This senseless cheating should stop

[Mpamaegbu]

I don't know if this is the right section for this post. The mod can move it appropriately if not. It's an observation I got recently on a telegram bounty and
I have reached out to the concerned manager in charge. I hope he follows it up, anyway.

In addition, I decided to make this post because I believe the same fraud cuts across all other social media bounties.

Here is the thing. Some unscrupulous participants of the said Telegram bounty (name withheld) used profile links of some reputable members of this forum whom I believe aren't even aware of this bounty.

The first that caught my eyes as I ran through the spreadsheet was Nullius. I screamed. Instantly, I knew it was someone else using his profile. Nullius was last active here around April. With the little I knew of him while he was active here I can vehemently bet he wouldn't have such luxury of time to indulge a telegram campaign.

Then I looked beneath him and I saw some other users I believe don't even know about the bounty let alone participate in it. Well, to cut the long story short and proffer a solution to a future occurrence I came up with an idea.

It would be a preventive measure if Bounty Managers (especially for social media) would always send a pm to every bitcointalk profile whose links are filled in the Google form as a kind of validation. That way, users get to know whenever a cheater is trying to use their links. I think this will go a long way to keep this bounty cheaters off. Why link someone to a bounty he doesn't even know about.

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[Jet Cash]

I don't support any bounty programmes or any telegram, facebook or other rubbish. So anything with my name on it is not associated with me.

[zenhu]

you will not believe how many people cheating in telegram campaign using another person profile, that's why some bounty manager requires an authentication post. In this last two month, I found my bct and telegram username registered is several campaigns that I don't even participate, I even found someone using rolling.io bct username to registered in telegram campaign,  I think how tf an owner of gambling website joining some campaign that only pays as much as 1 USD. And what makes me angrier is sometimes they don't even have anything, they just have ethereum address. they use telegram username who already in that group and claim it as his own.
Bunch of scumbags and pathetic loser who try to make money in the easiest way possible.

[LoyceV]

It would be a preventive measure if Bounty Managers (especially for social media) would always send a pm to every bitcointalk profile whose links are filled in the Google form as a kind of validation.

Bad idea. Last time I checked a Telegram campaign, I quickly found more than 1000 fake entries (using the same address twice). And many of the remaining 7000 entries will be fake too.
Automated PM-spam to thousands of users who didn't subscribe isn't allowed.

A very easy solution would be to put your Ethereum token collection address in the Location field in your profile. All you need to enter in a Google Docs form is your userID. That's enough to have a Google Docs spreadsheet scrape your profile for your username, Merit count, Activity and addy. This kills all fake entries instantly, but the "bounty manager" would have to actually care about spam to do this.
Doing this would instantly end the thousands of "authentication" spam posts per day. But it would also kill the business model of bumping their thread with spam.

[hilariousetc]

If all it takes is for someone to sign up on a spreadsheet with someone else's bitcointalk username then that's the ICO's problem and their fault for being so incompetent and allowing themselves to be cheated this way. They could easily solve this if they wanted, or you know, stop giving away tokens for something so stupid as this.

It would be a preventive measure if Bounty Managers (especially for social media) would always send a pm to every bitcointalk profile whose links are filled in the Google form as a kind of validation. That way, users get to know whenever a cheater is trying to use their links. I think this will go a long way to keep this bounty cheaters off. Why link someone to a bounty he doesn't even know about.

Spamming a load of people that haven't signed up isn't the way to go. It would make more sense to get the users to PM the bounty manager so at least that is verification that they're in control of that account. Bounties don't care either way anyway. Most of them are incompetently run and couldn't care less about how many tokens they get as long as they're getting their name out their and taking in the BTC/ETH in the process.  

[coinlocket$]

If all it takes is for someone to sign up on a spreadsheet with someone else's bitcointalk username then that's the ICO's problem and their fault for being so incompetent and allowing themselves to be cheated this way. They could easily solve this if they wanted, or you know, stop giving away tokens for something so stupid as this.

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Yes they can, but they never will do cause, we know, big telegram number is the only thing that matters and since the tokens generated are free for them (for the major part of shitcoins), they really don't care about it.

[Direwolve735]

If all it takes is for someone to sign up on a spreadsheet with someone else's bitcointalk username then that's the ICO's problem and their fault for being so incompetent and allowing themselves to be cheated this way. They could easily solve this if they wanted, or you know, stop giving away tokens for something so stupid as this.

I think that ICOs, which allow this to happen, don`t even care. Their task is to advertise their project. The ways in which it is done, the competence and honesty of the participants don`t bother them. It remains only to imagine the promise of such a project and the quality of the tokens that they distribute to all in a row. If the project itself doesn`t worry about its reputation, then what can we say about its participants who came here simply to earn as many tokens as possible?

[LeGaulois]

It happened to me long ago. I didn't understand why someone would use some else username in a bounty campaign. I didn't think about money, only after I did lol. I asked the user managing the campaign to remove my name from his list. He didn't want to, or I should say he didn't care.
And that's it, they don't care, as long their google sheet is filled to meet the criteria asked...

I can tell you worst than this: when someone uses half of your full name  IRL to make an account on Bitcointalk.... :/

[nngella]

I think the reason why KYC exists is because of this.  By requiring bounty hunters to present documents to verify their identities, then the management prevent scammers and make their bounty campaigns more productive.

[Helana]

>...>

It is actually happening a lot. Just for adding another example, a follow-local did have the same very problem like a month ago, you can read about that on this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4919159

So yes, it seems like a common practice, where the scammers just pick another's members profile to join a campaign. I think the best solution is for bounty managers to establish some kind of authentication-protocol in which you need to join the campaign towards the forum instead of another platform. Giving the option of joining a campaign by google doesn't seem logical to me, for you are actually unable to check the authenticity of the campaign joiners.

[rhomelmabini]

The solution to it is Proof of Authentication if they are joining or not and hope every managers will came to realize that before they are creating such campaigns. In that way it can minimize frauds or maybe eliminate it.

[Mpamaegbu]

It happened to me long ago...

I can tell you worst than this: when someone uses half of your full name  IRL to make an account on Bitcointalk.... :/

This can be really tough and dicey, especially the second sentence. With that in mind, I can even foresee a situation where some of these cheaters may unscrupulously input another user's wallet ID just to make that user look fraudulent. There's no way you can really tag these cheaters on this because the bitcointalk profile links aren't theirs. This is a sad situation we have here.

[coinlocket$]

I think the reason why KYC exists is because of this.  By requiring bounty hunters to present documents to verify their identities, then the management prevent scammers and make their bounty campaigns more productive.

Or to steal data and sell them. I can post different cases where we got a KYC and bounty was never paid.
Your IDs are money on the black market.

[LogitechMouse]

I think the reason why KYC exists is because of this.  By requiring bounty hunters to present documents to verify their identities, then the management prevent scammers and make their bounty campaigns more productive.

I joined some bounty campaigns already and some of them required us to submit KYC for verification process. Yeah KYC is one of the solution but on the other hand, as @coinlocket$ said, your personal information might be in trouble because they can use it on black market.

It would be a preventive measure if Bounty Managers (especially for social media) would always send a pm to every bitcointalk profile whose links are filled in the Google form as a kind of validation. That way, users get to know whenever a cheater is trying to use their links. I think this will go a long way to keep this bounty cheaters off. Why link someone to a bounty he doesn't even know about.

This is a good solution but unfortunately, some of the bounty managers doesn't care about it. Some bounty managers don't have the initiative to PM one by one especially in social media campaign where sometimes, more than thousands are joining. What is important for them is to get paid and that's it. I have seen users posting "Proof of authentication" on the bounty pages but I think this is illegal already (correct me if I am wrong ).

[Mpamaegbu]

I have seen users posting "Proof of authentication" on the bounty pages but I think this is illegal already (correct me if I am wrong ).

I believe this is also a preventive mechanism. In fact, anything that will compel the participants to make a post using the account name that they had given out its profile link will do. So, if no response from that username then they don't get any reward. It's as simple as that.

Or to steal data and sell them. I can post different cases where we got a KYC and bounty was never paid.
Your IDs are money on the black market.

This is sadly true. I am also a victim of this.

[allahabadi]

Or to steal data and sell them. I can post different cases where we got a KYC and bounty was never paid.
Your IDs are money on the black market.

Well said; quite a few bounties and even airdrops demand this and take advantage of this, but yeah a lot of such problems can be curbed if the BMs intend to.

[r1s2g3]

Actually, this should be lesson for ICO investors to not too listen what people are saying Facebook, Twitter and telegram, because most of the profile are fake and paid/ unpaid shillings.
I do not expect anything from  most bounty managers here because they are getting paid for this fake traffic, in fact they will add in their resume that maintained bounty of more than 10000 users in telegram , Facebook and so on.
ICO companies are giving stakes of their own tokens, so it does not matter to them how many participants enrolled, more traffic look good to them also.
It is win win model for managers and ICO, where hunters are fake.
Only people that really losing in this model are ICO investors but are the investment claims are also real?

[Karisma Black]

Here is the thing. Some unscrupulous participants of the said Telegram bounty (name withheld) used profile links of some reputable members of this forum whom I believe aren't even aware of this bounty

What's the name of that campaign ?

[coinlocket$]

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What's the name of that campaign ?
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You can pick any big campaign here on the forum, almost 90% of them they will have abusers with account hijack on their telegram campaing.(or multiaccount)

[Atlantic12]

Agree with the last paragraph of your post. I think it would really help if the bounty managers sends pm of the link to the sender. The cheaters are becoming rampant.