Not sure if this is legit

[vectisitch]

hi, one of our project members seems to be having a problem with his bct account. It looks like he joined here in march, but has not posted yet. he says he is getting this message


"Your IP address has previously been used for evil on this forum, or it is a known proxy/VPN/Tor exit node, so you are required to pay a small fee before you are able to post messages or send PMs. You can still use all of the read-only features without paying.

Your account contains 4,036.72 units of evil. To atone, you must pay a total of 0.00302224 bitcoins (3.02224 mBTC; 302224 satoshi). Pay to the address 3Cu5LbfhZAJnhhAHGNK1cdynuvJyvRivkD. Once you have paid the full amount, wait a few seconds and then reload this page. If the fee is so small that your wallet is unable to send it, you can send any larger amount, though you will not be refunded the difference.

Alternatively, any forum staff member and some other notable members can manually whitelist you. Paying the fee is probably easier/quicker, though.

If you find any bugs in this system, email pbbugs-...@.... For example, send email here if your payment is not registered an hour after sending it. (Note: exchanges often do not actually send transactions until long after you submit a withdrawal.) The mere fact that payment is required for your IP address is never a bug. You will be permanently banned if you send email here requesting free whitelisting.

People commonly say, "I haven't posted anything before, so why on Earth am I banned?" You are not banned. Your IP address was previously used for evil, so everyone who uses that IP address has to pay this registration fee."


so i'm wondering if this message is legit or a scam of some sort??

Advice please mods.

[TryNinja]

It's legit. Your project member registered with a IP which is probably close to a range of IP that has abused the forum in the past. This happens a lot if you use Tor to register to the forum.

Some posts about this:

Evil score visualization
Units of Evil

[vectisitch]

It's legit. Your project member registered with a IP which is probably close to a range of IP that has abused the forum in the past. This happens a lot if you use Tor to register to the forum.

Some posts about this:

Evil score visualization
Units of Evil

ok, thankyou for your help

[AverageGlabella]

You could attempt to contact a global moderator and endorse that member to get them manually whitelisted but I would only recommend this if the member doesn't have any Bitcoin to start with. I think a lot of projects are sharing the main account representing their company between multiple team members so that could be another alternative.

[TryNinja]

Along with the above, you can also just tell him to pay the fee and get the Copper Member rank. Since it costs the exact amount of BTC your friend has to pay (0.00302224 BTC), it's like he's just buying that rank (the evil fee payment also goes to the copper membership payment).

Since he is part of a project/company, this can be a good idea because he will be able to post images and have fewer limitations in the forum. Take a look: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote

[Thirdspace]

Your account contains 4,036.72 units of evil. To atone, you must pay a total of 0.00302224 bitcoins (3.02224 mBTC; 302224 satoshi).

that's a very high evil point he must have registered from a very bad ip address
why not try create a new account from a different ip, find a good clean ip so he doesn't get proxyban
if the account name is significant to the project, then just buy copper membership as TryNinja said