Bitcoin Forum

DON'T JOIN SPAM BOUNTIES!

Some times, you might see some projects, that give away their coins in spam bounties.
Their targets are not strange, and the spam place is Bitcointalk.org forum.
They often give away coins for the first 20, 50, 100, or 250 people to visit their announcement topics and leave a post.
Post should be positive about their projects.
Next, bounty hunters - who are also spammers - have to post proof of their positive posts in Discord, concurrently with receiving addresses.

I recommend you don't do this, don't join those types of spam bounties.
Join them, you will obviously get quick, easy money. Sometimes you can luckily receive $10, $20, or $50, but those money does not help you richer!
Consequences of your participation in such campaigns are:
- Red trust as spammers to come.
- Temporary bans and permanent bans (if repeatedly violates forum rules by spamming and join boosting service).
- Risks of losing your money stored in your devices (because you have to install unknown wallet, that probably contains potential threats).
The more bitcointalk give-away bounties you join, the more odds for you to be tagged with red, or at worst, temp/ perma banned, or nuked.
Rules of forum that will be violated by such campaigns:
Links to unofficial forum rules: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0

Smartly choose bounties to join is the best approach for bounty hunters.

Collections of bitcointalk give-away bounties:
https://i.imgur.com/fo3bC14.png
https://i.imgur.com/DLE8Dv8.jpg

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I might update more images of  more bounties when I find them, or someone who see them can help by posting images here.

Thank you.

By breaking the forum rules, an account could/should get banned, be it temporarily or permanently. Nevertheless, the account should not really get red tagged for it, as forum rules infringement should take precedence operationally.

Although there is not uniform consensus on red tagging motives, and one DT could differ somewhat in criteria from another, the following is a comprehensive, albeit non-official, thread on leaving Trust feedback: [Infographic]: Guide on possible reasons to leave a -ve/+ve trust feedbacks (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5100675.msg49363316#msg49363316).

Trust feedback can lead to getting red-tagged if performed by DT or, if you happen to have a Customized Trust Network, someone within it up to the depth level you have selected (default 2).

Not trivial to understand, but the operational side to it is: If you get banned, yo are so as a person (the ban extends to all your potential accounts), and should leave the forum for good. If you are red tagged, you may stay and post on the forum, but no campaign will take you on and trading on the forum will be a quimera.

I think you are mistaken here. I've never joined an altcoin bounty, but from what I've seen, the vast majority are either scams or collapse long before they reach an exchange or are worth anything. With the ones that do succeed in become listed somewhere, the bounty rewards are generally worth a couple of bucks, at best. Not to mention that some of these projects want you to go through KYC and send them your documents in return for your "rewards", and sending your identity to a complete stranger in return for a promise of a few worthless tokens is completely insane.

Agreed. The rewards for this kind of task is extremely small, you won't even be able to buy enough food for 1 day with it. On top of that, the distribution usually takes months after the bounty is finished, so it's not really worth to do. You're wasting your time hoping your $1 tokens can make you become a millionaire in a few weeks or months.

The worth of token in real life will be zero. By doing spam bounties you are acquiring zero value token and causing large number people to lose millions of dollars. In the end more distrust to crypto and that might cause further depreciation of your crypto assets.

In other words , it is way of self destruction.

A person will not pay you for SCAM, I mean if he wants to pay why he does not do it legally, and showing payments publicly is another proof of the seriousness of the project.

Mostly, those who do this want to either distribute their shitcoins and thus give them some fame, or scammers try to profit in return for not paying anything.
Also, no one will try to help you if they find out that you have been scammed and are trying to scam others. "You are doing an illegal act."

You should report for such violations until they stop and not just warn them.

Speaking on your topic, it's simple as saying easy come easy go. Money that comes easily such as promoting Scam tokens through bounty to help defraud others doesn't last long, that's the reason we have numerous scams carried out by the same set of individual those type of wealth won't make you rich if that's the reason for engaging in such act and if you partake in any scam bounty on forum you're liking to get red tagged as DT members frown against such act.

I was deeply annoyed with these kinds of scheme where projects especially those in the ICO stage spams bounties and will ask the community members to participate with them by leaving a post and I really find it stupid, as well. These are some sort of marketing strategies and the project owners are taking advantage of the community and I am so happy to see the regulation implemented for this. Spamming bounties must not be tolerated and probably punishable which better.

Hustles that come quick with easy money are not advisable because the money at one time or the other vanish to tin air. Forum rules are strongly against spam Bounties| scam bounties, hope that; the usual is done to those accounts that are jointly involved in the alleged Spam bounties|Scam bounties. There's one obvious reason for spam bounties these days; which involve KYC before be able to claim the reward, which in the process they turn to be died before arrival.

Most of those Altcoin bounties won't even get you $10, simple because the tokens are worthless, low trading volume, no realiable exchanges, and so on.

The risk of getting tagged, wasting your time, and risking documents in kyc (for bounties and exchanges) is simple not worth.

Moreover, those spam bounties tend to open when coins don't get listed on exchanges.
Consequently, spammers have to download and install wallets on their devices.
It is another high risks.
Take risks, lots of risks, from red trust, banned, to lose money due to viruses in wallets, etc.
Generally, such spam campaigns are too risky, and don't worthy.

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For estimated price for each participant, it is just estimation, and a little bit exaggerated.

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Noticed that those spam bounties tend to use btt-bounty for their subchannel in Discord.
What is BTT? They named it, in the way only they understood.
Bitcointalk forum named as BTT in abbreviation. :V

I have experience and I have seen previously that spammers asking reply on their thread by Google form of airdrop. That means in order to get airdrop token bitcointalk comment link is required during submit of airdrop form. And obviously comment should be positive. I don't think they will pay if someone comment negative. Just for 2/3 usd people's also spamming.

However if you fund this kind of case you can report to moderators because this is against of forum rules. If you can't explain on report you are free to send PM to appropriate moderators.

They ask for saying lies, positive about their project.
At the end, they maybe pay or not pay for their supporters.
Even they pay for lies, for all potential risks I wrote above, stay way from them is best choice.

This is a perfect example of short-term gain and long term loss. It takes me back to the days when Ripple was first introduced on this forum. They required people to link their Facebook identity to their account for a small bounty payment.  ::) So, you sell your financial privacy for a couple of bucks and you expose/dox yourself to your own detriment. <Making yourself a target for hackers>

The same goes for spam bounties like this, because you expose yourself to account banning and severe consequences and you reveal your real identity.  ::)

Be greedy, be foolish to accept risks, and also accept potential losses.
Accept both risks and losses in long term to exchange for small buck in the present.
I have never thought it is a good way to get money.
There are so many safer ways to get money.

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Your example on Ripple reminds me about the $25 give away of Blockchain.info paid in Stellar, but the cost is doing KYCs.
Is $25 XLM worth your privacy (identify). (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5123855.0)

Absolutely correct. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not isolated to the world of crypto. "If it's free, you are the product", as the saying goes. Every company or business has to make money somewhere, or else they will cease to exist. Anything that gives you something for free (short of sites like Wikipedia which are run on charity/donations), be that a service such as Google or Facebook, or a product such as YouTube or ICOs, is making their money from you. Simple things like your browsing history, which is easily trackable unless you take steps to prevent it from being so, can be sold to third parties and used to target advertisements. When you willingly part with even more data like you do when telling Facebook your life story or sending your KYC documents to an ICO, your data becomes ever more valuable, and the risk you expose yourself to becomes ever higher.

If you are happy having no privacy, having your data sold to unknown third parties and used against you, making yourself a target for hackers and identity theft, etc, in return for a few worthless tokens or seeing photos of friends' latest meals on Instagram, then as far as I am concerned, you are crazy.

So, participants of bounties are still asked to post in ANN threads in order to get paid? Wow, I'm surprised, I thought it was 2017/2018 thing. Forum rules simply doesn't allow to do that. People who are doing that are risking to get ban. And these bounty and ANN topics should be trashed. When you see such topics, you have to report it to moderators.
And definitely it's not worth to join such bounties. First of all it's likely that you will be scammed or will get some worthless tokens at the end of campaign. And secondly, you're risking to get account banned. So, I don't see any reasons to join these type of bounties, because potential few bucks that you can get isn't worth all risks.

Posting on some ANN Thread to bump it, it's illegal and will have some bad consequences If the mod caught them. I they are being paid to do it then it looks like they're helping the unreal project to scam people. getting paid for bumping is a bad thing, the real one will get buried. and as OP said you're not contributing to the forum at all, instead you're helping this bad people to spam here which is obviously not cool.

I actually thought like you, but over time I saw some prominent users reguarly bump their topics, and I searched to find out why they do it without fear of bans. Acutlaly, bumping is allowable, but there are some rules for bumping.

There are some rules and guides on bumping.

There are only fee bounty campaigns here that will discourage soamming innl the forum. Yes some bounty managers had qouted this in their rules and regulation for wearing signature bounty. However, it will encourage the bounty hunter to spam due to.the fact that bounty manager ask the users to post minimum quality post to get stake from the rewards. So, this is what happen now more and more people are joining projects that does require.min. post to be enable to receive rewards.

Absolutely agreed. We have to improve our selection, as often people wish for better results but they don’t think about improving their own choices or standard.

This is where I feel so right with going for Bounty Campaign (https://cryptolinks.com/airdrops) that comes from reputed houses (companies), as that means there is no risk element involved at all. And when that happens, you are for sure able to extract benefits and bring out profitable results in your favour which makes it all super easy and cool.

Most of the bounties causing so what is the permanent solution for this?

We can ask the people not to join but they will run behind the bounties where the rewards are lucrative so it will be better to have some guidelines for creating the bounties and for the people who are managing it will help a lot.

An idea - maybe you could make it a rule that if you have signature text or avatar in place, that you get a limit to the number of posts you can do a week.

If you have no sig, then you can post as much as you like.

For example, if you are a member with a sig - you get ten posts. If full then 15.

It would prevent the spam campaigns that just encourage fifty posts a week of nothing (i'm looking at you gambling website campaigns!)

I can see mostly who spam ann threads are newbies joined in bounty so to stop spamming, newbies must be restricted from posting in ann sections/altcoins or a newbie account must have a limited number of post he can create per month lets say only 30 post are allowed per month in this way spamming can be controlled.

Many of the best posters wear a campaign signature as a means of passive income or play crypto, and the fact that they bear a signature does not cripple nor interfere with their ability to post.

The signature per-se is not a problem, and I actually barely notice them unless the posts are of a noticeably low quality and are posted in bursts of short spaced time periods. Then, paradoxically, I tend to notice the signature and conceptually may associate the campaign to a spam permissive campaign.

What matters is content, not the presence/absence/nature of the signature. Based on this, one could vouch for merits to play a role and create different posting threshold limits based on the number of earned merits in a given period of time. I doubt we’ll see this roll-out though. We would also need to consider that certain boards are not very merited (i.e. mining boards, some local boards), and thus delimiting the number of posts on a merit based proposal would not play out that well there.

I believe that good posters are just serious people in real life.
Wearing a signature that pays in BTC is an incentive to make even better posts, and spend more time in the forum (an in cryptocurrency subjects in general).

As wearing a signature these people can earn extra income, it is a nice incentive to keep posting, studying and helping new bitcoin users around the world. You are also helping serious projects, such as gambling, mixers, and other bitcoin related services. And you are also helping bitcointalk.org website, by contributing with good posts and helping users. I really see no problem.

Problems appears when managers are accepting spammers to their campaigns. Users that do not contribute to anything and are like parasites (as the managers who accepts them). Luckily, most of BTC paying campaigns are not managed by those people, and those spammers are mostly in altcoin related projects.

When theymos launched merit system in early of 2018, he wrote that if spamming does not decrease and such annoyance from spam permissive signature won't be controlled or at least, reduced; he would consider to disable all signature campaigns paid in altcoins or tokens; or even more seriously disable all signature and related industry. Fortunately, merit system works, and recently a plagiabot works, so we might still see signature campaigns. Generally, participants will have to make better quality posts, it does not equal to high quality posts. But, at least they stop or reduce copy & paste; then reduce pace of spamming.

There's a massive improvement in this forum, especially on my local board after the merit system was introduced (well, not exactly one second after, maybe months or weeks after that). Not sure how related merit and the decrease of spammers are, as the increasing scam projects might also contribute to that condition. But overall, we can see which user is really making a good post and being appreciated, and which one doesn't.

After that, sooner or later more members try to be helpful in order to be more appreciated and have better luck with campaigns. Hopefully, it continues until the end.

Loyce has some great data available here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032314.0. This is regarding the 1 merit requirement to display a signature, rather than the merit system on a whole, however.

Essentially, after the introduction of the 1 merit requirement, the number of posts per week slowly fell by around 60% and then plateaued around that level. That is a huge reduction in spam. A compounding factor may be that the price was pretty static around $6,000 for most of these weeks, and then fell to $3,000 towards the end, and that may have contributed somewhat to the reduction in number of posts, but there is no denying that using merit to stop signature spamming from newbies made a big impact.

We talked about this in Meta a few weeks ago.
The problem with altcoin signature campaigns is often in the bounty managers. They accept everyone that applies as long as they have the appropriate rank. The applicants post history isn't checked and therefore the quality of the posts is below standards.

This wouldn't happen with any of the reputable campaign managers that we have that manage Bitcoin campaigns. The solution is applying the same guidelines and standards in the altcoin section that we already have for bitcoin campaigns. 

Managers of those campaigns don't check post quality of applicants at beginnings, and don't check post quality of participants during their time joining campaigns.

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Agreed. Reputable campaign managers eliminate shitposters at starts, and during their participations, they will be eliminated if they don't meet minium post quality ask by campaign managers.