Bitcoin Forum

I am reading the Currency Exchange board whenever I need to exchange btc to Paypal and thankfully until now I have finished some trades with trustworthy persons, I send btc first to them and in 2 months 0 chargeback plus I have withdrawn all my paypal now. The problem is when I start reading these last few days noticed that the newbies with only very few posts are all over the place trying to sell/buy Paypal for bitcoin and to be honest they smell scam a few thousand meters away. I think we need to restrict that board to members only and up or if I am being too extreme, then at least Jr and to have at least 10 merits. Overall what I want to say is that we really need some restrictions there.

You are old enough on the forum to spot scams.

But what you are suggesting will be helpful for the new members trying that section. They may get fooled or cheated by scammers there. It it thus a good practice to allow only old members be able to offer services there. That merit requirement is not required there in my opinion. Merit has nothing to do with how honest a member is.

I somewhat agree, but this (or something similar) has been suggested before and I don't think Theymos wants to do anything about it--remember, he doesn't even moderate scams when they're obvious, much less try to prevent them with restrictions.

Most people who've been here more than a couple months or so learn not to deal with noobs and PayPal.  I also haven't heard many chargeback horror stories lately, have you?  I could have missed them, but it doesn't seem to be the huge problem it once was.

Thank God I haven't heard too and I have been dealing with Paypal with 4-5 different persons, some green trusted and well respected, but 2 of the persons I have dealt were normal members with only a few non trusted positive feedback like mine, so I decided to risk and I was not deceived. What I mean is that something must be done because the noobs spamming the CE section with Paypal threads opening being their very first post here makes it difficult for me to find reputable members to trade with, I need to spend more time until I find the thread I want. Probably to add some filter to that area of the forum, just like in a databse where you create a query to exclude or include things, I think it will be easy to create a filter to exclude newbies and jr members threads if a user wants to ?

So what I understand is - it's up to the members to decide if they want to buy into a scam or not. Members are adult enough here. If they lose money or fall in the trap then it's their own mistake.

In my personal view, if a website/service provider ask ID for verification and a person verify the account with his ID and then sell the account to another person then both seller and buyer are equally scammer.

I do not think I can create two paypal account with same ID. If I sell my paypal account then the other person is basically using my identity. If he do anything illegal then the authority will charge me. So I don't think when these people are buying an account thinking the account is the person's who is selling them. They are actually buying these accounts to sell it to someone else and these sellings will continue without no actual use of the account. So in other words:

1st seller scammer -> 1 buyer scammer, he is now 2nd seller -> 2nd buyer scammer, he is now 3rd seller .... it goes up to nth and nth+1

Yeah, I've been dealing with gameristo for PayPal deals for about the past year or so, consistently.  That saves me the trouble of starting threads in Currency Exchange and having idiotic noobs post offers even when I make it a local rule that I'll only deal with Full Members and above.  Then they ask me to send bitcoin first, or PayPal first, which I certainly wouldn't do with a noob or even a low-ranked, untrusted member.

The main problem is that a lot of people still don't realize how risky it is to deal with PayPal, and they're the ones who end up getting scammed because of it.  Nowadays I think more people know the risks, but I would imagine there are still going to be people who fall for scams and they need to be warned.  Vod used to hand out negs pretty liberally for noobs offering PP (if I'm not mistaken), but I haven't seen that much lately.  As I said, I haven't seen a lot of scam accusations recently either, so that's definitely good.

Aside from what you suggested which I largely agree with because its always surprise me when I see a newbie with few posts and having join the forum just few days ago knows the exact place to place his ads on the forum and exactly the right currency. Its not too hard to discover that its someone else hiding behind that username to perpetrate scam using an account that can be tossed away. But with what you suggested especially the merit part its going to be difficult to quickly rank up and at the same time such merit should be investigated before trusting it blindly.

Another thing improvement in that section of the forum is the removal of ability to lock a thread. Several scam exchange sites are there with the thread bumped every time and with great rates to attract unsuspecting people and those who have been scammed  could not post on the thread because it has been locked. I also fell for it until I took my time to search about it only to discover several scam threads have been open in another section of the forum..

I've noticed this a lot, mostly because I have been looking at trying to get away from using my exchange unless I have to.

The problem is similar to marketplace threads that are self moderated, or unlocked and rocked after the bump. Obviously now I know these are clear flags and I just mosey on.

From what I've gathered Theymos has no interest in restricting or regulating marketplaces, so again it's up to the community.  I really don't have a problem with that or takes a few seconds to post a comment that can derail there sammy threads.

This isn't a big issue. Newbie paypal sellers are usually ignored and buyers either contact trusted members, or they are ignored too.

Worse case scenario: Newbie contacts another newbie and ends up getting scammed. A very possible case, but if a person is smart and bothers to just read the stickies, he is good to go.

Merit should only be a requirement for rank, its not a restriction for everything on this forum. If people are to scam, they'll find a way to do so, but if they aren't, then they would just have a quick deal and get things done with.

Anyone should have right to trade. But as there is charge-back option for few payment method eg: PayPal, neteller this types of payment method should not be traded by the newbies. And if they can post still then there should have no problem, as we have option to trade or not. We have to made safety of us by ourselves. If we do not take PayPal from newbies then they will not be able to scam with us. To make 30 post is not difficult. Anyone can make it and within a certain period of time he/she will be jr. member and in this case they can scam as newbie can. SO better useful thing will be to stay away from the scammer.