It seems to me like there has been growing concern for lending and currency exchange scams from new members jumping straight out of the newbie section and into those forums. And from what I've seen, most of these scammers are repeat customers: they get a scammer tag, so they create a new account and try it again. This is a process that takes little effort to achieve with the current restrictions on new members. I have two ideas of changes that can be made that will increase the effort needed for scams without imposing a heavy burden on honest new members.
1: I think that the current requirements for new members to post outside of the Newbie forum could stand to be increased. Five posts and four hours of browsing the forum are easy things for scammers to accomplish. To that end, I propose the following changes:
- Changing the new member posting requirement from 5 posts to at least 10; possibly around 15-20.
- Changing the browsing hours from 4 hours to 5-6.
The posting requirement is the easiest change, as well as what I feel to be the most immediate need: five posts are incredibly easy to make. Increasing the requirement to 15-20 would not be a major annoyance to legitimate members. However, I believe the waiting hours have a bigger affect on scam reduction. Five posts can be done in ten minutes, but that still leaves a four hour wait that scammers may be too impatient to deal with. An increase of an hour or two wouldn't change things too badly, and it could be the extra step that turns a scammer away.
2: I also think that, whether hand-in-hand with the above changes or as alternative to them, the forum could implement posting requirements to access forum sections that are prone to scamming (lending in particular). An investment in the forum is a fair exchange to request loans from the members of the forum. My proposal:
- Implement a posting requirement of 100 to 150 posts to access high-risk forum sections.
I see two benefits to this kind of requirement. For one, it puts another step of time in the way of potential scammers. Even if it doesn't prevent a patient scammer from claiming a victim, it will strongly dissuade repeat scammers from creating new accounts and starting over from scratch. They probably will not see a return that's worth the effort; on another note, they may feel the need to pursue more expensive scams that are not as successful (i.e; asking for
BTC10+, which lenders are wary of, instead of
BTC1-3 scams that are usually more successful).
The second benefit is that it helps legitimate members build a stronger web of trust. A 100 post requirement gives the member more time to provide positive contributions to the forum and to gain a history of successful trades of goods or services. It also gives potential lenders more history to review before they commit to lending.
Edit: To add in a third benefit to this requirement: it could help prevent the creation of sock-puppet accounts used to build false trading histories.
I'm not claiming that these changes will completely
prevent scams: dedicated scammers are going to jump through whatever hoops they have to. I do believe that these changes will
reduce successful forum scams without turning away honest new members. And while I agree that forum members need to apply their own reasoning and common sense when it comes to trusting others, I also believe that we can better protect forum members in a non-intrusive way.
