How can we protect Newbies from getting scammed?

[Lafu]

I just try to be helpful for new and other users as long they dont get on me personally and want to know real things !

Most important thing on the Forum "  Dont Click any Links you dont Know or have done some research about "

[tranthidung]

I can understand the feeling of that guy who lost his/ her huge money.
However, I think that the forum always have so many available helpful topics:
Most of them can be found there:
[GUIDES] on Bitcointalk. Index thread (until there is a dedicated subforum?) (LoyceV's topic).
From essential knowledge, skills, and guide to investigate scam projects.
So, I think that the forum has actually made good help for newbies, not only newbies in the forum, but also newbies in crypto.
Or this warning message, but naive and lazy guys don't care of it.

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

As we all known and experienced, scammers are abundantly in the world, in different areas, not only in crypto.
Each person has to prepare enough knowledge, skills, and vigilance to protect his-/ her-self.

Even if the forum disable PMs, scammers will have other ways to scam.
And, more importantly, naive guys will always easily fall into scam.
It's their faults to be extremely naive.
As theymos stated there:

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.

It is too technical complicated for me, but sounds good idea.
However, those naive and lazy guys often don't care to use Escrow. They simply want to get fastly supports/ guides.

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).

I don't agree to the ideas of disabling PMs in the forum, because it is one of the most helpful and essential features for forum users, no matter what who they are.
The forum actually has restrictions on Newbies' ability to use PMs.
Key lesson:
Be safe first, before thinking of anything.
Think, re-think, do it repeatedly till you think it's safe to do.
Always be extremely cautious with help for strangers.

[Jet Cash]

Surely it isn't just the newbie account that include scammers. In fact, it's probably more likely that purchased senior accounts will be scammers.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

A welcome PM from forum to all newbie could go a long way to warn them about scammers on forum. When a new user creates an account and login a PM should be sent welcoming them to the forum and warning him/her e.g "Welcome to the forum (username). Don't believe any offer or click on any links sent to you through PM's, all transactions should be carried out openly on threads to prevent possible scam attempt". in addition to any other important information the forum want to info the users about.

Surely it isn't just the newbie account that include scammers. In fact, it's probably more likely that purchased senior accounts will be scammers.

If purchase accounts get scammed I don't think it's the forum problem they deserve it because you can find warning all over the forum discouraging account farming. And those users involved in account farmingare looking for short cuts to earning therefore deserve whatever they gets be it red tagged, scammed or ban.

[theyoungmillionaire]

Why are you suddenly concern about the newbies?

Hi, ac2eugenio,

Don’t get people wrong here. We welcome newbies with open arms. As much as possible we like to help them, protect newbies, know what they want, the reasons why they want to participate on Bitcointalk. Who knows that newbie could be the next theymos. We all started as newbies here, I too have bad experienced here; got rejected, no replies from PM while asking curious questions when I was a newbie.

The thing we hate are newbies who came here to spam, do plagiarism, engage on any rule breaking/scam group of people, and other stuff that could lead to next generation of newbies a bad image of our forum. Example was a newbie saying “thank you for this topic, very helpful to me and other people” – It was deleted by moderator. Then, replied again “I have a perfect grammar and on topic message, why it was deleted? This forum is a joke.” – saying Thank you and some blah blah blah are perfect grammar now? As FH said: The forum is not an "exam", we are not here to hear the same answers again and again but in your own words.  Make us laugh (or mad!), add something of value, something new or something interesting to the discussion.
Even me who have now 41k+ good reports got 15 replies deleted and 3 topics removed.

Newbies engaging on scams or manipulations are surely bad reflections for new gens. They may think that it is a good practice to engaged on such activities, because it wasn’t red tag by the early DT members. Tagging is the way we can help other genuine newbies in choosing the right persons to communicate with. But, we can’t please everyone, people listen in different stories and they are the one who decides what stories they want to accept as true.

Again, we welcome newbies here. This forum will be passed down to the new batch of newbies, we can’t be here forever. If people think we’re against them, then you’re not part of bitcointalk. 

See you around.

theyoungmillionaire

[ac2eugenio]

Why are you suddenly concern about the newbies?

Hi, ac2eugenio,

<snip> thanks theyoungmillionaire i am just talking about the abuse from the new folks here im not saying all of the DT members are abusing the system but most of them,and you know you arent.How about situation like this,a newbie didnt agree with old member's posts and he received a redtrust for not agreeing with these people? would that be fair for the newbie? nah? yes the tag isnt appropriate and theymos doesnt even care about these abuses.What will the newcomers think about that?

A set of new rule for the old members will be a relief for those new so that abuses like what ive said will be less.This place are morelikely turned into political stage,and if you dont have power like the newbies you are nothing here.

[theyoungmillionaire]

thanks theyoungmillionaire i am just talking about the abuse from the new folks here im not saying all of the DT members are abusing the system but most of them,and you know you arent.How about situation like this,a newbie didnt agree with old member's posts and he received a redtrust for not agreeing with these people? would that be fair for the newbie? nah? yes the tag isnt appropriate and theymos doesnt even care about these abuses.What will the newcomers think about that?

Sorry to hear that, my friend. I understand what you feel. Frustrating of course, but, we can’t change the world easily and I’m sure theymos care about our DT system, that is why he is changing it every month to see how it will work. People hear your point, ac2eugenio - we listen to them, it is your freedom. Change is coming.

[LoyceV]

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.

The victim's thread started on the Electrum board, that's where he got scammed. After that, he changed the OP into a scam accusation, so I had it moved to the appropriate board.

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?

Please don't go off-topic. If you have any problem with any of my ratings, feel free to discuss it in LoyceV's reputation thread. But there too: stay on topic! I'm not part of any "gang", and I only take responsibility for my own actions.
I love real new users, it's the future of this forum!

[manfredmann]

Newbie should be welcome so as we have to get a good number of registered users here in the forum. Though the forum has good money circulation but there is a huge percentage drop of the growth of the registered users compared to previous year to where Bitcoin has achieved the ATH market price.

The ranking system also deviates higher rank from the newbie. User's with newbie rank may be intimidated with higher ranks. Besides, newbie will going to rank up with the need of acquiring merit required to rank up. Not all users are good in English and are usually advise to go to local boards and exercise to use their own dialect to have an ease or comfort of using the forum. But, there were no merit source on every local boards and has a huge number of registered users in every local board so how do newbie expect to get even 1 merit?

 Dialect divide us all.

[Pmalek]

What I don't understand is why people don't apply the same common sense they do in real life on the internet as well. I mean if you have problems with your credit card getting declined to make a purchase would you just blindly give your card and your PIN code to the person sitting next to you on the subway just because he promised you he can fix it? Then why do the same with your private keys or passwords?

I am sorry for everyone who gets scammed out of their money but in most cases it is their own fault. Don't give your wallets to strange men on the subway and don't do it with your electronic wallets either.
if you are not willing to accept a bag of strange white powder from a random person who wants to keep it at your place then don't accept weird software from strange online users either.   

[Crypto-DesignService]

Force them to be transparent. Once a new user ask something, posting users should explain their answer as a post not thru PM.

Why not disable and have a duration time for newly-created users to receive PMs? So all the answer they will receive will be a post and can be seen/scrutinize publicly.

Maybe a 7 days duration of a disabled PM.

[examplens]

A welcome PM from forum to all newbie could go a long way to warn them about scammers on forum. When a new user creates an account and login a PM should be sent welcoming them to the forum and warning him/her e.g "Welcome to the forum (username). Don't believe any offer or click on any links sent to you through PM's, all transactions should be carried out openly on threads to prevent possible scam attempt". in addition to any other important information the forum want to info the users about.

---cut

I think a very small percentage of people read any warning or any other text. Only click on "next" and "submit". At that point, no one is thinking about a possible scam because what can going wrong, it is just forum registration.
Maybe to add a small quiz before registration, where they need to answer a few questions about some forum rules and his own securities.

but as far as I know, Newbie not only pretending to be deceived, I find here senior members who've reported fraud even if they have more experience.

[khaled0111]

Senior members should guide newbies and tell them what they should do and what to avoid to make their experience here pleasent and safe.

How to do that!... Senior members, should stop arguing about merit system, DT sytem,, and focus more on helping newbies and answering their quetions on boards like "Beginners & Help", "Development & Technical Discussion", "Bitcoin Technical Support"

However, it is not always up to senior members, newbies, also, should make an effort to learn how to secure their wallet, after all it is a new technology and you should learn a lot before starting using it.

In this particular case, the victim owned more than 30k$ of cryptocurrencies and he didn't know how to secure his funds!!
I sympathise with the victim, but it is completely his fault and no one else should be blamed for what happened.

I think it is time to change these ranks to something more significant combining current rank, trust and gained merits.

[tranthidung]

Agreed with all your above ideas.

About this one, I don't get what you want to say?
Can you clarify it, please.
Which kind of combinations of ranks, trust, and gained merits?
And, which kind of purposes of the combination?

I think it is time to change these ranks to something more significant combining current rank, trust and gained merits.

[morvillz7z]

You know what's ironic in this unpleasant situation? Coolserver.host has posted something like a guide on how to recognize, stay safe and not get ripped off just two days prior to him scamming. Let me quote:

I hope this helps a few people not getting scammed on the forum.

I don't know if ultimately his intention was to trick and scam someone or he just saw an opportunity and took advantage of it ...not that it matters and should excuse him for what he did though.


Other than that, I fully support vit05's suggestion and would post under any wallet-related seeking help topics, that you should never under no circumstances accept any help in private messages from low-ranked members:

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.

[Taki]

I think that over than 50% of newbies on this forum actually people who were banned and who created a new account or multiply accounts.
Anyway truly newbies can really became an easy victim of scammers. I believe that it's more up to them to be scammed or not than from us, users with experience.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Terrible to read about people getting scammed, it happens far too often here but I guess you can’t help stupid. The same thing happens with people falling for fake bank text scams & phone calls asking people for personal info. Some people will always fall victim to scams & fraud.

I don’t know what to suggest, you have to look after yourself & your finances. If you don’t be careful then you are likely to get fucked sadly.

[coinlocket$]

Short answer you can't.

The scam is like the doping: first of all, they create the drug, after when it will be discovered the anti-doping control will be created. When people become aware of the control used a new drug will be born and so on.

You can help with showing the trust score everywhere on the forum and disabling pm for newborn accounts and red trust accounts but it will not fix the problem.

[bitart]

Short answer you can't.
...
You can help with showing the trust score everywhere on the forum and disabling pm for newborn accounts and red trust accounts but it will not fix the problem.

I don't really think this will help...
A real scammer will buy a different, well ranked account after a successful scam attempt, because of the red trust and because he/she can afford it after a succesful scam.

I just don't uderstand people, here in the forum and sometimes in the real life...
If a stranger tells you on the street that if you hand over your wallet to him, he will show you that there's a secret pocket in it, where you can find hidden money which you haven't been aware before, would you belive him and would you hand over your wallet with your savings?  Greed and laziness helps scammers...

People should understand that they have to think before something happens, and not just after...

[Crypto-DesignService]

how can i protect my newbies from the moderator?

Do you mean yourself?
Follow Bitcointalk rules and guidelines.