It could be related to theymos rooting around the files for further investigation.

TomatoCage is one of the users who actively prune his trust list, he's normally quite fair and doesn't jump the gun like a lot of others who play a similar role as a scam buster. He's probably the most understanding too. I'd bet a fair amount of money that Tomatocage is right about his claim, or if he is wrong he will withdraw it.



He's confused about a lot of things.

I've seen a lot of referral links being posted recently and they normally have the same referable url. Also, accounts just randomly posting a thread and going offline without any follow up questions or answers. I've also seen the links to different websites flying around and with the recent Ponzi outbreak there's been a lot of them spreading their links through alt accounts.

Luckily, they don't do much harm as they normally dealt as soon as I report them, probably the longest one I've seen is an hour, much longer if the person is not a Newbie though because, it requires higher end staff.

It's not easy to prevent sock puppets, I used to think there could be a system put into place but, was proven wrong. Disallowing links wouldn't have much of a effect to be honest, they would just post no quality posts just to reach the limit and then spam their links. Just adding more chaos for the mods to deal with. Doing that would be easily achievable, an example would be programming a bot just to post a previous post in the same thread could go unnoticed for awhile unless you have keen eyes. They could, just target the "what song are you listening to right now" and that would probably go unnoticed. So, even restricting the links to rank, isn't going to stop those persistent bastards.

It's good to be back nonetheless, keep us updated with the investigation. Minimal damage was done, and it was back up in a pretty speedy fashion (considering the nature of the downtime), well done to you and the team.

It's not used for recovering accounts, it can be changed if a hacker has gained access to your account. Changing it will not be logged, the same goes for signatures. If you do decide to put a address there it will be visible to anyone who looks at your profile.

To take precautions for losing access to your account send your Bitcoin address to DefaultTrust then if your account was hacked or you can't access it you simply sign that address and send that information to theymos. Although, account recovery is low priority.

I've scanned through the current requirements and I don't believe anything like this is mentioned, however if it is I do apologise. I also, did a quick search in this section and couldn't find anything.

So here's the idea:
When someone is prevented from posting something due to using a VPN/Tor exit node, the thing they tried to post should be added to a list which is only visible to mods. Mods can then manually whitelist the post. This would encourage people who maybe can't afford the payment to get the ban lifted from the account (I know it's a small amount, but I imagine many people who sign up here haven't accumulated any Bitcoin yet) or users who don't want to expose their ip for what ever reasons. I don't think this would be any use for existing members, unless for the people who register alt accounts with a VPN/Tor node and want to post an opinion or piece of information they don't want associated with their main account which I don't see a problem with.

I don't know if this would overwork the mods, I would imagine patrollers could take on this role of whitelisting these posts. If a particular post is very good, maybe have the option of whitelisting the user too. Hopefully adding something like this will encourage users to post quality information without having to pay a fee, use their IP or find a VPN which isn't blacklisted by the forum. This could also serve as a alternative to using a Tor connection to register and be whitelisted without paying the fee.



I've found it in the current requirements

Which of course it exactly what I've suggested.

Any thing is ridiculous when compared to Bitcoin.

Any posts you've made recently will be stored in your drafts

So, there's a couple red flags.

- New Account asking for a loan
- No collateral
- Already tried buying bitcoin with paypal

This is a quote of you trying to buy bitcoin with paypal:

And, another one:
What happened to this £390 in paypal? Couldn't you just use this for what ever reason you need this loan, it's more than the requested amount and it seems you did not reach a successful deal with anyone.

If this is a legitimate request (I highly doubt given the context), you need to provide collateral which would interest the lender, normally something which is equal or more than the amount requested which is considered easy to move on if you default. Collateral can be held by a trusted third party to protect both parties.  

Referral links are allowed. They are only disallowed when posts/threads were solely created to advertise the service, low quality posts dedicated to the referral link and obviously spamming of referral links.

If you have a problem with someone messaging you, report & ignore.

This list might not be entirely up to date (I've edited a few):

Like I mentioned this list probably isn't up to date, but you can verify it yourself via the member list.

I wouldn't have thought having the same opinions as theymos would influence the decision making process. It shouldn't matter if they have differences of opinion on forum rules, Bitcoin or disagreed with theymos decisions.

As long as they follow the forums guidelines and have a good understanding of the forums policies there shouldn't be a problem.

Accepted practice is to use "Bitcoin"  to label the software, protocol, and community, and "bitcoins"  to label tokens/unit of currency. 

Just sending your address to DefaultTrust should suffice. If you ever post your public address whilst dealing with someone on the forum, you can use that to sign at a later date if your account becomes compromised. If you send your address to default trust, it's best to go to your Outbox and click on the message you sent Subject and save the url. The part that you need from the url will look something like this:


Alternatively, you can post a PGP key.

You don't need to sync if you are just verifying the private key(s) work. All you have to do is import the private key and go to the receiving tab, this is where it will show your address. Then you can verify the amount of coins in that address by using one of the several available block explorers.

Downloading the blockchain on bitcoin core, is only necessary if you plan on sending Bitcoin from that address. Although, as soon as you turn on the internet you risk compromising the private key.

Downloading the Mycelium app on a factory ready phone could also be a bad choice. If that phone connects to the internet at any point, either through wifi or roaming then your keys could be compromised. Although, I'm not familar with Mycelium as I've never used it.  



To verify your private key works with the associated address, you can simply import it using Bitcoin core on a offline computer/liveCD. You don't need the internet to verify your private key is working. There are also a few other ways, which include using pywallet for example.


Read the bold text in this post.

There is no notification. If you haven't reported much, then your percentage will be changing all the time , so you will know roughly when you made a incorrect report. However, the more you report the harder this becomes.

You won't know when your report gets handled, but they are normally handled quite quick. I think the longest I've seen is 2-3 hours when everyone was hibernating.

If you've reported a post which needs to be deleted then you can check here: modlog

You can't say which is the best collateral. It depends on the lender, they are the ones who decide if the collateral is adequate enough. The things you listed are mostly for low amounts. When we are talking large amounts it could be anything from cars to laptops.

Really, any collateral which the lender can sell right away at the same amount loaned or more.

What makes you think that? There's been plenty of discussion recently and theymos weighed in on the situation:

Now to figure out how to build these god damn train tracks up to the moon, we need some bloody good engineers.

Did you press submit? Whenever you report a post the number of reported posts will go up, but the percentage will only change when a report has been handled. However, it sounds to me like you haven't  pressed "Report to moderator" but, haven't pressed submit on the page which follows. It's below the input box.