How can we protect Newbies from getting scammed?

[LoyceV]

Scenario
Someone has a problem with a wallet, comes to Bitcointalk, creates an account, asks a question, and gets a solution. Great! A happy new user for the forum, and another happy Bitcoin user, which adds to Bitcoin's popularity.

Reality (2 days ago)
Someone has a problem with a wallet, comes to Bitcointalk, creates an account, asks a question, gets "help" by PM from someone who asks him to enter some code into Electrum, enter his password (and I quote: "(NEVER share this password with anybody)"), and gets scammed out of $30,000.
Another clueless naive new user bites the dust, the forum loses a new user, and Bitcoin loses a potential user forever.

How can we prevent this? Wallets aren't always easy, not all Bitcoin users are tech savvy, scammers are smart and creative, and if we want Bitcoin(talk) to grow in the right direction, these things kinda just shouldn't happen at all. I know that's utopia, and we can't prevent all scams from happening, but we could do more than this, right?
What would work? Disable receiving PMs? If they can't PM, they'll post their email address so that doesn't help.
More warnings for new users? A warning PM for every few first posts they make?

I'm not sure if this topic is going to help, but I had to get it off my chest.

[Indamuck]

"theres a sucker born every minute"

There is only so much you can do to help, its just the world we live in.  People will always fall for scams.  Real world obviously is full of examples:

Herbalife scammed billions
Car dealerships scamming everyone
Bernie madoff was able to dupe intelligent and wealthy people

[Alone055]

A warning PM for every few first posts they make?

Sounds good, but rather than a PM, the warning should be shown in the post writing area just like how we see warnings like for new posts that has been submitted while we were composing, etc. The warning could be like, "Beware of scammers. Don't blindly believe anyone since not every person is a genuine helper around." and some other precautions to prevent them from such scams.

[JetAid]

We need to create a police force, and then try to develop methods to recover stolen funds.

[fronti]

This is a quite well idea to protect (not only Newbies) from getting scammed.

A warming will be fine, maybe red in the PM Part.
But as we have a lot of warnings and technical tricks already and like in your example the scammers know also on this and find ways to avoid.
Moving to email/telegram etc..

The best will be we need to be faster than the scammers in helping

------

We need to create a police force, and then try to develop methods to recover stolen funds.

recover stolen funds will not possible as we did not manage the money for people..

[JetAid]

recover stolen funds will not possible as we did not manage the money for people..

It could be done if we could track down the scammer, and initiate a legal process.

[theyoungmillionaire]

"Beware of scammers. Don't blindly believe anyone since not every person is a genuine helper around." and some other precautions to prevent them from such scams.

It will be nice if upon registering it will pop up or something, at least they are already warned.
Also, safety precaution is another warning when PMing someone like what we have already on our forum.

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

New feature
Newbie sending a message:
!!!WARNING: You are about to message a veteran member. Beware of scammers: If you are expecting a message from/to a more veteran member, then this is an imposter!!! Do not blindly believe anyone, not all persons are genuine helper.

[AverageGlabella]

Something technical like this we could create a shortcut of questions like a FAQ. So they select Start new thread and they are asked whether their questions fits into certain criteria in this example given its about wallets so if they enter wallet in the post then an automatic system could pick that as a keyword and ask whether their question is about wallet. They select yes and then will be taken to a another set of questions to narrow down their question. The tree would look something like Start new thread > Is your question about a wallet? > Please select your wallet A. Electrum B. Bitcoin core C. Other. > Have you lost password?> Is your wallet having problems with syncing? Basically it runs through the most common problems and at the end either links to a already informative thread or provides a link to trustworthy people who have opted in to help these sort of questions.

[tweetbit]

I’d rather suggest that newbies with wallet problem and sort of will be directly pointed to DT members or a well known technical supports in this forum first for a solution before posting it publicly. Like A list of trusted people that is posted and pinned on sections that is relevant to they’re issues.

Example:

Pinned:
   Trusted Member/Names
   LoyceV -Profile Link -other contact SM links

Location: Services

But IF (no solutions from DT) then a third party members will be called by the DT themselves. (They’re reputation will be on stake at this process).

If problem solve (a tip is welcome ).

[DireWolfM14]

I wish there was something we could do to prevent these types of things from happening, but unfortunately I think it's impossible.  More and more folks who are not tech savvy will be entering into the crypto world, and that means more people will be there in attempt to take advantage of them.  I learned a few lessons early on, and luckily for me they were relatively affordable lessons.  

Good catch finding this scammer's information, kudos for that.  Hopefully he gets caught, and the victim gets his money back.

There's a (Dutch) name in his email address. That may be fake, or it may be real if he didn't plan on scamming anyone but took the opportunity when you offered it.
If it's his real name, it might be useful to track him down.
His username is a domain name, that may help too.

[fronti]

recover stolen funds will not possible as we did not manage the money for people..

It could be done if we could track down the scammer, and initiate a legal process.

but this is not the responsibility of the forum and the members.
Sure there can be support and help but the initialization of a legal process need to done the scammed person.

[bitart]

Newbies (and other members) should know that if something is too good to be true, it is usually not true...
Also, there should be something that reminds newbies that bitcoin is really similar to the internet (because if someone starts to deal with bitcoin, he/she has some minimal knowledge about the internet otherwise he/she couldn't get in touch with bitcoin) so bitcoin is really similar to the internet, if you don't hand over your password of your email address to a stranger, you should not hand over any password, private key, etc... to strangers, doesn't matter how nicely the stranger asks...

[theymos]

Honestly, I think that someone that naïve can't be protected. Even if every inch of the page had been full of warnings, he still might've fallen for it, since he wasn't even thinking about the possibility of being given evil instructions. The scammer was a Jr Member, not some Legendary.

People like him (ie. the majority of the world population) are why we'll someday want an optional sidechain or something on top of Bitcoin which has reversible transactions (via some sort of automatic 2-of-3 escrow which expires after a while, maybe).
He should have the police contact me and I'll give them the scammer's IP logs.

[ac2eugenio]

Why are you suddenly concern about the newbies? low rank unworthy people as i recall you dont trust low rank members here so why? your gang loves to tag low rank members why do you want to protect them? its contradicting .Well for me ,let them ignorance wont save your ass from anything here high rank do scams,extortions and other shit stuffs going on here if you arent awre then leave this place.Dont trust anyone,thats the golden rule.

[friends1980]

Honestly, I think that someone that naïve can't be protected. Even if every inch of the page had been full of warnings, he still might've fallen for it, since he wasn't even thinking about the possibility of being given evil instructions. The scammer was a Jr Member, not some Legendary.

People like him (ie. the majority of the world population) are why we'll someday want an optional sidechain or something on top of Bitcoin which has reversible transactions (via some sort of automatic 2-of-3 escrow which expires after a while, maybe).
He should have the police contact me and I'll give them the scammer's IP logs.

The best lesson is getting scammed and hopefully for a minimal amount. I have had my share in my first days on the forum. Being called greedy afterwards by older members didn't exactly help my case. Being called naive was appropriate though. I reached crypto adulthood very rapidly since. Didn't happen again...

[libert19]

That's how people learn, you get scammed and you learn your lesson, some leave, some learn.

Unfortunately it's a never ending cycle, as newbies will keep coming in. That's how scammers are thriving.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Possibly newbies should be disabled from receiving messages from users less than a Member rank. This should probably help them a little since the trust is too displayed in the PMs which might warn them about the user. If the scammer posts his mail ID in the topic, then the problem shouldn't be under the control of forum anymore. I do accept this forum acts as an entity or middleman for newbies getting scammed more often, but it lies with the user to verify before what actions they perform. Since I visit Tech Board quite often, when I try to help out a newbie and if the problem doesn't get solved, they message me for assistance. Isn't messaging me is quite irrelevant and if I was a scammer I could have scammed them easily in a go.  Newbies can easily fall for the scams provided if they initiate the discussion and doesn't know what is going on around them.

...snip...

This is a decentralized forum, depending on quite few trusted individuals for a technical help isn't good. Anyone can help, provided the poster should be aware of his doings.

[vit05]

I do not see good points in newbie users being able to use PM. There is a lot of risks they take when receiving a PM. And most newbies use it to spread spam, scam and stuff like that.

In addition, any bug-related issues about wallets problems should be addressed in public posts. There is no real gain for this conversation to be private. Since the solution to the problem can help several other users later.

But the problem in question can potentially harm several other people. It's not a simple scam, and for those who do not understand how Bitcoin and transactions work, it can easily fall into something like that. It would be important for more people to know about this possibility. Especially in the novice section. It would be important for more people to know about this possibility. Mainly in the Beginners & Help section.

[Findingnemo]

Unfortunately it cannot be stopped until the newbies even don't have basic level skill and knowledge about crypto currencies and common sense about what they were doing.

What we can do most for them is giving a warning message at the section like marketplace such "Only trade with the person if you know him or have better reputation or always use escrows"

[The Cryptovator]

It's very sad for me that someone got scammed from forum. To be honest we can't stop this kind of stupid from get scam. I can't believe that whoever hold 7+ btc on his Electeum wallet he don't know about warning that he should not input any code that he have no knowledge about that. Also we don't know really who is scammer. As a DT we tag when someone got scam or if we doubts or suspect any scammy activity. I don't think even forum admin could help this kind of stupid. What will do with IP address if scammer use VPN or Tor browser? Scammer isn't really smart from us? So many warning post but no one bother to read, so how can we help them? If you stop PM then they will contact by mail or telegram.

Actually we can't stop them if they are not careful with their fund.

I can't see victim made any help post. Even he had not botherd to search forum even there is Electrum board. After got scam he have made thread and we can't do anything without tag scammer.