Bitcoin Forum

Sometimes we see scam accusations that occurred in our beloved forum. It's not important where it occurred, currency exchange, digital goods, services or any other boards. The important thing is that it occurred in our beloved forum. Unfortunately, when the victims complain, we all suggest using escrow service after they get scammed and later we tag the accused. Sometimes the tag helps and sometimes not.

We suggest using escrow service in threads in between of many posts, which probably not get noticed by all newbies. Thus most of the accusations are from newbies.

A case (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5200663.0) from yesterday, I felt very bad when I knew that money was for his kid's school fee (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5200663.msg53055244#msg53055244) and it got scammed. Till today no sign of the accused person, I'm just hoping he returns the money on time.

I'd like to suggest Theymos to help us encourage newbies to use escrow service, his help can reach more members than us.
Theymos can use the NEWS section (under our avatar) and also can use unsold ad space (if any) to reach more members for this awareness campaign.

I know the forum doesn't moderate scams, trades or anything else. I know it's a free zone...
But at least the forum can do awareness campaigns for a greater cause and under the ad space there is already a disclaimer that will not make the forum liable for anything I guess.

Please share, if you guys have more effective ideas to build awareness for this cause.

I'm not sure if this will work or not, but if it saves a single person from getting scammed then it will be a success.

My question to you OP is, 'what have you done personally to encourage the use of escrow by the said newbies'. it won't make much difference advertising if the said newbies aren't ready to make the safety of their funds their very own priority I mean, who just goes online to trust some random individual who's identify is anonymous without carryout some breakground check to confirm if the user they're about transacting with can be trusted and in a scenario where that trustworthiness is in doubt, they employed the service of a third party system (Escrow).

To my best of knowledge, the fees charged by this escrow providers aren't that ridiculously high per se to drive away patronizers. It's the newbies who are acting carelessly either out of ignorance and becoming victims of this scams. Only them can help themselves effectively.

Yeah, I read that thread too and tagged the alleged scammer--but I'm still hoping the guy gets his money, although it's probably unlikely.

The problem in that case was putting too much faith in the trust system, because Zerbis (the alleged scammer) had some green trust which no doubt allowed him to make deals more easily with members.  He doesn't have an extensive trading history and I doubt BitSat19 even looked at his trust page.  So that's part of the problem in general, trusting members based on their feedback profile.  Those of us who've been on the forum long enough know that green-trusted members have scammed for paltry amounts before, and since account selling goes on, there's no way to know if someone's green trust even represents the current owner of the account.  That's one of the reasons why I can't stand account sales.

And yes, everyone should use escrow, but as much as it gets recommended people love taking shortcuts.  Hell, I've done it plenty of times myself and other members have done deals with me when I could have scammed them--probably the only reason why they didn't want to use escrow is because of my trust score.  I know I'm not going to scam someone, but from someone else's viewpoint they ought to be more careful, since they couldn't know if my account was hacked or sold or that I was planning an exit scam.

Thankfully we haven't seen a great deal of scams coming from senior members with green trust lately.  The last biggie was Master-P, I think.  For the most part certain members can be trusted, but you just never know.  But OP, I think the scamming is going to keep happening no matter how many warnings people get about using escrow.

Mostly I do the same as others do, suggesting to use the escrow service in their accusation threads after they got scammed and maybe a few times IIRC then I have suggested in threads where I saw two newbies are willing to trade with each other.


Yes, it's the newbies or oldies or anyone else, it's their own duty to save their own ass from any consequences for their own irresponsibility. It could be the fees, it could be the ignorance or maybe something else for the reason members are getting scammed for avoiding escrow.

The forum never tried such awareness campaign before as far I know, so what could be the result that is uncertain. But I believe it may help fire some member's ignorance habit to change and they may act responsibly.

The forum runs interesting facts, funny quotes, hints, info, and ads given away to supporters to the unsold ad slots, then why not use this same technique for the said awareness campaign. This way, at least the forum is alerting the naive members and if they don't consider to be safe then they deserve what they deserve. The forum can reach more peoples than us by using its resources.

Anyone makes a transaction is responsible for safety of that. They should use escrow or anything else to guarantee the safety of the transaction. Despite of this, I agree with the OP. We should make our effort to save newbies from getting scammed.

I almost never visit "Currency exchange" board. I just visited this board. I expected to see a pinned post warning newbies. I think the easiest thing that can be done is to pin a post at top pf the board which warns newbies against scammers. I guess there are many newbies that don't even know what is a escrow service.

It's sad story. Maybe it's still possible that he will return money. But considering thst he asked for loans without valid collateral, I wouldn't put much faith.
But I think this case is a bit different, because scammer offered to use escrow, but victim refused it, because of green trust.
Escroe is must use thing in most of cases, especially when you're dealing with relatively new members. Few positive feedbacks on profile doesn't means much, it's not so difficult to get it. Especially when there is things like trust farming exists. Escrow isn't needed only when you're dealing with old extremely trusted member with big number of positive fedbacks and nothing negative in his profile.

For new commer, maybe when the first time they register, put some words that made them agree if they must use an escrow by checklist it. Something like Terms and condition thing. If i'm not wrong, someone already recommended this too, but i can't find the thread or the post.

Another way probably, when you enter some specific board, there's pop up or some page that say
and then there's button that say "I understand", after you click it then you will redirected to board that you want, or something like that.

Your biggest problem with getting everyone to use "escrow" is the fee. Quite a few users would rather take the risk and save a dollar vs paying a fee and being safe. It's stupid and a huge mistake.

It's the same cycle with everything to do with money on this forum. You see it with trading, signature campaigns, gambling site wd fees, bitcoin transactions, and anything else that might cost an extra satoshi.

Users don't look at the risk, they just look at the bottom line. How much money can or will I put in my pocket?

Honestly, escrow fees are mostly reasonable and probably too cheap really. Some deals literally take hours to complete and an escrow is making pennies for all their time.

master-p got me for 2+ btc when I was using him to escrow signature campaigns. I'm sure this type of situation has been read by users in the past and steered them away from escrow as well.

I think using unsold or reserving 1 ad slot for education would be an excellent idea.

A simple warning message at the top of "New message/sending page" whenever they're dealing with new users: Sample (https://imgur.com/s8jEkfw)

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