Should restrict newbies from sending PM's ?

[KenR]

Wave of phishing links,impostors and sending other fake escrow information have been massively carried out by the newbie throwaway accounts.Takes efforts to do it from the original high ranked accounts as they lose money if the account is bought or simply the efforts taken while ranking it up.Hence,newbie accounts are an alternative.But what if forum restricts newbies from sending personal messages until they are a Jr.Member ? Would it put a stop on the phishing scams ?

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[SFR10]

But what if forum restricts newbies from sending personal messages until they are a Jr.Member ? Would it put a stop on the phishing scams ?

On a small scale, it could temporarily stop but the issue is, it wouldn't take them too long before their able to send PM's. Also PM's aren't the only way they do this (from time to time, you'll see some of these: http://www.phishing.org/phishing-techniques).

[mocacinno]

Wave of phishing links,impostors and sending other fake escrow information have been massively carried out by the newbie throwaway accounts.Takes efforts to do it from the original high ranked accounts as they lose money if the account is bought or simply the efforts taken while ranking it up.Hence,newbie accounts are an alternative.But what if forum restricts newbies from sending personal messages until they are a Jr.Member ? Would it put a stop on the phishing scams ?

Partially, but it would also stop legit newbies from sending PM's.
I've seen loads of people that register on this forum after they run into problems... If we would prohibit such newbies from sending messages, it would stop these new users from asking advice.

Isn't there a limit as to how many PM's a newbie can send/hour? Also, the big red warning at the top of their PM's is doing it job (at least, in my case)

[azguard]

This is something that need admin to do here. There are cases when primary account is hacked or banned when they initiate petition trough new newbie account but then there are the ones that use to create new ones in order to bad thing or try to make some fake advertising on some coin in order to raise fund ..... lot of thing to name.

Maybe it should be restricted until they reached jr. member rank to be able to send PMs, maybe this is hard choice but before few years ago this wasn't so common but now is just to many, believe that admin have lot of work on this issue but still some sort of bigger restriction could be good.

[numanoid]

Isn't there a limit as to how many PM's a newbie can send/hour? Also, the big red warning at the top of their PM's is doing it job (at least, in my case)

There is.

I've adjusted the limits to make spamming more difficult.

Activity	Min. seconds between post actions	Max PM recipients	PMs per hour
0	360	3	5
16	74	5	30
30	60	5	60
60	30	5	60
100	12	10	120
200	10	15	120
300	8	20	120

About that big red warnings, this guy was tried to manipulate it (read the green text)

!!! WARNING: This user is a newbie. If you are expecting a message from a more veteran member, then this is an imposter !!!

10 @ 0.3

This user is a Administrator Legendary member. If you are expecting a message from this member then it is genuine !!!

[hilariousandco]

This is something I've suggested to theymos previously. Newbies don't really need to PM people straight away and maybe we should make it so you have to be a Jnr Member before you can do so. It is being massively abused and would stop a lot of other spam PMs not just scams.

[KenR]

This is something I've suggested to theymos previously. Newbies don't really need to PM people straight away and maybe we should make it so you have to be a Jnr Member before you can do so. It is being massively abused and would stop a lot of other spam PMs not just scams.

Definitely.We would like to see it in action.Just one con ,what if a hacked account is trying to get his account back by creating a temporary account and PMing ownership proofs to the admins ? They won't be able to do so.On the other end,they would also put efforts for becoming a Junior member to send the Pm's which proves their serious interest in claiming the account back.Works great either way!

[hilariousandco]

They can just create a thread in Meta. Most do anyway.

[Coin-Keeper]

I would be for some control on this issue.  I have discussed maybe a user specific setting as opposed to a general board setting.  e.g. what if I wanted to set accepting PM's for those with > 50 posts as an example? This way those that want to answer the newbie PM's could be available but others might determine a different choice for themselves.  Just an idea.

[botany]

I would be for some control on this issue.  I have discussed maybe a user specific setting as opposed to a general board setting.  e.g. what if I wanted to set accepting PM's for those with > 50 posts as an example? This way those that want to answer the newbie PM's could be available but others might determine a different choice for themselves.  Just an idea.

If the default setting is receive PMs from Newbies, then it won't help. Most people don't change the default settings.
And people who fall prey to newbie imposters (Ignoring the red warning) would probably not even know how to change the default settings.

[LTU_btc]

I'm not supporting this idea because I think it would discriminate newbies. Many of them came to forum only to contact forum members when they need to solve some issues, get answers to their questions and PM's sometimes can be only way to do it. I can say that I received lot of messages from newbied and I didn't found any attempts to scam or do some other bad activity. I would agree with OP idea if these phishing would be massive problem, but now I think forum have more serious problems to solve.

[botany]

I'm not supporting this idea because I think it would discriminate newbies. Many of them came to forum only to contact forum members when they need to solve some issues, get answers to their questions and PM's sometimes can be only way to do it. I can say that I received lot of messages from newbied and I didn't found any attempts to scam or do some other bad activity. I would agree with OP idea if these phishing would be massive problem, but now I think forum have more serious problems to solve.

If a newbie does have a question he would like answered, a post in Beginners & Help would be the appropriate.
You don't need to have access to PMs to get your questions answered.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I'm not supporting this idea because I think it would discriminate newbies. Many of them came to forum only to contact forum members when they need to solve some issues, get answers to their questions and PM's sometimes can be only way to do it. I can say that I received lot of messages from newbied and I didn't found any attempts to scam or do some other bad activity. I would agree with OP idea if these phishing would be massive problem, but now I think forum have more serious problems to solve.

That's the point, they need to be "discriminated against", because they cause the most issues from throwaway accounts.   As mentioned,  newbies can start threads or cry in their beers when they have problems.  I think this is a swell idea.  Would be nice to see some action rather than endless debate.

[LTU_btc]

I'm not supporting this idea because I think it would discriminate newbies. Many of them came to forum only to contact forum members when they need to solve some issues, get answers to their questions and PM's sometimes can be only way to do it. I can say that I received lot of messages from newbied and I didn't found any attempts to scam or do some other bad activity. I would agree with OP idea if these phishing would be massive problem, but now I think forum have more serious problems to solve.

If a newbie does have a question he would like answered, a post in Beginners & Help would be the appropriate.
You don't need to have access to PMs to get your questions answered.

That's the point, they need to be "discriminated against", because they cause the most issues from throwaway accounts.   As mentioned,  newbies can start threads or cry in their beers when they have problems.  I think this is a swell idea.  Would be nice to see some action rather than endless debate.

Newbies often came to forum when they have issues with exchanges, gambling websites and other services. Offcourse, they can start thread about it, but there will be no guarantee that someone from service staff will respond to the thread.
And I don't think that forum administration will restrict newbies from sending PM's because in general they don't fight against scammers. They can declare that they are fighting aginst scammers, but how they do that - forum even have dedicated place for scammers, called "Investor based games", where they have absolute freedom to promote their scam services.

[Coin-Keeper]

The PM thing is something that I have dealt with on many forums over the years.  In some I Mod and even Admin so I have seen both sides.  I usually suggest PM'd questions I receive are posted in the public arena because its a rare thing to answer a unique query.  In other words by me, or anyone else, responding in the public arena many members can benefit from the knowledge.  The whole idea of a forum such as this is to teach each other when we can, and learn from each other as we have needs.  PMs don't help in that process in the same way.

[ibminer]

I'm not entirely opposed to the idea but stopping a newbie from PM'ing may turn legitimate people away, not everyone wants to trade or communicate in a public setting. This also may increase account sales and the value of them. A compromise may be to keep allowing PMs from newbies but convert any links from newbies into text only to make it more obvious, I believe this would cut down on phishing victims although the attempts might still happen but I assume they wouldn't be as effective.