal information of such owner on that forum, and I do not see how bitcointalk is any different. Also, if you are going to trust the owner of the forum enough to conduct business on such forum, then to an extent, you are trusting them enough to not delete any accusation/claim of wrong doing that may popup. It is my understanding that there are a few accusations against theymos regarding, among other things his use of donated forum funds, however AFAICT these accusations lack any substantial merit. I have also seen, in this very thread instructions on how to find theymos's dox that are inaccurate (that lack any merit) that have been allowed to remain, however I have also seen instructions that might have lead to a more accurate dox be deleted.

I don't think it is a good policy to ban people simply for posting theymos's dox, or posting a link to where to find his dox. The reason for this is because it appears to be socially acceptable to post personal information and those that post it may not know any better (maybe a warning would be more appropriate for a 1st offense). Also, it would not be unreasonable for someone to stumble upon theymos's dox and someone may genuinely post it out of curiosity to see if it is accurate.

There appear to be allegations that some people are banned if they mention that people are banned for posting theymos's dox (however the credibility behind these allegations is unknown). I think if this is the current policy, then it should certainly be revisited and will only make the forum appear less trustworthy if revealed to be true and such policy is not reversed. There is a lot of inaccurate information posted by a number of people, some with good intentions and some with malicious intentions, so I do not see any reason for banning those that make this kind of statements, regardless of the truth behind such statements. 

Hey hey, welcome back! Like your new sig.
The issue is not theymos' banning people for attempting to post his dox, but rather theymos' duplicity, and lying by the staff.

Let's assume that theymos is being honest when claiming that users are not banned for posting his dox, but rather for how and why those dox are posted -- with intent to troll.

The corollary, of course, being "dox posted with sound justification will remain unmolested, as will the users posting those."  And, since "sound justification"" is wholly subjective, this leaves the banned user with no recourse & allows all the non-theymos dox posted on this website to stay up, because unimpeded flow of information and freedom of speech.  Sounds like a win.

But wait, dear reader, wait!  Could an auto-ban script [which triggers on a number of substrings contained in theymos' dox/phone#/BTC address] distinguish between trolling & justified doxxing?!

I reply, emphatically, NO!

I posit the script in question is an algorithmically-governed automaton, banning every instance of theymosdox with mathematically-assured indiscretion and certainty >:(

I haven't been doxed, yet, but someone posted what he thought was my name and town and said he wanted to meet me.  Then, 2 of his employees/devs implied that I might be murdered.  

"I suggest you fuck back off to your troll cave before it's worth someone's time to make you" - Since he's from England, I interpreted that to mean "If you don't stop providing evidence of our dishonest market practices, someone will eventually kill you,"  taking the word "make" to mean "do" or "take care of" me.

Then his associate dev showed up to inform me that he knew how to make me disappear like Jimmy Hoffa.

They seem pretty upset, because I started a topic questioning the integrity of their altcoin investment scheme.  So maybe they'll eventually find my real name, and subsequently I might be murdered.  I'm not sure how serious the threat is, but I'd rather not be murdered.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1181883.200

I am going to say with a good amount of certainty that the line about 'posting someone's dox for no reason other then to annoy them is trolling' is BS. As I have mentioned previously, I think that theymos 100% has the right to want to protect his privacy. I also think that users should be given warnings prior to receiving a long term ban for posting theymos's dox, and that a rule that posting theymos's dox is not allowed should be publicized (if this is not a rule, then one should be made and it should be publicized).

As I said previously, it is not realistic that the owner/controller of a site will allow damaging information about him to remain posted on his site, especially that of a dox. I would confidently say that if someone were to claim that if there was a claim that zuckerberg scammed someone on Facebook and such claim was posted on Facebook in 2004, then such claim would probably be removed, regardless of it's merits. I do not see why bitcointalk (or any other website for that matter) would be any different.

If theymos really did scam you (or someone else), or has exhibited other untrustworthy behavior, then such claims should be posted in (a) place(s) where theymos does not exert control over, and if you can back up such allegations with credible facts and evidence then such allegations will propagate, otherwise they will be ignored.

If you are to conduct business on bitcointalk, then you should (among many other things) conduct an investigation as to if theymos (the controllers of bitcointalk - for all intensive purposes) is trustworthy enough that he will not scam you (either via a MITM attack or otherwise). I can say that it would be my opinion that theymos is not going to attempt to scam you while you are conducting business on bitcointalk (although other scammers will most likely attempt to scam you). I can also say that I have also conducted multiple very large trades without incident (and if theymos was going to scam via a MITM attack then such trades would not have been completed without incident).

As I mentioned above, I think the handing out of bans for posting theymos's dox should be extremely liberal because there are several reasons that are not malicious why someone may post themos's dox, and that person may very well be able to make good conurbations to the community.

As someone who is also from England...I am still unable to interpret this phrase properly. It looks like he was more implying you would be banned ("make you..." - "fuck back off to your troll cave").

That's that, though. Can't do much about the bad apples.

OT: I don't like doxing, because I've been doxed before in the Bitcoin community (and luckily avoided having that leaked by high-tailing out of the situation, and have new people I know I can't trust due to it), but I still recognize that it can be useful. Unfortunately, doxing can be effective in getting stuff done. That's a harsh truth.

Doxing (and the threat of doxing) is essentially extortion worse then extortion, especially when the dox is not regarding trying to get you to return stolen money/property and/or to get you to stop stealing.

Based on your trust rating, it does not appear that you were previously involved in any kind of theft/scam, so I would somewhat assume that your getting doxed was a way to (at least attempt to) extort you. I am curious as to what the situation was, maybe you could share without revealing too much information about who could have your personal information.

Or was I ;)


It was. Interestingly enough the doxing was not an attempt to extort me out of money, rather it was an attempt to extort me out of my databases for bitcoin-related forum I used to run, i.e. user tables etc. Those databases are long gone now, but rather than hand over the databases I simply shut down the forum and never replied to the person who had my dox (all neatly formatted on a paste-bin alternative with ASCII sparkles and the like, mind you!).

Nice script! How do I add my personal info to said script so that everyone that attempts to post it is insta-banned?

Considering that your received trust does not contain a single allegation of theft, I would highly doubt it, although in theory it is possible.
Well I would guess that those user tables would probably have some level of financial value, so just because they did not ask for money does not mean they would not be able to extract money out of what they were asking for.

I was also extorted with my dox as leverage by a member of the forum, and they were asking that I leave the community and not pursue litigation against them for a tort that I had claimed they committed. I was lucky that they had the dox of a person that is in no way affiliated to me, so when it was released it did not personally affect me. Although it does appear that the person whose identity was released has potentially lost their job (assuming it was a real person), which is very unfortunate.

lol

Hmmmmmm..... Just wondering was this related to this guy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=356665.0) by any chance?

Is there any update on this?

You know what's really interesting?


A certain user was banned for mentioning theymos's documents. But when others do it to people that aren't theymos, oh, it's perfectly fine. I don't care if you were posting documents to upset and harass someone, or if you were posting documents to reveal a scammer. I just don't care. Posting somebody's personal information without their consent is a breach of privacy. If you don't want somebody doxxing you, you can't do it to other people. That's totally hypocritical.



Something is not right here at all.

He wasn't even just banned, he was auto-banned. No progress has been made in the last 2 months unfortunately.

You know how I look at it?

It's Theymos' forum - he can do whatever he pleases, and restrict whatever he pleases.

We have to take a step back and see how good we have it here on this forum.  No one has been able to create an alternative forum yet.

I don't know why this topic was bumped again, but I think It's worthy to add my insight on how TF's ban was banned. I don't stand behind what the mods say or do but the way I see this, mods didn't want to play his game (i.e. trying to push things too far).

SaltySpitoon clearly said that if there's a legitimate reason for a dox to stay (like for example a scam accusation) it would stay regardless if it was for a mod or admin.

Its also clear though that when there isn't a legitimate reason, they still stay. Has there ever been one deleted which isn't of the administration? I mean literally, ever?

That's what makes allowing doxing a double edged sword. In my opinion, the benefits of giving an option to expose scammers aren't that great when we take into consideration that it can be abused.

My goodness. This site is being ran by children...?


That is really hypocritical. He can't do that.

But because I need proof, show me in PM.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1185511.0

From the looks of it, people who post theymos's dox are automatically banned, presumably by theymos, under the guise of that posting theymos's dox is trolling (when you post the dox of someone for no reason other then to annoy them).

If you ignore the fact that it is a clear conflict of interest for theymos to make the determination of if someone is posting his dox because they think he scammed them verses they posted his dox to annoy him, then there is the issue that it appears, and there is evidence that users are automatically banned when they post his dox, which is contradictory to the above statement.

---

AFAIK, no. Although not quite the same as a dox, I believe that what was most likely a bogus rape claim against Vod was removed ~a year ago.

I don't believe I was ever accused of rape, but Evershawn did accuse me of being a pediophile on ripoffreport.  He used public information gleaned from my Linkedin account.

That bullshit claim has never been removed from this forum.

^^Someone at least said there was a rape claim against you that was deleted. I am not sure if you were aware of it, or if it even actually existed or not.

forum.bitcoin.com does not allow doxes, and I am pondering if that is a good decision or not. The above example makes me think that it probably is.

1. Is TF still banned?
2. Has there been any progress in moving doxes a non indexed section?

dont know how I ended up reading this thread...


But yeah totes.

except the Crypsty thread, that is fair game

This topic caught my eye. I have done a number (quite a lot actually); of successful trades here on Bitcointalk, and have in turn of course released my personal information to the buyer or seller (such as phone, address, etc) for items I sold them, or they sold me.  After I would think dozens if not close to 100 trades, I have never had anyone threaten me to post my personal information online (because there is no need - the trades, at least my part, went smoothly).

There were a few trades where I did in fact have issues fufilling the order, whether it be during a time I had familiy issues or business issues which simply took precedence; but I followed up with the buyer/seller, and made on the order, this being reflected in my feedback.

I would say, communities like eBay, and services like Paypal, all provide a level of accountability, in terms of verified addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.

This makes people have a level of comfort and security that they won't be scammed or outright robbed.

Bitcoin"talk", is a grassroots community based around the development and discussion of a totally new technology, which happens to be a currency; and a big part of that currency would naturally be "The Marketplace".

Considering that this forum is still in it's development years (although I did see Theymos' new Beta and it looks great); it doesn't yet have features such as verified addresses, buyer protection, and the like, to allow for people to truly feel safe trading in the marketplace.

While outright DOXing someone based on their point of view, opinion, or just a general disagreement should be swiftly handled by moderators, until the forum evolves to a point where buyer and seller safeguards are put into place people may view it as an only recourse if in the event they were robbed, sent money but no goods in return, etc.

I'll give one example: 

- I made a large trade with a buyer on here. It was our 2nd or 3rd trade: So there was an established sense of trust.

- The total purchase was for (off memory) 30 BTC which at the time was roughly $12,000.

- We agreed he would send me 50% first no escrow, I would ship. And he would send the final 50% upon receiving the packages.  (Miners).

- The deal went fine. He paid 15 BTC. I shipped. He paid the final.

- HOWEVER, about 2-3 months later, I got a PM  from a user here on BCT. They informed me they had seen our conversations in the threads, and if I had his information because this user had allegedly accepted BTC as payment, yet never shipped the items.

- The user wanted the person's phone, address, etc.

- While I wasn't and did not provide that to him, I did attempt to try to contact the member (who I had successfully made the trades with); by means of email and phone.

- Unfortunately I was not able to get a response. And I genuinely felt bad for the user who was claiming he had been scammed by the user. But that was personally as far as I was willing to go with the matter- and I let him know that. I tried to contact the member, asking him "this member is trying to reach you, I am just letting you know". But I never heard back, after two attempts. Not much more I could do.

I could see how some people might release that information, and that could lead to an escalation where threats are made, or worse. So I think it's important that if people want to treat Bitcoin as the anonymous currency, they should remain just that. Use burner phones, a PO Box for mail, etc.

But for me, I give buyers my cell, my address, when I ship out my return address to my business is on the label, because I am not out to scam anyone, and have nothing to hide in that sense. I have an eBay seller account and operate under the exact same principles.

I certainly wouldn't want private information posted openly about me on the forum. But after so many trades nothing of the sort has ever happened. I wouldn't expect it to.

But in closing, I do think that the forum, and moderators, should give thought, to more serious offenses of DOXing, such as revenge posts, or those of a malicious nature. These would include posts like ransom demands, posts which include personal information not relating to a Marketplace sale; such as the posting of SSN, photographs identifying the person, etc- that crosses a line.

Just thought I'd weigh in here; hopefully nothing what I posted is too off topic - I didn't read all 12 pages of the thread, but thought I'd throw in my thoughts on in a way "community policing" is "standard policy" until safeguards are developed- which will simply take time.

Strato

You did not, your summary pretty much summarised the sentiments in the thread:

DOX'ing...  I have been Dox before relating to my dog in the Lending section. It doesn't bother me at all but there will come a Day someone will release personal information about a person on here and it will go too far.  There are some Lunatics on here.

Then we will see things like   "Sorry"  "It was a mistake to allow DOX'ing" etc etc. But then it will be too late.

There is a fine line between pointing out scammers with their personal information and an open invitation to cause harm to a person. 

Where and who decides the line?

Theymos; as it should be. Badbear could probably act if Theymos doesn't have a strong opinion on the matter, but for now they're both quiet.

Its probably hibernation time. (https://i.imgur.com/DcbBEr0.webm)

My view is that there must be a reason to post personal, non-published information which would, to the person whom is being "DOX'd" consider private.

As an example: A single user enters into an agreement to buy item X.  Buyer sends payment based on sellers trust/feedback. Item never shows up. Prior to sale, buyer did discuss, via email, and phone, the details of the purchase. As such, he/she has personal information.

This would be in my opinion not a valid reason to post said information. The buyer can post feedback/negative trust, perhaps write a post in the appropriate thread regarding the scam/deal gone wrong.

But echoing otrkid70, there are a lot of crazy people on the net, and here, everywhere.

This example is simply a guy got ripped off. So he should go after him. Revenge, by DOX'ing is not the answer.

EXAMPLE TWO:

A seller of items has been selling high quantities of items. Large quantities of items, and BTC. Then, an exit scam takes place. This person could also be a company, a large company, small, but scale is key.

The aftermath leads to a number of posts in the SCAM thread, and users joining together to seek recourse. As information comes in, it turns out nearly 100 users were scammed of a sum in excess of 500 BTC.

This in my opinion falls more under "class action" on a grass roots level. There is a "community interest" in finding the person who caused financial harm, to so many, so that it doesnt happen again.

If someone has the guts to scam 100 people out of $200,000. They better have had their cards lined up in terms of their exit plan... because with that many people and that amount of money... people will come looking.

My opinion. Only that.