About bitcointalk.org Registration system

[Coin-Desk]

Hello, Bitcointalk's members

Today I will only share my personal Opinion about bitcointalk.org registration system.

bitcointalk.org registration system is too easy. There is no email verification system in the registration system. If there was an email verification system in registration then it will help us for stop creating fake accounts. Because I saw lots of fake accounts in the service section. They have only 1-3 activity. They create those account for doing only small tasks like survey tasks, Registration tasks etc.

Example link :
1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5050824.msg46919848#msg46919848
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5079424.0

In those link, you can see there are lot's of fake account with 1 activity created for only pick money by doing those tasks. If there were an email and phone verification system for registration process then it can help us to stop useless fake accounts. Bitcointalk should require to make an email verification and phone verification system. This system will protect the forum from spam and fake accounts. Nowadays Fake accounts are very dangerous for us. They can do various illegal things and it will damage this forum. So always stay safe from fake accounts.

You can share your own opinion with us.

Best regards
Coin-Desk

[suchmoon]

If there was an email verification system in registration then it will help us for stop creating fake accounts.

It won't. Fake e-mail addresses are easy to get.

Bitcointalk should require to make an email verification and phone verification system. This system will protect the forum from spam and fake accounts.

It won't. It would just inconvenience regular users. This has been discussed ad nauseam. Some have suggested going as far as implementing KYC. Not going to happen.

[chenille]

Adding a requirement to confirm a mail account could improve the situation in my opinion. It would be much more work to register large numbers of accounts. I agree to suchmoon this would not completely prevent those accounts from registering, but it would make the whole process for them more time-consuming. Especially ICO shills/bumping services are registering hundreds of accounts and I can imagine it would discourage maybe some of them or at least make their work very annoying.

Bitcointalk should require to make an email verification and phone verification system.

I don't like services where you have to submit your personal data for signing up and I tend to avoid them. And I can't imagine this fits in a Bitcoin forum, where the founder himself is anonymous and Bitcoin in general is designed to stay anonymous. If you link it to your personal data, your BTC addresses can be connected to your identity.

Mail verification works, it's easy to create a new mail account and still enough to make it time-consuming for large numbers of fake-accounts.

But something like a KYC in a Bitcoin forum is a contradiction in itself.  

[Bitcoin_Arena]

I don't like services where you have to submit your personal data for signing up and I tend to avoid them. And I can't imagine this fits in a Bitcoin forum, where the founder himself is anonymous and Bitcoin in general is designed to stay anonymous. If you link it to your personal data, your BTC addresses can be connected to your identity.

It isn't always about anonymity, it's about fight spam and achieving a forum of high quality. Unless one is really into so much shady stuff I don't see any problem with using your phone number or alternate number to verify your account... It doesn't even have to be the whole process of KYC.

Just like an email you used, you can still be tracked down if you have committed a very big offense, most people here even share their social media accounts... The ip addresses and other login details can be submitted to the investigating authorities should court put out an order to Theymos.

Yes Satoshi was anonymous bt that was 2009, things have evolved. More and more sites are trying to fight fraud, fake accounts, show transparency and trust by trying to verify people.

[chenille]

I don't like services where you have to submit your personal data for signing up and I tend to avoid them. And I can't imagine this fits in a Bitcoin forum, where the founder himself is anonymous and Bitcoin in general is designed to stay anonymous. If you link it to your personal data, your BTC addresses can be connected to your identity.

It isn't always about anonymity, it's about fight spam and achieving a forum of high quality. Unless one is really into so much shady stuff I don't see any problem with using your phone number or alternate number to verify your account... It doesn't even have to be the whole process of KYC.

I don't think we should be bothered to connect our personal phone number just because of the spammers/scammers here. There are many measures to prevent scam and spam such as Merit, Trust and Newbie-restrictions. But I have nothing against an additional mail-confirmation.
And when we are already improving the process of registration I would like to implement another feature: password and mail reset only after confirming it by a mail to the mail address you are currently using. Right now, it's possible that a hacker needs only access to your Bitcointalk account to steal it completely. He can change the password to lock the original owner out and change the mail address to prevent that you can get back your account by using password reset (to your original mail address).
If we can change this, many account hacks would not happen and save time for global mods to unlock accounts.

Just like an email you used, you can still be tracked down if you have committed a very big offense,

Yes, but we are talking about the average, legit forum user.

most people here even share their social media accounts...

That should not be our problem if someone shares his personal data for bounties, airdrops or something else. Everyone is responsible for the security of his own personal data and if a bunch of bounty hunters decide to use their personal social media accounts or do every shitty KYC to gain a few shitcoins - no problem for me if they want.

The ip addresses and other login details can be submitted to the investigating authorities should court put out an order to Theymos.

I don't know which data theymos has access to, but here again: even if it's possible it's not to track the average user. If an investigation should be the case it will affect only the scammers.

Yes Satoshi was anonymous bt that was 2009, things have evolved. More and more sites are trying to fight fraud, fake accounts, show transparency and trust by trying to verify people.

Bitcointalk is not a big exchange, it's a forum. We should be able to deal the spam/scam problem with normal measures.

In addition, the whole KYC issue is not something Satoshi would like in my opinion. Real scammers will always find a solution to launder money and scam people, no KYC can prevent it. The'll just buy personal data on the black market.

[LTU_btc]

KYC would solve this problem completely. 
Just kidding. Now seriously, your proposal wouldn't help. Then abusers just would use disposable email services. And it's so easy to do that when there are services like Yopmail works.
If these services that you gave links as example accept freshly made Newbie accounts - it's their choice and not our problem.
But there are other problems caused by such accounts - ANN bumping in altcoin boards, spambots which spread ref links, or in worst cases malware infected links. But there are more effective ways to stop them than email verification, for example disabling links in Newbie posts or add captcha in order to publish post.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

I don't think we should be bothered to connect our personal phone number just because of the spammers/scammers here. There are many measures to prevent scam and spam such as Merit, Trust and Newbie-restrictions.

The spammers /scammers don't care about merit or trust. They will keep coming. You ban or paint 100 accounts red, they will come back with 200. So i don't really think this works.
The real solution is there and we know it.

Yes, but we are talking about the average, legit forum user.

Am also speaking from a legit point of view. Except that we may be different. Am a legit user who likes transparency... So SMS verification is not a problem to me.

I don't know which data theymos has access to, but here again: even if it's possible it's not to track the average user. If an investigation should be the case it will affect only the scammers.

Then it shouldn't be a problem to get one's email and SMS verified if one is a legit user. It's not like the forum will display one's phone number for everyone to see.

Bitcointalk is not a big exchange, it's a forum. We should be able to deal the spam/scam problem with normal measures.

It doesn't have to be an exchange, It's the biggest crypto forum around. And with this, come new challenges. The measures you are talking about haven't really done anything significant.

I don't know why people even keep emphasizing about keeping anonymous and yet you want to use the forum... If you have something to hide about your life or want to be anonymous then i think it's safer to be completely off the Internet because as long as you use it, you are not "anonymous"

Back then, one could even post as an anonymous guest in this forum, it wasn't a problem, there where no spambies. Imagine if posting as an anonymous guest was brought back to them forum today.

So we have to evolve, gone are the days when a few people knew about the forum and it's value in terms of knowledge and maybe finance. Spamming and scamming is now a very big head now and so we need to also need to counter measure them.

[bones261]

Then it shouldn't be a problem to get one's email and SMS verified if one is a legit user. It's not like the forum will display one's phone number for everyone to see.

     The problem with SMS is that someone can port your phone number to a phone that they control. I know that many cell phone carriers are aware of this and now advise people to have a code that must be given to port a phone number. However, if someone gets access to this numerical code, you are as good as hacked.
     If you do it via e-mail verification, the hacker simply needs to gain access to the e-mail and it's no good.
    Using a 2FA program like Google Authenticator is a better option. Unfortunately, it is so good, that a person can end up locking themselves out of the account. In order to restore access, the administration would have to verify the person's ownership of the account to reset the 2FA.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

    The problem with SMS is that someone can port your phone number to a phone that they control. I know that many cell phone carriers are aware of this and now advise people to have a code that must be given to port a phone number. However, if someone gets access to this numerical code, you are as good as hacked.
     If you do it via e-mail verification, the hacker simply needs to gain access to the e-mail and it's no good.
    Using a 2FA program like Google Authenticator is a better option. Unfortunately, it is so good, that a person can end up locking themselves out of the account. In order to restore access, the administration would have to verify the person's ownership of the account to reset the 2FA.

I agree authentication would be the best option but;
- This is optional in most cases and only at-least solves the problem of account hacks and not Spammers or scammers
- Not so long ago i read about Google authentication being a feature which is practically impossible to implement on an SMF powered forum(not sure if it's credible) but if it's true then we can be sure as hell that it won't happen any time soon.

This leave us with SMS/email verification to at least help massively reduce on the scammers/spammers here.
It just takes a couple of minutes to verify. There is nothing inconveniencing about this if you are a genuine user, What is inconveniencing is one having to see scam and Spam posts here and there having to report over 5000 posts during your time in the forum.

[suchmoon]

This leave us with SMS/email verification to at least help massively reduce on the scammers/spammers here.
It just takes a couple of minutes to verify. There is nothing inconveniencing about this if you are a genuine user, What is inconveniencing is one having to see scam and Spam posts here and there having to report over 5000 posts during your time in the forum.

It's pretty much the opposite. Mass spammers won't have a problem with it. They can get a catch-all e-mail domain or simply add "+" to a gmail address and create thousands of e-mail addresses with zero effort. There are likely ways to do the same for SMS - VOIP numbers etc.

Many regular users simply wouldn't bother and would just stop posting. This forum had password leaks in the past and that was bad enough. I have no interest in getting my phone number leaked too.

[Welsh]

Then it shouldn't be a problem to get one's email and SMS verified if one is a legit user. It's not like the forum will display one's phone number for everyone to see.

     The problem with SMS is that someone can port your phone number to a phone that they control. I know that many cell phone carriers are aware of this and now advise people to have a code that must be given to port a phone number. However, if someone gets access to this numerical code, you are as good as hacked.
     If you do it via e-mail verification, the hacker simply needs to gain access to the e-mail and it's no good.
    Using a 2FA program like Google Authenticator is a better option. Unfortunately, it is so good, that a person can end up locking themselves out of the account. In order to restore access, the administration would have to verify the person's ownership of the account to reset the 2FA.

Depending on the automatic recovery system that's coming up it might not be that bad after all. I know nothing about how it works, but I'm assuming it checks for staked addresses, and unlocks the account with a signature from one of those addresses. Obviously, it's going to be a little more complex than that to prevent abuse, and I don't really want to make predictions as some users will take that as fact. But, getting locked out of your account might just be a small hindrance if the automatic recovery system will be able to help.

[rat03gopoh]

You can share your own opinion with us.

Best regards
Coin-Desk

IMO...

I prefer the referral system for new account registration (only for registration purposes, there isn't any point to improve anything). I've seen a reduction in Full/Senior Members is greater than the growth rate lately.

So, the referral code is only available to the Full/Senior member or above and the confirmation of account activation must be done by both parties in their account to avoid abuse of the referral code so that some selected forum members can see their downline/upline (or even published).

Some things might happen next:
1. Buying and selling referral codes in a forum?
Referral codes can be deactivated by the code owner at any time as long as the status is newbie without the need to conform to the downline. Of course, a full/senior can judge which ones include spam posts or not. And anyone will avoid buying and selling activities because they think of the risks above.

2. Someone who doesn't have even an acquaintance with the referral code owner?
Give them a chance with (applicable to all newbies):
- Can post only in certain sections that won't be involved in any advertising or crypto transactions activities until they can find the referral code(upline) or after becoming Jr. Well, here the concern of the owner of the referral code is needed for members without uplines who are of sufficient quality to open their limitations.
- become a copper member.

The above is a way to reduce the number of new user registrations that aim ...

bitcointalk.org registration system is too easy. There is no email verification system in the registration system. If there was an email verification system in registration then it will help us for stop creating fake accounts. Because I saw lots of fake accounts in the service section. They have only 1-3 activity. They create those account for doing only small tasks like survey tasks, Registration tasks etc.

~snip~

 Nowadays Fake accounts are very dangerous for us. They can do various illegal things and it will damage this forum. So always stay safe from fake accounts.

Maybe there are some weaknesses that I haven't thought about. Tell me, maybe I'll find the solutions 
or ignore if this idea isn't interesting at all 

[LTU_btc]

@rat03gopoh, your idea just will stop legitimate new users from signing up. In past theymos said that he don't want to make more restrictions to new members, he was even against 1 Merit requirement to become Jr. Member, but then he changed his mind. High number of new signups isn't a problem, the problem is what big part of these Newbies are doing.

[khaled0111]

@rat03gopoh, your idea just will stop legitimate new users from signing up. In past theymos said that he don't want to make more restrictions to new members, he was even against 1 Merit requirement to become Jr. Member, but then he changed his mind. High number of new signups isn't a problem, the problem is what big part of these Newbies are doing.

Exactly, there is nothing wrong with the system, the problem is in people misusing it.
The only thing that should change is how these people think and behave.

[mikeywith]

In those link, you can see there are lot's of fake account with 1 activity created for only pick money by doing those tasks.

are you paying them? any forum member is? am i ?  no, no, differently no.

so why bother? let the poor make some money, some people are so desperate for 1-2 $ to put food on the table. if someone is WILLING to pay them for creating an account here or posting some shit somewhere on the internet , why should anyone bother? if you are worried about the content of what you read then learn to visit more informative places, or simply go to the library.

cheers !.

[Thirdspace]

In those link, you can see there are lot's of fake account with 1 activity created for only pick money by doing those tasks.

and if you also bother to check, none of them getting paid by Hhampuz
in cases like those, it's the manager's job to filter out abusers or fake participants

If there were an email and phone verification system for registration process then it can help us to stop useless fake accounts. Bitcointalk should require to make an email verification and phone verification system. This system will protect the forum from spam and fake accounts.

unlikely stopping them... email addresses and phone numbers are easy to obtain
it could slow them down but could never stop multi account abusers

[ryap12]

That is why some giveaway prefers the participant to be at Jr. Member and above to qualify. But I too notice why Bitcointalk.org never had email verification. It would help incase someone uses your email. But I think the team already made registration on the same IP more difficulty as it requires a few btc to send to a certain address.

[rat03gopoh]

@rat03gopoh, your idea just will stop legitimate new users from signing up.

Not really, who do you mean "legitimate new users"? those who are completely new to the forum won'tt start any start any transaction/advertise/offer before they learn something here. I was a newbie, and I felt that those activities were very dangerous at the time (unless they have been here before).

In past theymos said that he don't want to make more restrictions to new members, he was even against 1 Merit requirement to become Jr. Member, but then he changed his mind.

I'm just trying to show the middle ground, where new users can signup as usual without changing the previous registration system even got merit (as many users generally want). Referral code is only an option when signing up. And the limitations only apply until they become "brandnew/newbie".

High number of new signups isn't a problem, the problem is what big part of these Newbies are doing.

Ofcourse, and they have done signups before

Exactly, there is nothing wrong with the system, the problem is in people misusing it.

So, no system needs to be repaired, only need to upgrade the system so that there are no opportunity to be misused.

The only thing that should change is how these people think and behave.

Sorry, is that a logical solution?

[Marshall14]

We do not necessarily have to bother about illegitimate fake accounts and definitely not to the extent of making it difficult for the genuine ones to sign up
We do not care if the fake accounts get in, they will definitely not rank up, but will either end up being nuked,banned or the account abandoned

[khaled0111]

The only thing that should change is how these people think and behave.

Sorry, is that a logical solution?

Yes, it is.
By ignoring shit-posters, reporting their replies to moderators, not validating their activities by bounty managers... They will be forced to improve the quality of their posts or just leave the forum.