Bitcoin and Fraud

[BuySomeBitcoins]

Assuming a merchant accept Bitcoin,

You as a shopper, place an order, and that merchant did not deliver, or sent to the wrong address, or sent a fake product.

You can not reverse the payment, you can get your bitcoins back, and the only thing you can do it leave a negative feedback.

Of course, there are many other scenarios, like phishing websites, fake websites, selective scams, and so on

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

[1715547062]

1715547062

[Holliday]

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Either do your own due diligence (stick with established, well rated merchants) or use a credit card when shopping somewhere "less than reputable".

[BuySomeBitcoins]

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Either do your own due diligence (stick with established, well rated merchants) or use a credit card when shopping somewhere "less than reputable".

Yeah well the purpose of my question is about promoting Bitcoin for merchants.

Thank you anyway for your though

Anybody else ?

[OrangeII]

to ensure security in the bitcoin transactions and prevent fraud, it may be very useful to use escrow. but, it is very difficult to find it. if no escrow, try to see the feedback obtained by the site, whether it is good or not. you can see a site with comments from previous visitors.

[bitbunnny]

Unfortunately because of anonimity and it's virtual nature, lack of regulations, Bitcoin is very convenient for different kind of scam and fraud. Often, when that happens you don't have much choice to get your coins back or to report someone for fraud so before you get into any kind of business with Bitcoins you have to be very careful, do the due dilligence and check everything twice.

[OmegaStarScream]

If we assume that we are talking about a centralized service like Amazon and you are buying from there then I see no reason why you won't get the item unless It's a scam, people will realize that after one order and stop using the service.

If we are now speaking about something like eBay where you are dealing with individuals instead of companies then the feedback and reputation system is there for a reason, and usually, service that offer this have an escrow system. I have personally never got scammed while trading using bitcoin or any other payment method for the simple reason that I don't trade with shady people, I do my homework before trading with anyone.

[BrewMaster]

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Either do your own due diligence (stick with established, well rated merchants) or use a credit card when shopping somewhere "less than reputable".

Yeah well the purpose of my question is about promoting Bitcoin for merchants.

Thank you anyway for your though

Anybody else ?

your question should be what is promoting bitcoin for "customers" not merchants.
in fact bitcoin is best for merchants! because it doesn't have charge back. the worse thing that keeps happening to merchants is either charge back or credit card fraud and bitcoin eliminates all of these.

but according to your OP it is customers who will be affected by things you said. and if the merchants is trusted and has a good history trusting is not hard.

[Valiance]

While Bitcoin is very easy for fraud due to its pseudonymity and convenience, trusted vendors who begin to accept Bitcoin will always be legitimate.  If, for example, Amazon started accepting Bitcoin payments, it's not like they would scam people just because people are paying with Bitcoin.  What's important is that the site verifies their owners and other details about their business.

[PetroffVany]

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Either do your own due diligence (stick with established, well rated merchants) or use a credit card when shopping somewhere "less than reputable".

Yeah well the purpose of my question is about promoting Bitcoin for merchants.

Thank you anyway for your though

Anybody else ?

your question should be what is promoting bitcoin for "customers" not merchants.
in fact bitcoin is best for merchants! because it doesn't have charge back. the worse thing that keeps happening to merchants is either charge back or credit card fraud and bitcoin eliminates all of these.

but according to your OP it is customers who will be affected by things you said. and if the merchants is trusted and has a good history trusting is not hard.

Yes, you are right, you need to choose a seller who cause trust. Or to agree that you will pay 50 percent of the prepayment, and the rest after receiving the goods

[dopecoindude]

It really does come down to Trusted vendors.

[20kevin20]

Do just the same thing you would do if you were to trade a real life object, say a smartphone, with another guy: never go first unless the trader is a very reputable guy. If it's an online website, the only option is signing an agreement upon signing up on the website where you would agree to the fact that it's mandatory to refund the money in case the order hasn't been delivered, the wrong product arrived or something else...

[darkangel11]

While Bitcoin is very easy for fraud due to its pseudonymity and convenience, trusted vendors who begin to accept Bitcoin will always be legitimate.  If, for example, Amazon started accepting Bitcoin payments, it's not like they would scam people just because people are paying with Bitcoin.  What's important is that the site verifies their owners and other details about their business.

Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for new vendors, without an established position on the market, to start a Bitcoin business. They will need to offer something very attractive to a potential buyer to make him risk the money and buy it, or offer something cheap, so that people will ignore the possibility of being scammed and try it out.
Many scammers choose this strategy to start with a legitimate business that sells cheap products and then use their established position and well known brand to take advantage of their customers.

[Hydrogen]

Some type of escrow or trusted 3rd party service to hold funds in trust until goods/services are confirmed delivered could be the best we can hope for.

Alternative methods to keep track of scammers other than IP tracking may also help.

Whatever scamming bitcoin is subject to has to be pale in comparison with the massive amount of credit card fraud in the world.

[Carlsen]

Unfortunatelly scams are part of bitcoin since the beginning.
And the way bitcoin is designed, it makes it attractive to sellers.
Personally I don't use direct payment to a seller, only bitcoin payment service provider.
Sooner or later one of them will come up with some protection for the buyer, like paypal does it.

[BitcoinMarshal]

Some type of escrow or trusted 3rd party service to hold funds in trust until goods/services are confirmed delivered could be the best we can hope for.

Alternative methods to keep track of scammers other than IP tracking may also help.

Whatever scamming bitcoin is subject to has to be pale in comparison with the massive amount of credit card fraud in the world.

In my view using trusted merchant and escrow is best if you have no these options then try to use some other method which can give you bring back payment option is more useful because if you are using bitcoin without escrow or trusted feedback then you can lost your hard earned money

[mindrust]

Assuming a merchant accept Bitcoin,

You as a shopper, place an order, and that merchant did not deliver, or sent to the wrong address, or sent a fake product.

You can not reverse the payment, you can get your bitcoins back, and the only thing you can do it leave a negative feedback.

Of course, there are many other scenarios, like phishing websites, fake websites, selective scams, and so on

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

You better use your credit card unless its a %1000 trusted seller which you haven't had any problems before. Using a decentralized currency has its advantages and disadvantages. Bitcoin is not your daily shopping currency.

When you have a problem with the seller, nobody's going to fix it for you if you used bitcoin.

[QuestionAuthority]

Assuming a merchant accept Bitcoin,

You as a shopper, place an order, and that merchant did not deliver, or sent to the wrong address, or sent a fake product.

You can not reverse the payment, you can get your bitcoins back, and the only thing you can do it leave a negative feedback.

Of course, there are many other scenarios, like phishing websites, fake websites, selective scams, and so on

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Think of Bitcoin as the anti-PayPal.

Paypal protects consumers at the expense of the seller. Businesses get screwed over buy PayPal all the time but it's great for the consumer. The upside is that average consumers are more likely to trust startups and sellers with no or limited history because PayPal will protect them if something goes wrong. It's good for new sellers too because they can get an easier start.

Bitcoin protects sellers at the expense of consumers. Consumers get screwed over buy Bitcoin businesses all the time (don't call me out and make me list businesses like Butterfuck labs to prove a point because I can list two pages of them) but it's great for the seller because they can't have a shady customer reverse their payment after they receive their product. The upside is startups and sellers with limited capital can avoid losing money to scamming consumers. It's bad for sellers though because consumers may be hesitant to trust or use businesses with limited history.

Holliday was right, everyone needs to use the system that works for them.

As for a consumer solution to the problems you list there are only a few. Escrow is one of them, using a business that's regulated by a responsive government is another but Russian consumer roulette is what most people have used historically. Sometimes you lose. Just don't spend much money at once using Bitcoin so you're not out much if you get screwed. Oh, don't think you're safe if you use a big company either. I have had an open investigation with Overstock.com for a long time about .95btc I sent them and never received the product.

[Yakamoto]

Assuming a merchant accept Bitcoin,

You as a shopper, place an order, and that merchant did not deliver, or sent to the wrong address, or sent a fake product.

You can not reverse the payment, you can get your bitcoins back, and the only thing you can do it leave a negative feedback.

Of course, there are many other scenarios, like phishing websites, fake websites, selective scams, and so on

What are your thoughts and ideas to prevent these scams.

Escrow is the biggest thing that you can use to prevent things like this from happening, and especially when it comes to online commerce reputation can be (and is) very, very important. Bad reviews along with proof can mean a world of a difference.

Escrow may be another medium, but it does make a bit more money move within the Bitcoin economy, and that can be a good thing.

[ImHash]

Bitcoin as a currency? agreed.
Bitcoin as a store of value? agreed.
Bitcoin as a digital gold? agreed.
Bitcoin is exchangeable to fiat currency? yes.
Bitcoin is accepted in exchanging services worldwide? yes.
You should really use whatever is more convenient and easy for you which is to exchange bitcoin into fiat then use credit cards for your daily needs.
Even developers are trying to change bitcoin into a massively used worldwide cryptocurrency but with the current protocols it's impossible.
Once again if you feel you are losing money or not having the charge back advantage then turn your bitcoins into currencies where their processors accept and do chargebacks.

[Senor.Bla]

It is pretty much possible to scam with every Payment method there is. Bitcoin is not different here, but since it is new people pay extra attention to scams and maybe scammers also test it so that there actually is a bit more scamming going on. However people are using all sorts of payment methods without being perfectly safe, because the wast majority is honest and it works most of the time. For big transactions you take extra measures to be safe.
Right now Bitcoin is developing more into the store of value direction rather then everyday cash, so we might see extensive use of escrow services. It wouldn't surprise me to see to see 2 or 3 big escrow companies in the future that get used for 90% of all transactions.
Escrows do cost more and take some time to, so i would expect that we just use Bitcoin normally and and accept the relatively rare scams as normal.
As a society we can do something against scams, but this is time and cost intensive. Especially to kill off the very last bit from under 1 % to 0 is very hard, time and cost intensive. The extra effort to do this is unproportional high, so we as society accept it. This btw is true for all crimes.