Abuse or not?

[Blazed]

Recently I have seen a few accounts being sold that have some trust on them. Personally I think it is bad to sell any accounts, but trusted is obviously worse. I think dropping a negative is probably alright as I do not trust people who buy them. Right now I have been leaving neutral warnings to inform others, but that does not lower their trusted status. Let me know what you think or at least flame me for the fun of it.

[1714876129]

1714876129

[Scamalert]

I think it is a problem that a acount with default trust (green numbers) is being sold.
Trust should be reset when an acount is being sold, since all previous trust cannot be trusted, I know the system cannot do it.

Therefor should the account be nuked with negative untill it is back to zero.

Short version: no it is not abuse, go ahead and swing that negative whip!

[Quickseller]

A high ranking account in general is going to have value. Although some members of the community may disagree that these are "good" things to be trading, the below reasons are why a Hero member would be valuable (for example):

• Higher Signature Payments
• Prestige of being a "Hero"
• They are rare and hard to come by (this is less so as of recently)
• Less posting restrictions - no 360 second jail
• Can be used to promote your business
• Can be used with/for giveaways
• Can otherwise allow it's owner to earn money/btc
• Can be used to scam - it is actually very rare this actually happens, but this is an unfortunate reality

Additionally, an account with positive trust has value for the following reasons:

• All of the above
• Greater chance of being able to promote your business
• Can entice others to send first to you, which will result in a lesser chance of you getting scammed
• Can earn money/btc by offering services requiring trust (e.g. managing a signature campaign)
• Prestige/respect of having positive trust
• Can be used to scam, it is rare that this happens, however it is a reality that others should be made aware of

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why people buy accounts, both trusted and neutral-trusted. The vast majority of these reasons are not scam related (giving a negative rating means that a person is either a scammer, or you strongly believe they are a scammer). On a percentage of instances of sold accounts basis, I believe that a very low minority of sold accounts are used to attempt to scam, and of those, a very small percentage of accounts are ever successful at scamming.

As stated above, there are a number of reasons that give accounts value.

The reasons that someone will sell an account are below:

• They are in need of money, and are willing to dispose of their valuable asset
• They want to make money (this would be common in the case of people trading accounts

As you can see above, the primary reasons people will sell accounts is around the fact that they need money.

If it becomes a common practice to give a negative rating on known sold accounts, then the value of such accounts will decline because buyers will need to factor in the risk that their newly purchased account will receive a negative rating (and along with it, lose all/most of it's value) for no real reason. This will cause two things to happen:

1) When accounts are sold, the new buyers will have a greater incentive to try to scam because they know there is a chance it will receive negative trust eventually anyway, so they have less ways to make their initial investment back.

2) Owners of accounts (the original owners) will have greater incentives to try to scam because the EV of a scam attempt verses trying to sell their account would be greater because of the low prices their account would now be worth, when compared to the potential payout of scamming.

If someone around here is desperate for money, lets say they are behind on their car payment and is in need of $250 to avoid it getting repossessed in the near future, their first choice might be to sell their account, but might not do so if the price is not high enough, then they might try a few other "honest" avenues, and eventually turn to trying to take out a loan they have no interest in ever repaying, or selling something that does not exist (or selling the same item twice, or selling something and never sending it to the buyer), or buying/selling bitcoin but not following through on their side of the trade, or some other form of scamming.

To answer your question, I think engaging in the practice of giving negative trust to sold accounts is going to do more harm then good. I personally will not even leave a neutral rating when I know an account is sold, I will however keep an eye on it, and if it starts to do anything scammy/sketchy then I will drop it a negative.

I think a much more effective way to stop scams is to not give positive trust for micro trades, and to get other respected members of doing the same (and when others do not stop giving out trust for small trades/loans, to have them be removed from DefaultTrust (or lobby for their removal).

[Blazed]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=363749

Was recently sold and has decent feedback. I really think with it being sold it should not be green.

[Racey]

I  voted yes some sellers dont give a damn as long as they make money, abuse YES

I wonder who sold /bought this account https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374778

Scammer https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1136500.0;all

And who bought/sold this account  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=266213

This fkr scammed bipolarbob https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1133424.msg11956641#msg11956641
Also this fucker gave me negative trust... so to be the same as him I too abused the negative ratings system why not everyone eles seems to do this the nobs get at a kick out of it.

I once asked a high ranking mod to see what they could do about my neg ratings, dare I say I was ignored.

Do I trade here?

Am I a cnut here?

Who have I offended here?

I must admit though I did  make a new account,  as this red minus is not applicable to me.

[Quickseller]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=363749

Was recently sold and has decent feedback. I really think with it being sold it should not be green.

The person who purchased the account paid some level of premium for it having positive trust, and if the new owner tries to scam with it then he would be risking that he would lose out on his premium.

I don't really think he should have received positive trust for those micro trades though. Even if the trust remains (and if the account was not sold), he should not be trusted because all the trades he has engaged in were very small.

[TECSHARE]

I think the real question is where does this policing stop? A lot of people object to sold accounts, as do I, but its really not something that can be effectively enforced, and frankly negging sold accounts just incentivizes them to sell more because they will need to buy a new one with a clean rep anyway, so more money in the farmer's pockets. The problem with this type of policing is eventually everyone will start doing it for everything they just don't like, and negative ratings will become meaningless and become ignored, as well as hundreds of people inserting themselves uninvited in perfectly legal person to person trade.

Isn't that why Bitcoin was created, so we wouldn't have financial nannies constantly telling us what we can and can not do with our money? The negatives outweigh the positives, and if you think you are preventing anything from happening you are totally naive. A fool and his money will soon be parted, always. Always has been, always will be. Focus on the ones that actually did something instead of playing Tom Cruise in Minority Report busting future crimes. It is just not a healthy mentality for the community in general.

[xetsr]

I think the real question is where does this policing stop? A lot of people object to sold accounts, as do I, but its really not something that can be effectively enforced, and frankly negging sold accounts just incentivizes them to sell more because they will need to buy a new one with a clean rep anyway, so more money in the farmer's pockets. The problem with this type of policing is eventually everyone will start doing it for everything they just don't like, and negative ratings will become meaningless and become ignored, as well as hundreds of people inserting themselves uninvited in perfectly legal person to person trade.

Isn't that why Bitcoin was created, so we wouldn't have financial nannies constantly telling us what we can and can not do with our money? The negatives outweigh the positives, and if you think you are preventing anything from happening you are totally naive. A fool and his money will soon be parted, always. Always has been, always will be. Focus on the ones that actually did something instead of playing Tom Cruise in Minority Report busting future crimes. It is just not a healthy mentality for the community in general.

So what do you suggest? Do nothing and let the scammers be free to do whatever they please? I won't argue with you that wrong negative feedback from DT members can harm when wrongfully given, I know that but you keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that some of those who are new to bitcoin never come back to bitcoin after being scammed. Nothing will stop the long term cons but negative trust will slow them down while making users a little more aware IMO.

[KWH]

Since the account was sold, perhaps approach those that left the feedback and ask to remove it since it is no longer valid. At the very lease a Neutral should be left. In some cases Negative. Gray area really and maybe it's time for the community to take a stance one way or the other.

[NLNico]

Sold account should absolutely not have positive trust from trades of the previous owner. Seems obvious to me. They simply do not deserve that positive trust as they were not involved in the actual trade.

IMO the only legit reasons to buy an account do not need "fake positive trust". However, I can see how negative can harm it (for example signature campaigns don't need positive trust, but neg. trust not allowed.)

So the best thing to do, would be to PM the persons who left the feedback and ask them to remove it or make it neutral. You should give some proof of the sale with that though. Also neutral feedback seems good - I agree negative might harm it. Unless the person is trying to do trades already without disclaimer that he is the new owner, then I would definitely give negative trust.

edit: Temporary adding negative trust until the positive ones are removed? Not sure about that one.

[Blazed]

Could you imagine if I sold my account off? Would you be willing to message who knows how many people to drop my trust down? I just think selling the accounts is an issue when they have feedback. Who would pay extra for an account with trust and why?

[xetsr]

Could you imagine if I sold my account off? Would you be willing to message who knows how many people to drop my trust down? I just think selling the accounts is an issue when they have feedback. Who would pay extra for an account with trust and why?

the damage would most likely have been done by the time others reached out to have trust removed.

buying trust is frowned upon here, through loans or micro transactions. so why is buying accounts with trust not?   same thing, no?

[KWH]

Could you imagine if I sold my account off? Would you be willing to message who knows how many people to drop my trust down? I just think selling the accounts is an issue when they have feedback. Who would pay extra for an account with trust and why?

the damage would most likely have been done by the time others reached out to have trust removed.

buying trust is frowned upon here, through loans or micro transactions. so why is buying accounts with trust not?   same thing, no?

Pretty much except the buying/selling of accounts is allowed. Why I said it was a gray area.

[NLNico]

I wouldn't mind if admins wipe all the feedback of sold accounts. But I think the problem is it will only make the "business" of selling accounts less public - which would be even worse. Also in some cases it might be difficult to really prove accounts are sold, even for admins (people can be inactive and can move to a different country, etc.)



Either way I agree with the reasons mentioned by Quickseller, I just disagree that some of them are "non-scam" reasons. I mean:

- Greater chance of being able to promote your business
- Can entice others to send first to you, which will result in a lesser chance of you getting scammed
- Can earn money/btc by offering services requiring trust (e.g. managing a signature campaign)
- Prestige/respect of having positive trust
- Can be used to scam, it is rare that this happens, however it is a reality that others should be made aware of

To me all of these are sketchy and at least on the edge of warning others (eg negative trust.) If you have a business and you buy a full member account from some Indian guy (like scam CloudThink did) to more easily promote your business, you are sketchy (even more so if that account already has positive trust.) If you want people to send money first even though you do not have a real established trust, you are sketchy. If you want to escrow/manage things without deserved trust, you are sketchy. If you want "Prestige/respect" based on trust of a previous owner,  IMO you are sketchy.

Now "sketchy" might not be a scam, but a counter negative trust if they already have positive trusts to warn others, maybe seems okay...?

However, the most common legit reason would be "Higher Signature Payments" and they cannot join with negative trust. So that's why I would say: neutral, ask positives to remove, and make it negative if they try to trade without "I am new owner" disclaimer - just to extra warn others the green numbers are not based on his real established trust.

[n2004al]

Recently I have seen a few accounts being sold that have some trust on them. Personally I think it is bad to sell any accounts, but trusted is obviously worse. I think dropping a negative is probably alright as I do not trust people who buy them. Right now I have been leaving neutral warnings to inform others, but that does not lower their trusted status. Let me know what you think or at least flame me for the fun of it.

I think that the process of selling accounts is a doubt process. Doubt because on one hand everyone has the right to sell something which is not abusive and don't harm anyone: on the contrary help the buyer to achieve something. The reason of bought. But on the other hand the utility of an account is very dubious. I can't imagine for what can serve this account except to be used for some signature campaign or maybe to be a sign of status symbol: I am old in this forum and I am someone here.

Without judging this I think that if am account must be sold must be in collaboration with the administration of the forum. It will be sold white without signs of the previous author except the value from which would be sold: the number of posts and the activity.

[Quickseller]

Either way I agree with the reasons mentioned by Quickseller, I just disagree that some of them are "non-scam" reasons. I mean:

- Greater chance of being able to promote your business
- Can entice others to send first to you, which will result in a lesser chance of you getting scammed
- Can earn money/btc by offering services requiring trust (e.g. managing a signature campaign)
- Prestige/respect of having positive trust
- Can be used to scam, it is rare that this happens, however it is a reality that others should be made aware of

To me all of these are sketchy and at least on the edge of warning others (eg negative trust.) If you have a business and you buy a full member account from some Indian guy (like scam CloudThink did) to more easily promote your business, you are sketchy (even more so if that account already has positive trust.) If you want people to send money first even though you do not have a real established trust, you are sketchy. If you want to escrow/manage things without deserved trust, you are sketchy. If you want "Prestige/respect" based on trust of a previous owner,  IMO you are sketchy.

Now "sketchy" might not be a scam, but a counter negative trust if they already have positive trusts to warn others, maybe seems okay...?

However, the most common legit reason would be "Higher Signature Payments" and they cannot join with negative trust. So that's why I would say: neutral, ask positives to remove, and make it negative if they try to trade without "I am new owner" disclaimer - just to extra warn others the green numbers are not based on his real established trust.

The CloudThink example is an exception to the rule. However I also think that the CloudThink situation only proves my point that people will not want to purchase a trusted account to scam.

First of all, it is beyond obvious that CloudThink is a scam, and regardless of if it was a newbie trying to pull off that scam, or a level 1 Default Truster, the account running the scam would have loads of negative trust. I also don't think the CloudThink scam has actually been able to steal from anyone, or if they have from a very small number of people (this is based on the fact that there are not large numbers of people complaining about having their money stolen from them).

Secondly, the fact that the person behind CloudThink purchased all of those accounts, and that those accounts are now virtually worthless because of the negative trust they now have means that CloudThink's investment in those accounts has gone down the drain. They have permanently lost the money they paid for those accounts, really prior to even having the opportunity to even try to scam their first victim.

I can also say that when a newbie opens a thread in the currency exchange section trying to buy/sell a large amount of bitcoin that almost no one takes them seriously because everyone thinks they are trying to scam, granted a lot of the time they probably are, however other times, they likely simply give up and either trade their bitcoin elsewhere or abandon the trade entirely (making it look like it was a scam when it really wasn't). If someone who was actually trying to conduct an actual trade were to purchase a trusted account then maybe others would take them more seriously. You can apply that same logic to other types of businesses.

Any time that you send first to your trading partner, and anytime you use escrow, you are risking that either your trading partner or the escrow agent is going to scam you (hopefully you do enough due diligence so the risk of escrow scamming is low, however this does still happen - see maidak). If you are acting honestly and people are willing to send first to you, then you losses due to getting scammed will be zero.

I would also say that acting honestly is almost always going to be more profitable over the long run then scamming will be. When I was only a Junior Member, for some strange reason, someone was willing to send first to me when I was selling a Hero account to them (escrow was offered but they did not want to use it) for over 2.5 BTC (at the time, USD/BTC prices were well over $500). I ended up delivering as agreed, and did not scam that person. If I had scammed them, then I would have been "up" 2.5+ BTC as of then, however I would likely have not been able to trade again in the future. Acting honestly, I delivered and have since made over 10 times the amount I would have been able to scam in terms of profit from trading in BTC (the amount in USD is much less due to the BTC price being lower, however that is besides the point).

[redsn0w]

I think leave a negative trust because an account was sold is an abuse, because it is not against the forum rules (but it is discouraged). A neutral trust would be more appropriate.

[shitaifan2013]

if someone on DT doesnt trust sold accounts as a matter of principle, I think it is perfectly fine for him to leave negative trust, as long as the trust rating explains the reason.

people not agreeing with that behaviour could always exclude the DT member from their own trusted list, right?

[Blazed]

if someone on DT doesnt trust sold accounts as a matter of principle, I think it is perfectly fine for him to leave negative trust, as long as the trust rating explains the reason.

people not agreeing with that behaviour could always exclude the DT member from their own trusted list, right?

DT people have to take more into consideration when they leave a feedback is why I asked. Since when we leave a rating it would most likely make the account red for most users. It is looking like the best route is just a neutral, but it still bothers me trusted accounts are sold. I guess dropping the people who left feedback a message is the best thing.

[TECSHARE]

I think the real question is where does this policing stop? A lot of people object to sold accounts, as do I, but its really not something that can be effectively enforced, and frankly negging sold accounts just incentivizes them to sell more because they will need to buy a new one with a clean rep anyway, so more money in the farmer's pockets. The problem with this type of policing is eventually everyone will start doing it for everything they just don't like, and negative ratings will become meaningless and become ignored, as well as hundreds of people inserting themselves uninvited in perfectly legal person to person trade.

Isn't that why Bitcoin was created, so we wouldn't have financial nannies constantly telling us what we can and can not do with our money? The negatives outweigh the positives, and if you think you are preventing anything from happening you are totally naive. A fool and his money will soon be parted, always. Always has been, always will be. Focus on the ones that actually did something instead of playing Tom Cruise in Minority Report busting future crimes. It is just not a healthy mentality for the community in general.

So what do you suggest? Do nothing and let the scammers be free to do whatever they please? I won't argue with you that wrong negative feedback from DT members can harm when wrongfully given, I know that but you keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that some of those who are new to bitcoin never come back to bitcoin after being scammed. Nothing will stop the long term cons but negative trust will slow them down while making users a little more aware IMO.

Scammers aren't already free to do what they please? Sure fooled me. Please, be real, the trust police don't stop anything, at the very best they delay the inevitable. That effort spent patrolling the forums looking for targets could be better spent teaching honest users how NOT to get ripped off, or actually helping people in some way. You think people will just leave after they have been scammed? I disagree, most people understand that scammers are everywhere and won't blame Bitcoin or the entire forum for what an individual has done. Furthermore I have seen many people who were duped stick around to try again, knowing their own lackadaisical attitude was the cause of their loss, not the forum.

Conversely though, if people who are perceived to have authority here (trust patrol) permanently ruin their reputation over mere suspicion, there IS a very high likelihood they will leave and never come back, unfortunately the scammers ALWAYS come back, usually within seconds to start up what they were doing right again. The ONLY effective defense is teaching people how to protect themselves, the rest is just self serving bullshit that is destructive to the community rather than being helpful no matter how many times you repeat that you are doing good.

Even if you really believe that, without teaching the user how to protect themselves, they will just walk right into the very next scam! Playing whack-a-mole is not the solution, and a lot of innocent moles are getting whacked over the rising nanny state on this forum known as "scambusters". All this serves to do is make new users have the erroneous impression someone is filtering out scammers for them, making them that much more vulnerable. A fool is a fool, and saving him from a single scam does nothing if he is still a fool, he will just walk right into the next one.