Instawallet claim process

[oda.krell]

A link to a scan of a police report filed by Paymium has been posted in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177317.0;all

by user naphto.

Looks real to me, but I don't see any comment or explanation from Boussac, which is pretty bad style IMO.

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[tvbcof]

A link to a scan of a police report filed by Paymium has been posted in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177317.0;all

by user naphto.

Looks real to me, but I don't see any comment or explanation from Boussac, which is pretty bad style IMO.

Mother of Christ!  What was so hard about that?!?

I am now keenly interested in both:

 - ascertaining the legitimacy of this report, and

 - coming up with a template for those users who are effected by modest losses to use to file their own reports if they feel so inclined.

If a plethora of reports throws inefficiency into the resolution process, 'to bad, so sad.'  In the very best of circumstances it was completely negligent of Paymium not to produce this information in a timely manner and they brought this on themselves and their 'customers' (or 'victims' more likely.)

When I better understand how user 'naphto' managed to produce this information I intend to express my appreciation appropriately.  I will do the same for anyone tho takes an interest in the aformentioned bullet items.

Thanks,

 - Tom

[Phinnaeus Gage]

A link to a scan of a police report filed by Paymium has been posted in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177317.0;all

by user naphto.

Looks real to me, but I don't see any comment or explanation from Boussac, which is pretty bad style IMO.

Mother of Christ!  What was so hard about that?!?

I am now keenly interested in both:

 - ascertaining the legitimacy of this report, and

 - coming up with a template for those users who are effected by modest losses to use to file their own reports if they feel so inclined.

If a plethora of reports throws inefficiency into the resolution process, 'to bad, so sad.'  In the very best of circumstances it was completely negligent of Paymium not to produce this information in a timely manner and they brought this on themselves and their 'customers' (or 'victims' more likely.)

When I better understand how user 'naphto' managed to produce this information I intend to express my appreciation appropriately.  I will do the same for anyone tho takes an interest in the aformentioned bullet items.

Thanks,

 - Tom

Until I'm led to believe differently, with something nefarious afoot, maybe we can assume naphto gleaned it from the French section of this forum.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

chers utilisateurs d'Instawallet,

Pour rappel, Paymium a déposé une plainte au BEFTI (Bureau d'Enquête sur les Fraudes aux Technologies de l'Information, une unité de la Police Judiciaire) le 3 avril suite à une intrusion dans certains de ses serveurs informatiques.

Pour ceux d'entre vous qui n'ont pas suivi le thread en anglais, je précise que vous pouvez demander le remboursement de votre instawallet si il comportait des transactions.
Rendez vous simplement sur la page https://www.instawallet.org/w/yourwalletkey: elle vous rappellera le solde en bitcoins de votre instawallet et vous permettra d'envoyer à Paymium votre demande de remboursement. "yourwalletkey" est la clé secrète unique de votre url d'instawallet.

Votre demande sera traitée d'ici le 1er juillet 2013, date à laquelle les remboursements seront envoyés pour les demandes légitimes et vérifiées, avec un maximum de 50 BTC par wallet.
Les demandes pour des wallets présentant un solde supérieur à 50 BTC seront traitées au cas par cas, après le 1er juillet.

"Traduction" :

Code:

As a reminder, Paymium filed a complaint to BEFTI (Investigation Bureau on the Fraud Information Technologies, a unit of the Judicial Police) April 3 following an intrusion in some of its servers.

For those of you who have not followed the thread in English , I said that you can reclaim your InstaWallet if it included transactions.
Simply go to the page https://www.instawallet.org/w/yourwalletkey: it will remind you the balance of your bitcoins InstaWallet and allow you to send your Paymium claim. "yourwalletkey" is the unique secret key to your url of InstaWallet.

Your request will be processed by July 1, 2013, when refunds will be sent to the legitimate requests and verified, with a maximum of 50 per BTC wallet.
Requests for wallets with more than 50 BTC balance will be handled on a case by case basis, after July 1.

This document is from Boussac,

[tvbcof]

...

I am now keenly interested in both:

 - ascertaining the legitimacy of this report, and

 - coming up with a template for those users who are effected by modest losses to use to file their own reports if they feel so inclined.

If a plethora of reports throws inefficiency into the resolution process, 'to bad, so sad.'  In the very best of circumstances it was completely negligent of Paymium not to produce this information in a timely manner and they brought this on themselves and their 'customers' (or 'victims' more likely.)

When I better understand how user 'naphto' managed to produce this information I intend to express my appreciation appropriately.  I will do the same for anyone tho takes an interest in the aformentioned bullet items.

Thanks,

 - Tom

Until I'm led to believe differently, with something nefarious afoot, maybe we can assume naphto gleaned it from the French section of this forum.

Simply producing this from the French section to the more appropriate thread on this forum is worth something to me, and I intend to make it worth ~naphto's time.

Now I am looking for anyone who is in a position to take that report to a police precinct and discover whether it is legitimate.  Extra-credit for information about how any investigation may be proceeding.  Extra-extra credit for making it known to the investigators that the behavior of 'Paymium' suggests that they very may be the perpetrators.

Secondly, it is my intent to file a report for loss of access to my modest funds.  I stated that unless everyone's funds were returned by 10 days ago (as I write this) I would be doing so, and I have every intention of doing exactly that.  I am still seeking a discussion about the best way for non-French victims to file a report.  Ideally a template and an address.

If Paymium does not do a rapid about-face and start convincing the community that they are working hard to unsure that the perpetrators of this crime are being vigorously perused, I continue to believe that a worthwhile fulcrum to apply pressure would be the mainstream bank which have been used significantly by Paymium in an effort to create confidence in their operations, and which have also already been tied to Paymium in general consumption media.

I am interested in all information gleaned being presented in a completely open manner to one of the more serious threads on this forum for discussion.  This is not always possible in real-time, but I will be working with my sources to ensure that it can be done when the time is most opportune.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://bitcoin-central.net/s/terms_of_service?locale=en

The services offered by Paymium include, but are not limited to, the use of the following web-sites and platforms, hereafter referred to as the "Service" :

Bitcoin-Central.net
Paytunia.com
InstaWallet.org
InstaWire.org
By accessing or using the Service, you state that :

You have accepted this Agreement,

You are at least 18 years of age and have the full capacity to accept this Agreement
Paymium reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change, add or remove portions of this Agreement, at any time. You will be notified of such changes two weeks in advance through the Service and upon such notification it is your responsibility to review the amended Agreement. Your continued use of the Service following the posting of changes will mean that you accept and agree to the changes. You agree that all subsequent Service usage by you will be subject to this Agreement.

The above was impossible for users of InstaWallet, for the site did not have a ToS in place and there was no way for users to be notified of any changes because email addresses weren't the mode of communications. In fact, there was no mode of communication in place for InstaWallet users, not even a homepage, with their unique URL wallet address acting as a home page of sorts. I can't imagine them using the 'home page' to announce a ToS change.

I, for one, used no other services offered up my Paymium.

Also, the police report, if you can call it that, is for Paymium SAS, and I'm not sure if InstaWallet is even part of the investigation with the exception of it being stated as such in the above quote.

According to Boussac, no funds were stolen from Paymium, only InstaWallet, thus being confused.

~Bruno K~

[Boussac]

If Paymium does not do a rapid about-face and start convincing the community that they are working hard to unsure that the perpetrators of this crime are being vigorously perused, I continue to believe that a worthwhile fulcrum to apply pressure would be the mainstream bank which have been used significantly by Paymium in an effort to create confidence in their operations, and which have also already been tied to Paymium in general consumption media.

You thanked your "friend " naphto for posting a document that I POSTED in the French section of the Forum, appropriately since the document is in French.

Just so you know, naphto is a new troll writing in the French section that according to him the demise of bitcoin is inevitable:

Le BTC est voué à disparaître parce qu'il ne pourra jamais être adopté massivement.

Like a handful of people on this Forum (tvbcof, pyedpyper, Phinneaus Gaga, Herodes), he is out to exploit the incident and blow it out of proportion when in fact Paymium is probably going to be the first bitcoin start up ever to survive a cyberattack and refund all the users in the shortest possible time frame.
You have not even acknowledged the fact that we did our best to put up the claim form online as fast as we could when we had to rebuild a new production environment from scratch after the attack.

You are not the bitcoin community tvbcof, you are  amongst its worst ennemies.

I now realize that you want to create as much damage as possible to bitcoin in general and to Paymium in particular.
If it were for your money you would be content with the refund but that is not enough for you.

Now that I published a confidential piece of information about the investigation, you wonder how you could best turn it into yet another evidence of an alleged "criminal" behaviour.
You could care less about the consequences of your prejudiced, unfounded insinuations akin to libel but I will not forget who kicked us while we were on the ground.

[tvbcof]

Some members of the community asked for some simple and completely reasonable information, and did so with the utmost tact, sensitivity, and professionalism.  Paymium (if Boussac is even a spokesmen which again nobody will confirm or deny) had their chance to do the right thing and they blew it.

Paymium deserved to bite the dust simply because of their res ipsa loquitur incompetence at security and customer relations even if they are not the perps of this crime.  I have never stated that they are because I simply do not know, but I have stated that it is a strong possibility that they are.  A lot of the behaviors would match perfectly.  I would totally welcome words or deeds which would argue against my thesis.  And would be very interested to find out how a charge of libel against me would play out in court...so go for it if you like, Mr. Ballsack.

As someone who has lost some BTC through Instawallet, and stands to lose vastly more as the Bitcoin network is sullied by criminal or incompetent service operators, it makes perfect sense that I would be involved here and zero sense that I wish either the Bitcoin solution or the handful of legitimate and competent operators any harm.  Weeding out the losers, however, is a very worthwhile endeavor in my opinion.

[Herodes]

Like a handful of people on this Forum (tvbcof, pyedpyper, Phinneaus Gaga, Herodes), he is out to exploit the incident and blow it out of proportion

I can only speak for myself, but personally I only want the best for the bitcoin community. If you check my post history, you will see I've acted with this in mind in numerous posts.

I don't see how the requests and questions of Phinn and pyedpyper can be interpreted as 'trying to exploit' the incident. Phinn got angry because he's got considerable funds tied up, and you ignored and evaded questions asked. Likewise, pyedpyper has considerable interest in the case, and have therefore, repeatedly tried to communicate with you in a very civil and polite manner.

When you take things personally and think people are attacking you, and are out to cause havoc in the bitcoin community,that is false. In the cryptocurrency world, things are moving fast, and people expect expedient resolution of issues that is cropping up, esp. when a site goes offline and client funds are missing, easing the worries of the community is of paramount importance.

I would advise in the future, to take a step back, and calm down before you write angry stuff online. This reflects not only on you as a random person on an internetforum, but also on the professional role you have with Paymium. No matter how angry or upset any customer is, the only way to conduct serious and professional business is to keep a level headed tone and respond without emotions getting the best of you. As it is, you've severly damaged the reputation of your business, and I don't think I'm the only one that thinks so. Apparently you will find this last phrase I wrote 'condecending', but in reality, when you haven't understood how to run a business when you're an adult of 40 years+ of age, then there's not a hope it's going to improve anytime soon, unfortunately. If you want a piece of advice, it would be to stick to whatever you're good at - and that's not customer relations.

[Boussac]

Like a handful of people on this Forum (tvbcof, pyedpyper, Phinneaus Gaga, Herodes), he is out to exploit the incident and blow it out of proportion

I can only speak for myself, but personally I only want the best for the bitcoin community. If you check my post history, you will see I've acted with this in mind in numerous posts.

I don't see how the requests and questions of Phinn and pyedpyper can be interpreted as 'trying to exploit' the incident. Phinn got angry because he's got considerable funds tied up, and you ignored and evaded questions asked. Likewise, pyedpyper has considerable interest in the case, and have therefore, repeatedly tried to communicate with you in a very civil and polite manner.

When you take things personally and think people are attacking you, and are out to cause havoc in the bitcoin community,that is false. In the cryptocurrency world, things are moving fast, and people expect expedient resolution of issues that is cropping up, esp. when a site goes offline and client funds are missing, easing the worries of the community is of paramount importance.

I would advise in the future, to take a step back, and calm down before you write angry stuff online. This reflects not only on you as a random person on an internetforum, but also on the professional role you have with Paymium. No matter how angry or upset any customer is, the only way to conduct serious and professional business is to keep a level headed tone and respond without emotions getting the best of you. As it is, you've severly damaged the reputation of your business, and I don't think I'm the only one that thinks so. Apparently you will find this last phrase I wrote 'condecending', but in reality, when you haven't understood how to run a business when you're an adult of 40 years+ of age, then there's not a hope it's going to improve anytime soon, unfortunately. If you want a piece of advice, it would be to stick to whatever you're good at - and that's not customer relations.

If you confuse normal customer relations with an attempt by you to derail a business in which my associates and I invested a lot more than any instawallet balance, you do not know much about emotions indeed.
I will tell you about my emotions when I meet you in person.
You are just one of four people trying to hurt my business by insinuating publicly that it is connected to a thief without the slightest evidence.

[Herodes]

If you confuse normal customer relations with an attempt by you to derail a business in which my associates and I invested a lot more than any instawallet balance, you do not know much about emotions indeed.
I will tell you about my emotions when I meet you in person.
You are just one of four people trying to hurt my business by insinuating publicly that it is connected to a thief without the slightest evidence.

When things go pear-shaped in the bitcoin world, people will assume by default that you're a scammer, and not communicating properly with the community, and evading questions asked is not making things better. In my view you are acting very unprofessionaly, and I think there are more people around here with that view. I don't think however that's something you're going to reflect upon.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

I don't think however that's something you're going to reflect upon.

Maybe they have better to do ? Sick of this US mania about PR

In my view you are acting very unprofessionaly,

Bitcoin is still in Beta, NO ONE is  professional, deal with it

[Phinnaeus Gage]

If you confuse normal customer relations with an attempt by you to derail a business in which my associates and I invested a lot more than any instawallet balance, you do not know much about emotions indeed.
I will tell you about my emotions when I meet you in person.
You are just one of four people trying to hurt my business by insinuating publicly that it is connected to a thief without the slightest evidence.

When things go pear-shaped in the bitcoin world, people will assume by default that you're a scammer, and not communicating properly with the community, and evading questions asked is not making things better. In my view you are acting very unprofessionaly, and I think there are more people around here with that view. I don't think however that's something you're going to reflect upon.

I think we're fighting a losing battle:

Hey, being a hacker is the most profitable and stress-free job in Bitcoin world. And you almost never get caught.

Being a BITCOINICA hacker is the most profitable and stress free job in the world, and you never get caught.

[steelboy]

@boussac

Thank you for posting the document. I have always wanted to believe that you and your company is honest and want to help us reclaim out BTC and one of my main worries was the fact that there wasn't any police number. (Something shared by most people).

I can imagine it must seem like a lot of people getting unnecessarily angry on these forums if all you and your company is trying to do is sort everything out for us behind the scenes. All I would say is a little more communication would go a long way to helping us relax and believe we will be reimbursed. As I'm sure you know some of us have a lot of money tied up. Maybe a few more updates of how the process is coming along. Numbers of claims, how many 50btc+ claims are being dealt with now etc etc

I hope that you will be the first bitcoin company to survive an attack and I am sure if you are paymium will be stronger because of it.

We all want to believe you Boussac. Some people more than others. The way you communicate with us is so important.

[tvbcof]

In my view you are acting very unprofessionaly,

Bitcoin is still in Beta, NO ONE is  professional, deal with it

People who are in the business of looking after someone else's funds had better get professional BEFORE entering the business, or do something else for a living.

I'm pretty careful with my funds and tend to look after them myself (using more care than most Bitcoin business seem to use, alarmingly enough) so this is the first time someone has robbed me directly for anything less more than a completely trivial sum.  I'm planning to 'deal with it' as effectively as I know how.

edit: fix

[Herodes]

I don't think however that's something you're going to reflect upon.

Maybe they have better to do ? Sick of this US mania about PR

In my view you are acting very unprofessionaly,

Bitcoin is still in Beta, NO ONE is  professional, deal with it

For the record, I am not US based. And it has nothing with US mania about PR to do. It has to do with communicating with the userbase i an expedient, responsive manner, being transparent as far as it is possible. I've also been concerned about the business of Bitinstant in regards to these things, but they were able to handle it quite professionally.

You refer to Bitcoin being in Beta, yes - the reference implementaiton, Bitcoin-QT is in beta. As for the bitcoin-economy itself, it is still young, so the very large players is yet to enter the market, and as such you could say that the market still consists of 'amateurs', however you could also call your local baker or bicycle repair shop for 'amateurs' and not being professional.

As to define professional in this context:

A professional is a person who is engaged in a certain activity, or occupation, for gain or compensation as means of livelihood; such as a permanent career, not as an amateur or pastime.[1][2] The traditional professions were doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects and commissioned military officers. Today, the term is applied to nurses, accountants, educators, scientists, technology experts, social workers, artists, librarians (information professionals) and many more.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional

Since we Boussac & Co claims they have decades of experience under their belts, and AFAIK they're doing this as their full time jobs, then it is to be expected that they behave as professionals.

Being a bitcoin business does not give you a wildcard to be unprofessional. Those who are not professional, deserve to give them feedback telling them so. For instance, MtGox have been getting much flak recently, and for a very good reason, and I do think they're starting to learn.

When customers are concerned, and they have the impression that they're not being taken very seriously, then they have all reason to be upset. I'm aware that running a business entails more tasks than sitting on the forum all day, but when you run a bitcoin business, you should be communicative, and answer when people ask you about simple things. Since Boussac participated in threads where he gave input, while ignoring questions repeated over and over from others in regards to the police report in particular, then it's only natural that people starts being irritated, and when customers starts being irritated, it's the responsibility of the professional part to handle things professionally.

You might be annoyed with your bank and scream at them, but if you're a support representative and scream at the customer, then you lose your job. Run the show, and you can do anything you want - but everything you do and say will reflect on your business and will either withdraw or attracts customers to your business.

Boussac has repeatedly shown his disrespect for his very customers, and that is worth noting as he's also involved with bitcoin-central. They bought instawallet for a reason, and yet, he says he doesn't see instawallet users as his customers.

For example he makes fun of Phinnaeus Gage who sits nervously in the US, uncertain whether he will ever see his bitcoins again or not, and to that response Boussac has this to say:

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167215.msg1869048#msg1869048

Unignore

I see how the game is played now: Hack your own sites, claim money was stolen, claim to fill out a police report, ignore all requests from those who entrusted you with their assets, then call them trolls for requesting a simple number to set them at ease.

You sir, are one sick mother fucker!

Couldn't agree more...

All ease aside, the one hint is the lack of a police report number (and possibly them being one sick motherfuckers).

Ignore

When customer representatives do not communicate well (as you can see from above - he respond as the average random forum user below the age of 20), customers get angry, that's the main point. And that is what everyone running a business needs to know, and then act accordingly.

[wordofmouth]

Seems like they were involved into another communication plan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOuOo4csqw

[Herodes]

Seems like they were involved into another communication plan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOuOo4csqw

Couldn't see Bossac there.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

I'm pretty careful with my funds, this is the first time someone has robbed me directly for anything more than a completely trivial sum

You are pretty careful with your funds but you kept more than a completely trivial sum on InstaWallet ??

April joke ?


@ Herodes :

Paymium was the first in the world backed by a "bank", it's the better place to be hacked.
you have a name, face, addresses, it's a real company with insurance or at least should


EVERY hacker on earth is trying to find a door somewhere.
Instawallet was not the first time and will not be the last time !

[tvbcof]

Monsieur Boussac (or more accurately, whoever the real name behind this invented persona is):

You started this thread and give every indication of speaking directly on behalf of Paymium.  I expect that you will explicitly state that you are no longer interested in using this thread as a formal or informal channel of communications with your customer base if that is indeed the case.  So you may answer my question here or an official representative of Paymium may do it via a different channel in the future.

I would suggest that it would be a good communications policy and may rebuild a certain amount of trust within the Paymium (or former Paymium) user-base by simply answering the question fully and right here.  But you may be the judge of that.

So, I wish to see a full revision history of the boilerplate text displayed on the Instawallet front page since the time Paymium purchased the Instawallet service and user-base from the the original designer and maintainer.

A set of links to example pages would work just fine.  I would be very surprised if your organization lacked the technical proficiency or the several minutes it would take to comply with my request.

Thanks,

 - Tom