Bitcoin Forum

So a lot of threads and concerns are being brought up recently with trading accounts on this forum,especially of higher ranks or green trust which are blatantly used for scamming.And we're still encouraging such account sales openly in self-moderated threads?
Take this cunt for example : Claims to have multiple hero and legendary accounts with the trust scale rating from light green to dark green.


The respective threads : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1470963.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1472845.0;topicseen

How can its possible for one to own too many "Green Trusted" accounts anyway ? Either he is lying the account sales or maybe one of the trusted members is miss using powers.My point is,let the account sales be there but if Mods can delete such green trust account sales thread or DT tag the sellers rightfully ,it can avoid further scam.

I totally agree with you mate.Account sales for High trust account should not be encouraged in the forum as a scammer may get a chance to scam someone or someone may abust trust powers.Accounts starting up such kind of threads should be handed a perma ban.

Reluctantly allowing the sale of accounts seems to be the policy here, but it's hard to justify transferring positive trust to a new user whose motives for buying could well be dishonest. Straightforward buying of trust isn't condoned, so why should this back door way of getting it be?

In practice though, how could admin stop it even if they wanted to, or strip sold accounts of positive trust which is no longer applicable?
They only have certain information about an account, the email, password, isp and maybe a signed message. They may have other magic forensic stuff, but I'd have thought that would be pretty labor intensive.
All that sellers would do would transfer everything to the new user as part of the deal, and isp's change all the time.

If I'm understanding the "trust system" correctly, it would only take a DT1 member to add an account to it's trust list and give it a positive rating of some kind correct for that account to be considered dark green and DT2? If that's the case I'm sure it's possible for any DT1 member to have multiple DT2 accounts, but I think the majority of the time these account sale threads started by newbies are just conversation starters for sig spammers. I myself have inquired on a couple different threads and never even received a response back from the OP, or the OP will post or pm something like "the account was sold by way of pm" after bids or inquiries have been placed with no proof of the sale. So it's hard to tell in the end. I consider almost any thread started by a "newbie" to be a bogus thread really, until it's proven legitimate otherwise ...lol I also think a lot of the blatantly obvious scam threads are started by members here on purpose as well, so they can pretend to "kick some scammer ass" and build their post counts in the process ...lol I agree with you JOEL though, there are some crazy "CUNTS" here in this forum ...lol and Only GOD knows what's really going on in this place half the time!



 

I wouldn't trust a legendary I don't know.
I wouldn't trust someone with 100000 green trust I don't know.

so a dark green legendary should be worth around 0.05 or so to me. ;D

It is indeed awkward, that trust can be purchased by such methods. The trust was initially given by a person or persons, because the one given this trust to, had earned it in such. Handing over such accounts to other persons, is like saying it's okay for a Charles Ponzi to be eligible to take on the mantle of the Pope and hence forth to be believed and/or trusted as such.

It should not be allowed to trade accounts with positive trust, or at least the trust should be nullified before trading such accounts is allowed.

It's pretty easy to identify an account specially if it's high ranked and has a trust feedbacks as a sold account.
I wouldn't trust a green trust who just recently changed their password. Also I would ask for a signed message his old address to prove if it's still the same person.

I actually don't think that the buyig and selling can be stopped because even if it will be prohibited in this forum, it still can be done outside. Whic IMO it's best if the buy and sell of accounts happens here so that we can have an idea rather not knowing anything about it because it happened somewhere else.

I don't know if my opinion makes sense I'm just lacking for some words to express my opinion about this issue.

Here here! If I've never heard of someone it doesn't really matter that they have +25 beside their name. Just because they didn't scam someone when they bought $100 worth of bitcoins doesn't mean they won't scam me when we try to do a deal for $250 worth of bitcoins! also, ask for a PGP signed message. I know they can be sold with an account but it's not good indicator as to whether or not you're dealing with the right person or a purchased account.

Well you are correct when you say a person is added to DT2 when a person from DT1 adds them to their trust list but the rest of the system works differently, giving an account dark green requires at least 2 members from DT to give the account positive trust. Also, I dont think and DT1 user will risk their place by adding their alts to DT2

Two different issues the way I perceive the problem.
Account selling is not something you can control and its also part of loans,so you are also wanting to eliminate loans as well if this is the case.
Its actually a broken Default Trust system that needs to be addressed,the manipulation of the forum based on it has to change. It represents a oligarch that has past its time and holds to it with every dying breath.

Account selling is not the issue,its that accounts are being sold with Trust.

Changing the trust system is not an option, the current system actually works well 95% of the time, it's just that people dont start threads and make noise every time the system works. The only thing we can do is ban account sales

@Funny If a Level 1 Default trust member adds someone to his trust list, he would be on Level 2 Default trust. (Giving a positive feedback is not required.)

Yeah adding a positive feedback does not make it dark green trust either. IIRC it is a function of number of trusted feedbacks and number of months after the very first feedback.

If someone is in Default trust level 1, he doesn't need another default trust level 2 anyway. Having your own trust list like most established members do will take care of all the problems. :D

People can sell accounts off the site,so its something you can crack down on but most likely just slow the trafficking of accounts.
The Trust is controlled on the site,therefore something you can change. Does not mean it would be easy and think there maybe some better options than full out stripping of it.

Would say people mostly trade based on seeing other successful transactions with the member they choose to do business with. Doubt there are many members that are Hero up that base their opinion on who to go deal with based solely on their trust. Its actually something newer accounts do and the reason it is more damaging to the new stream of users.

We have been having multiple discussions on how to improve the trust rating system, If there were a better option, it would be in place. I think we should move our focus from trust and focus more on account sales, If account sales are banned then it will be very hard to sell accounts with green trust. If the trust system is changed or kept the same, trades can always be faked and fake feedback can be made

No one should trust trust system.

100% agree, trust system on bitcointalk is abused in both ways. You can get the red trust for anything from anyone and also members are selling the green trusts between accounts.

Is this how you plan to achieve change by attacking people in this manner OP?

link:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1489425.msg15012032#msg15012032

The thing I do not like is the emotional aspect and the hijacking of a thread to make a point.
Just because people feel right about a issue should not allow them to address people in this manner.
As of today account sales are allowed and attacking some one in their own thread is over stepping in my opinion.

I'm sorry if you find it rude but I seriously can't stand account farmers.What could I have had said possibly ? It won't make any difference to him,he'll continue his business anyway.

Again,I'm not stepping out of my bounds by posting my opinions in his thread.This is a public driven privately owned forum.Selling accounts is bad.gets worse when you have like a signature army ranging from newbie to hero accounts enrolled in every other signature campaign.Furthermore,that guy is selling a Senior Account already enrolled in a signature campaign.Could it get worse ?The campaign manager would have hired the first owner depending on their post quality,changing the account owner simply can't guarantee that.In my humble opinion,I find it as a sheer act of breaking forum's rules ,which is the root problem of all the scams,I may add.

Hey see this is how a few good people support the cause.

Hope you get my point,that is not derailing the thread ,its an attempt to stop account sales.

Almost nobody argues that account sales are bad.
But if I recall correctly, the primary argument has been that banning account sales will not stop them.

The people selling accounts would just do so on another forum, or in private message or on Skype or whatever.

->Enforcing this would take more mod time
->Enforcing this wouldn't severely reduce accounts sold
->Enforcing this would drive traffic away from the forum to other forums where people can sell accounts

Ok guys thanks for clearing that up for me on the trust thing, and I agree having your own trust list will eventually solve the problem long term. As far as DT1's not needing additional DT2 accounts? I would agree to a point, but greed does weird things to people. You can at least DOUBLE the value of a standard senior / hero member account by making it a DT2 it seems and with the price of Bitcoin soring at the moment? Probably not out of the realm of possibility :-) I truly hope it's not the case though, but you never know. I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day! 

The community is divided already about how to deal with selling accounts. and it would be really hard to track sold accounts, what i can suggest however is make the accounts traceable. this way we can still add red trust to those who sold the account once it turned scamy. let those sellers be responsible even after a year of selling the accounts. it should be their responsibilities to chose who they sell the accounts.

what if he just farmed those account, and gained green trust(not that hard nowadays), anyone can do it at this point

so it's not even about buying green trust account to scam, you can build it directly

Accounts put up for sale could be tagged with a neutral trust, like "This account doesn't belong to its original owner anymore" or something similar.

This is usually already done... assuming I can find and confirm which accounts are sold, I will leave a neutral feedback as reference and I have seen other DT members do the same, but this is not always easy. I believe its easier for admins to do this because they have access to IP & other information to go by (also not 100% accurate, but more information than we have as users). In the end, most account sales are hidden and not advertised as to which accounts are being sold. I still think the forum should make a rule against it, but they don't, they just discourage the behavior and seem to acknowledge that its not a good practice. It just seems like its a rule they are not fully able to enforce so they don't enforce it at all.

I think it hurts this forum and subsequently hurts Bitcoin in the process. Those that want to support Bitcoin should not want to see the top discussion forum overrun by a bunch of shady people with high-ranking profiles. I fear there are some large scams coming around the corner and hope everyone is keeping a vigilant eye out for them.

Even using an escrow isn't safe, there are a few escrows that could be safer than others but its always a risk. As the value increases in Bitcoin, the incentive to scam gets higher, and there are definitely people setup in high-ranked accounts that bought their way in. We can only hope they are just honest users trying to get ahead of the game but nobody will know until they run their exit scams and disappear. They may be brought to justice after their scams in one form or another, but the coins they scammed are likely never to be seen again, and that's just sad.


Unfortunately red or neutral tagging these throw-away accounts probably isn't going to do anything. Most of the people buying these accounts wouldn't care about the tag and if they did, the seller would create another newbie account and sell them. Threads being deleted could be helpful in getting this activity off of the forum. But some people, including admins, will say that doing this will just force them to go "underground" and sell the accounts elsewhere and there is no way to stop it. I say fine, let them go somewhere else, why make it easier on them, why give them the audience and traffic that this forum provides?

And yes, this seller could be completely lying and not have any accounts at all. One after effect of allowing trading on this forum: newbie accounts selling "legendary/hero" accounts are somehow not seen as newbies anymore because there is a false assumption that they own these high ranked accounts and are more trustworthy than other newbies. This is a very bad assumption to make but I am losing my sympathy for anyone attempting to buy these accounts.

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I totally agree with you mate.Account sales for High trust account should not be encouraged in the forum as a scammer may get a chance to scam someone or someone may abust trust powers.Accounts starting up such kind of threads should be handed a perma ban.
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That won't be exactly possible because most sales are initiated via PMs. You can not expect moderators to moderate PMs as well, that will be too much work :-X

I negged him, but as it's a noob throwaway account it makes little difference.  I totally agree with JoelJantsen.  These fucks are scum, and that's being too kind.