Should Evil fees have a maximum?

[ABCbits]

There is a maximum: it's that value currently. Without the maximum, that much evil would result in a fee of 0.06491724 BTC at current rates.

I just wonder why the max value isn't similar with with costs of copper membership? At least they could get copper membership benefit and probably won't decide not to join this forum.

Surely the simple solution is to avoid using Tor to sign up.

It's not simple for those who cares/have serious concern about privacy.

If one is privacy-orientated, he/she doesn't have to use his own IP address. But using a VPN to register the first time or using a public WIFI is definitely an option.
And after registering, you can freely connect via tor without having to pay any fee.

Using VPN probably will lead to same result (at least for free ones). Public WiFi is good option, but it reveal your geolocation.

[Thirdspace]

I just wonder why the max value isn't similar with with costs of copper membership? At least they could get copper membership benefit and probably won't decide not to join this forum.

if the max value was the same for getting copper membership, it would not effectively block spammers
in fact it will encourage them, as they will just need to buy CM and also free of proxyban
I wonder if LoyceV, DdmrDdmr or tranthidung can do analysis on newbie users with CM that got banned for spam/plagiarism

[actmyname]

if the max value was the same for getting copper membership, it would not effectively block spammers
in fact it will encourage them, as they will just need to buy CM and also free of proxyban

Spammers won't stay on one dedicated tainted IP. It doesn't make sense for them to pay just to spam a few times, then get banned and rack up evil points again.

[theymos]

OK, I reduced the maximum to the same price as copper membership, since it doesn't really make sense for copper membership to be cheaper when it includes whitelisting.

In the last 30 days:
 - 16441 users registered.
 - 4040 required a fee, and the average required fee among them was 0.00127297 BTC.
 - 99 paid the fee, and the average fee paid was 0.00116449 BTC.

I'm not necessarily bothered by the number of accounts abandoned due to fees, since many of those will probably be spammers searching for a no-fee IP. The fees actually paid (by people who are presumably not spammers) may be a bit high, though: I feel like it should be about a tenth of that.

[PrimeNumber7]

Can you have a way to track how many people registered, were prompted to pay a fee, didn’t pay, and subsequently registered a different account (both that did and did not require a fee). Something other than IP address would need to be used to track this.

[LoyceV]

The fees actually paid (by people who are presumably not spammers) may be a bit high, though: I feel like it should be about a tenth of that.

In that case: why don't you lower it further? It doesn't feel right though to clear all Evil units for a low fee (as that would benefit spammers). Hence my suggestion to allow only 1 registration after paying a smaller fee.

Can you have a way to track how many people registered, were prompted to pay a fee, didn’t pay, and subsequently registered a different account (both that did and did not require a fee). Something other than IP address would need to be used to track this.

That would go against many things this forum stands for.

Further reading:

A year or two ago I was researching fingerprinting techniques that'd work against pretty much anyone with JavaScript enabled, and I found several promising leads on that front. But then it occurred to me that I don't really want bitcointalk.org to be known as the #1 forum on the leading edge of de-anonymization technology, so I stopped pursuing it seriously...

[theymos]

It doesn't feel right though to clear all Evil units for a low fee (as that would benefit spammers). Hence my suggesti to allow only 1 registration after paying a smaller fee.

Paying the fee only affects your account, not the IP. Evil on IPs only decays with time.

[DaveF]

OK, I reduced the maximum to the same price as copper membership, since it doesn't really make sense for copper membership to be cheaper when it includes whitelisting.

In the last 30 days:
 - 16441 users registered.
 - 4040 required a fee, and the average required fee among them was 0.00127297 BTC.
 - 99 paid the fee, and the average fee paid was 0.00116449 BTC.

I'm not necessarily bothered by the number of accounts abandoned due to fees, since many of those will probably be spammers searching for a no-fee IP. The fees actually paid (by people who are presumably not spammers) may be a bit high, though: I feel like it should be about a tenth of that.

Of the 99 that paid, did any turn out  to be spammers? If so how many?

Do you have any anonymized data for them that you can share?
i.e. boards posted in, number of posts, etc.

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

Can you have a way to track how many people registered, were prompted to pay a fee, didn’t pay, and subsequently registered a different account (both that did and did not require a fee). Something other than IP address would need to be used to track this.

That would go against many things this forum stands for.

Further reading:

A year or two ago I was researching fingerprinting techniques that'd work against pretty much anyone with JavaScript enabled, and I found several promising leads on that front. But then it occurred to me that I don't really want bitcointalk.org to be known as the #1 forum on the leading edge of de-anonymization technology, so I stopped pursuing it seriously...

It is not necessary to rely on NSA (or Chinese government) level spying to track what I was referring to. I was referring to something closer to tracking cookies that can track your activity. I believe these can help detect things like if accounts are being hacked, for example if someone is accessing an account with the same browser type and IP range as normal but without a cookie that has previously been consistently present when accessing an account. I also believe these can pretty easily be removed, so if you don’t want this type of tracking, it is trivial to stop it.

I believe there are other types of tracking that doesn’t require NSA level spying.

The quote you cited was referring to very advanced tracking when the person being tracking is taking many steps to avoid being tracked. I don’t believe even the likes of Google and Facebook employ the types of tracking referred to in your quote.

[jackg]

It is not necessary to rely on NSA (or Chinese government) level spying to track what I was referring to. I was referring to something closer to tracking cookies that can track your activity. I believe these can help detect things like if accounts are being hacked, for example if someone is accessing an account with the same browser type and IP range as normal but without a cookie that has previously been consistently present when accessing an account. I also believe these can pretty easily be removed, so if you don’t want this type of tracking, it is trivial to stop it.

Cookie clearout happens too often for me ...

Also, there isn't much you can happily track without making it possible for other sites to get hold of your data stored on a cookie. Hopefully there is currently just a random session ID stored on out systems for the cookie for this site (afaik, that's how stuff normally works). You could track people by MAC addresses but I think it's possible to not use a mac address as modems are good at identifying devices with clones of mac addresses and IP addresses now (I've tested that)...

I'm surprised though that theymos hasn't started looking at anonymising accounts further though as there's a lot you could do to improve anonymity of people especially if your servers get hacked or Amazon fancies a look...