Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I've been dealing on bitcointalk for almost a year, spent hundreds of hours here and did deals for tens of thousands USD worth of amazon balance.

I see the same things over and over - new users don't check trust scan (even if it's clearly red lol), belive in fake vouches, don't use escrow or even know what that is.

Scammers are creating multiple threads, multi accounts for fake vouches (look at this guy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=828286)) or self moderating them. Hundereds or thousands of dollars are getting stolen every day from good people who just want to earn some money and do a honest business.


I think it's all about lack of internet awarness, people are vulnerable for attacks and deceptions with thieves getting more and more creative.
It's not new users fault really, they are unexperienced and expect forums to be the safe place. Getting scammed multiple times when you want to do honest business and make it grow does not really get you go back to this place for more deals.
The marketplace has over 6 million posts, really worth it to make it safer.


It's pretty hard to change human behaviour and spread the awarness with so many new users. Sticking posts like this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137288.0;topicseen) to every sub in marketplace could help a bit, although people are too often lazy or unaware what they have in front of their eyes.

Why won't we take care of scammers for good instead? Or at least the most notorious ones? Clearing the marketplace and banning all the scammers would make it much safer for the new users.

I suggest mods getting to work and users helping them - I noticed many good people fight (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2218555.0) for the truth to protect naive members. Definietly hiring more moderators to help or giving trusted users some new permissions, at least to lock scammers PM system untill forum staff take care of him for good.


I hope you think the same, it's finally time to do some clean up. It's been the problem for too long, good people can't lose money every day because we lack action to protect them and make them want to stay for more growth.

//thanks for moving this to the right sub

I think the solution is not to really ban scammers, but more of create an educational tour of the forum. By that I mean is to mandatory require all newly registered users to take a course to familiarize themselves with the features and some tips on not getting scammed here on the forum.

Banning scammers is useless, they can just create new accounts and the results will just be the same.

Yeah your right people need to became more educate on certain floss regarding unto this issue since it could help them out to sort on what is scam or not wheter it is on real time and in online industry, Banning those scammers cannot really help since mod cannot spot the actual scamming happening thats why we can see it happening and its not a rare case but in fact we can see it everyday.

So the best solution for this is to be more aware and not be appealed by those uncertain to good to be true promised of earnings.

It's a matter od 10 sec to ban the scammer, much longer for him to do 100+ post making his account look more trusted.
Much longer for thieves to get ways around multi account seciurity and other new features we could possibly implement.







Mods could ban people (at least from the marketplace) who have a trust scan full of negative comments and proofs inside.

Is it really so much work to give someone a ban? Or is it that we lack mods and other staff members?

Recently i read a post that was created by the admin theymos mentioning change of terms and procedures to account holders.
According to theymos post, no one can hack your account anymore because if there is a change on email or password, the owner of account gets notified on his primary email and if this activity is suspecious, owner can lock his account anytime upto 15 days.
I think this procedure is good and account buyers are also not feeling safe with sellers.

That's awesome to hear, another simple feature that would help.
It will happen soon hopefully.

I agree with you many users fall prey to scams due to carelessness and lack of knowledge/experience using the forum, although what we can do is pretty limited since scammers don't really stick around long to one account and keep making new accounts the best solution would be to use escrow for any deal you do banning them all is not really possible since they use throw away accounts.

I'm using marketplace every day for months.
There are people who have red scan, negative feedback, red "Warning: Trade with extreme caution!" for months and yet they are still members who get scammed for more. All because user has account for some time and multiple posts.
Red trust is usually invisible also when you go to the profile, visible only after you click "Untrusted feedback - Show ratings" so newbies don't even see it.

How can we figure it out that this account is a scammers here, new account can easily be done at the same time, so even we caught on scammer here, it is easy for them to create new and make another transaction which people fall easily at many times, right?

I noticed people tend to avoid dealing with users who are few days on the forums. Not all of them obviously but it's a good start.

What about making marketplace available after getting 100+ posts? That would waste scammers time at least.

In my own interpretation, the OP is trying to say that these users should be banned right away rather than just paint them red. You can hide your trust from displaying as we know and newbies who didn't nother looking about trust and we can't blame them since they are "newbie." By just painting them red, the thread would continue to live on and scam.

They might just create a new account but it doesn't change the fact that those accounts that are used to scam should not freely roam around and just let them be.

If the mods really are serious in facing this issue, they would delete those kind of threads especially autobuy(s). I see those threads that are up for days and I'm wondering why mods are not deleting it.

P.S. Marketplace is one of the most important thread that needs moderation.

Yeah why don't  we start a thread regarding how they move like by studying how they attack focus on their strengths first because you couldn't  find any weakness if you don't  know what their strengths are. So I guess educating is also is must in order to avoid and prevent them from coming in and to to find a way how to eliminate them once and for all.

Great post, I'd ban their IP and do much more if it was possible, I bet all these multi accounts are usually made with one IP address.
Plus creating a new thread after getting some quality posts at least.


There are multiple threads on how to spot a scammer or smell something fishy with the deal.
Maybe stick them on the top of every marketplace section not just some? Make them bold, visible etc.

Thanks. Just my observation and understanding.  ;D

And some would say that you can just change your IP which is nothing new. Quiet a typical demon's advocate's response.

This would be a nice suggestion but I would modify it a little bit. It would be implemented only in marketplace, auctions and alike.

The things is, a lot of people are not paying attention to pinned posts or stickies. These posts aren't pinned for no reason, aren't these?

If you ask me about it I think it's natural process if they are not get scammed anywhere then they won't learn and keep trusting people blindly over the Internet and it is not good. they have to start using their own mind to think and detect scam and scammers even when they have neutral trust or even positive trust. People learn from the mistake but at least, why we let scammers earn free money. Community members are doing their best to tag member who is involved in fishy things and cause damage to users. People have to learn if they won't take feedbacks seriously, then they lose money.

Buying anything from auto-buy links is like lottery either you get something in it or not. It should be prohibited at least as it will help to decrease the number of scams. I don't know how many scams are going daily but if every one report it will be a huge number in the last.

People need to use their due diligence before buying anything as forum moderators can't verify everything that is sold and purchased here. Forum rules and regulations are clear about that. But nothing last forever in this world and I hope the policy get some improvisation in future.

People have to follow trust feedbacks otherwise it is not possible to save them from scams and stop scammers from getting free money.

Stopping scams completely is impossible as if we want to do that then we have to close this forum, It is the only possible way to stop scams. Forum scam gets more highlights as people can report them.

I think the best way to avoid scammers is look at their rank and their reputation . Maybe? Only trade with guy who has high reputation or high rank . And by the way there is escrow service which can help you guarantee that's no scammer could be allowed to scam you. I guess you didn't use escrow service at all ? Right ?

That's a big issue!
I've already been their victim!
I complained once, but didn't receive my money back.
I think it's a good idea to create thread with listing the names of scammers.

i doubt this would actually be implemented, but it's not a bad idea, especially since it would also serve as a deterrent to spammers creating new accounts considering the annoyance of the tutorial and the time that would be wasted. it could be an idea to consider in the new forum whenever the software actually gets finished, but as is, i dont see it being implemented on the forum running on smf.

pretty sure very few newbies (actual newbies) actually read those. it's like the ToS on every new piece of software you'd install on your computer: no one reads them. but if they can't take the time to familiarize themselves with the forum before going out and trading with anonymous personas online, that's their loss and they probably wont make the same mistake again.

I'm pretty active on catching scammers and i believe moderators should do some actions against them.
We also need more moderators and better trust system.
Not sure is the admins still active around to check whats going on but the scam attempts around are insane.

7 days, 16 hours and 24 minutes

That's just 184 hours.  :)

No. Reputation =/= Trustworthiness, and in fact trust is not an absolute indicator of true trust. After all, we know about the many exit scams that have happened on Bitcointalk. ;)

Your point about escrowing is kind-of right. There's always a degree of risk when trading (the escrow may decide to scam) but it does offer some insurance. I would personally say that trading with people who have no reputation at all (or little reputation) with an escrow would be equivalent to trading with someone that has a high reputation. The only difference is the escrow fee yet, in the end, you still hold the same financial risk, should one of the parties decide to scam.

File some reports in the Scam Accusations section. Red trust will be splashed. Easy.

I wonder why obvious scammers are not banned, can someone explain this to me?

Yes.

The forum used to manually apply the "SCAMMER!" tag to accounts that had scammed.  The scammer numbers became too great, and forum resources were insufficient.  Hence, the default trust system was born.

And that is the way it should be.  "Untrusted" means anyone can make a free anonymous account and post whatever they like.  Looking at my untrusted feedback, I am one of the worst people ever to walk this earth.

"Trusted" feedback should be considered, since those that left it would be quickly removed from that position if they abused it.

To get scammed by newbie very rare occurrence, for example I have scammed by three legendary user with green trust (one even belongs to DT) ,
 and few trusted hero, limit of 100+ post or activity, can only reduce spam not scam.

Learn first not banning honest people...this is more important.
The day you are taken for a scammer and you are honest,you will understand.

Post block for marketplace is the best way here then.

This a good idea to be tackled and be get serious about. it is so difficult to distinguish scammers, I am always referring to there Negative trust everytime i negotiate with other person if I am Trading. bitcoin Forum has So Many members.

Maybe The Best Thing to do if You encounter with scammers give there account negative trust and always look up to there account if the account is legendary then maybe He/She will be afraid to have Negative trust.

Most scammers account are newbies sometimes they use other reputated names.

that's just the forum administration's position they take on scammers; in the past, they did manually apply scammer tags to verified scammers ass vod pointed out above, but with the amount of traffic the forum sees nowadays, that's nearly impossible considering the man hours that would have to be dedicated to the task to even keep up with the sheer volume, while ensuring accuracy. if the administration were to become involved again, it would be impossible to seem impartial or avoid the image that they were doing a half - ass job if they weren't able to keep up, which is likely, and they cannot seem partial in their management of the forum and its users. compared to this outcome, i think the laissez faire stance they have taken is a smarter move in their position, with the initiative placed on the users via the trust system; caveat emptor. personally, even if the old system were to be implemented again, scams would still happen, weather it be by new accounts, bought accounts, or established users looking to exit scam, which does happen every once in a while.
that's just my take on it, can't speak for the administration itself.

Plus the other accounts.

The funny this is about those who are trying to buy high ranking account either having a green trust for a purpise to scam others are having a problem buying since the new security implemented which in result 2 scammers are scamming each other. How romantic.

Technically the new security features only protect against hacked accounts scamming. They are simply locked and not recovered it still requires a signed address to recover the account. So if the account didn't stake an address then it can't be recovered.

Sorry? You're off topic or either you didn't get what I'm saying.

Ok. Here it is: Account sellers can now lock the accounts they sold and sign a message to recover it then resell it again. Following that line of thought, I think you'll get it. Account sales would dramatically go down because of this.

The funny this is about those who are trying to buy high ranking account either having a green trust for a purpise to scam others are having a problem buying since the new security implemented which in result 2 scammers are scamming each other. How romantic.
[/quote]
what new security features? ive only been back on the forum for a few months now, either i missed this announcement or this happened before that, mind filling me in?


LOL, I can just see all the prospective scanners racking up 100 posts in an hour or 2. I'm sure they can esaily figure it out.
[/quote]
forgot to address this point in my previous point, my bad.
lets assume that a post would take someone around a minute to write, and with new accounts, the 6 minute restriction is in place in between posts. with that, we'd be looking at nearly 12 hours to write 100 posts to move this hypothetical restriction (of straight, nonstop posting). dunno how everyone else feels about this, but i barely make 20 posts a week even, granted they're thought out and the furthest thing from spam. however, 12 hours is a lot of time to dedicate, and would be a pretty darn effective deterrent against scamming just from the sheer effort required to bypass that restriction. not that i think this is a good idea, but just stating the point. it's not easy at all.

Here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2282758.msg23164732#msg23164732), from theymos himself.

Haha. You should know the tricks of scammers in order to understand them. They have someone write post for them which these ghost writers would then later send all of the ordered posts of the client. You can see in the marketplace someone offering that kind of service. And they paste it at once like a user I see in the past where he posted 40-50 posts within 20 minutes or less span of time. The thing is: every post is in the average length about 3 lines.

I don't get why are you trying to protect everyone. This can't be done. I've read claims that people are trusting random people, ignoring threads about scammers and trust comments. It's nothing new. You have to understand that some people are lazy, careless or don't care. They want quick and easy money and are blinded by greed.
We can take cloud mining as an example. There's literally a hundred threads about that system where people are explaining that it's risky, scammy and unprofitable, but there are regularly people who post saying they put thousands of USD into cloud mining and are still waiting for a return.
Banning scammers won't change anything. Account are cheap, VPNs widely available and there are always gullible people ready to take the bait.

It's amazing to me that this forum/admins/moderators are allowing their own users to get scammed without doing anything about it. It's common sense that someone like JACC the scammer is extremely known around here and uses a self moderated thread, has been reported many many many times, has a very negative trust setting, and on top of that after I have for several weeks constantly posting on his scam thread (of course being deleted by the scammer JACC) for people to watch out, I receive an email from the mods that I should stop and that he can continue scamming.

This makes people go away from this forum. Yes, you can say, oh well, the new users need to learn about getting scammed bla bla, this can easily be avoided with some minor programming. If trust level is > certain X, reported by trusted/positive members of the forum, ban the thread/user or at least remove self moderated threads for that particular user. Simple.

Honestly, since I was scammed, I barely use this forum anymore since the mods do not want to take any action on it.

The only thing i hate is the fact that every day we get a x amount of "i am banned" topic. The rule states that ban evasion is not allowed. So why do we still get the i am banned post. Every i am banned topic should result in an instant perma ban, with no discussion. Or is it to the community to just report every alt account that has been made to evade bans?

We can protect ourselves from forum scammers with 100% guarantee. That first a person was scammed he reports to moderator and the scammer gets negative trust. This souls to make other people to think twice before to start any contact with such user. The problem is that accounts are selling and buying and a lot of people should to complain before poizen account would be blocked. I think we can't do anything with that unfortunately.

Excellent shitpost, 5/7.

Fallacy.

Bullshit. Plenty of people got scammed by people with negative trust. Some scammers don't receive negative in time and manage to scam several members.

---

IMHO, we should at least start banning confirmed serial scammers.

This. I don't even get it why aren't these users who are 100% confirmed that they're scammers aren't banned. Their thread is still living though it's locked and trust hidden then using autobuy link. I think we should disable "hide trust" exclusively in Marketplace, Auctions and others that I forgot to mention that involves trades.

This seems like a trivial thing to do and isn't really prone to abuse. Moderators could verify the claims via their trust ratings. Those autobuy links tend to be very annoying, yes.

Another issue that got my attention yesterday was Beginners & Help. Someone offered people help to claim BTG and asked users to PM them. However, they have been sending users a link to some website that asks them to input their private key(s). Tl;dr to the issue: Trust ratings are not visible in that section.

Some users still fall for it especially newbies. Anyway, it doesn't changed the fact that they are confirmed scammers and should be banned and the thread that are used to scam (especially this "trap" threads) should be put down.

This is a major issue. The trust rating's purpose is not delivered well. This should be brought up to the admins and implement this (we can't wait for the new forum to be done in an indefinite time to apply crucial changes).

thats the greatest idea to lessen the scammed issue if might not be stopped permanently.but atleast educating new user or even those not so really new but  didnt have tried to deal with damd scammers.more advertising and education ..promote lots of warning post.and those strategy and tricks of the scammers should be revealed for the benefits of many users and prospected victims

@podgor
I belongs to so many communities, but never seen scammers like in this forums. I was been scammed from several bounties, the way they did till the end of the ICO. the last one was Car Taxi where they changed addresses.
It's one of toughest thing to maintain these scammers, there are more scammers exists here under reputation.

This ones a good idea but somehow scammers wilk always find a new way on how to scam people all over again. There are a lot of moderators here so I think they could handle this problem because scammers scatter everywhere. They're really annoying.

New members are often afraid to report scammers because they can get a revenge rep (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2403300).

on my opinion, banning scammers is not the solution for this matter cause they will always find a way to go back to their job on scamming, like creating new accounts. I think the moderator or the person incharge should tighten the security of accounts for this matter.

More important than the question whether a revolver or a shotgun should be used is the question who is allowed to wear the sherriff badge.

Building an honest forum should start at the top. As the situation is now it is impossible to discern between scammers and honest members. For the scammer might just as well be the Legendary one with green trust and the honest one a member with red trust.

The other option is to decentralize moderation and build the forum on blockchain.

Going that direction, there's no reason in putting criminals in jail, they will always find a way to get back on breaking the law.

Going into that metaphore: Before we send people to prison we need a proper court of justice, instead of the police state we have now.

Some more active people should receive special "powers" like trust or something like that, or people with more trust should be more active in the scam sections, so the scammers will be tagged.

No. Giving out trust or distrust should simply not be centralized in persons. That's the police state model. The forum should construct a contitutional state model. Where members are judged on base of clear rules and sound proof. And not by the whims of authonomous persons. The latter works only when you give the power in the hands of honest persons. And honesty is not located in green trust points. And dishonesty not in red ones. There are plenty of devious greenies and honest reddies around here.

Rent hackers on tracking scammers worked out once  ;)

Prevention is a lot way better than cure. Even if we ban scammers they will just keep on coming back. Secure your accounts and protect it. Have a fail safe passwords. Always bear in mind the presence of scammers and everyone is a target. Dont jump into transactions that are to good to be true.

The truth is the staff and moderators can't do shit against the scammers because no one wants to deal with them.
That's how scammers fight those who catch them ->
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2426183
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2403300
And i can point out many many threads how this scamming group fucking us with scams, bumping fake created coins and many many more schemes.
Seems like no one care whats going around, and we, those who fight them instead of getting support, people react against us not with us.
Seems like the community deserve to be scammed if they support the scammers but not those people who expose them and trying to protect them.

just ranting that we need to educate people is plain wrong. the forum should also be active on scam reports or create a wide trust escrow service....

Agreed, we need some changes. Staff members should be taking care of proven scammers.
Locking them out of marketplace at least when there are multiple accusations from trusted members.



That's very clever but hiring hackers instead of having mods actually do some work is not the way to deal with things.



Amen.