How can we protect Newbies from getting scammed?

[Ruffian1314]

Even if we have forums and threads to guide newbies for avoiding scams if the person doesn't even bother to research or at least check the scammer's profile then we cannot help them anymore. I think bitcointalk has already have the informations and guidelines needed for newbies.

[1714012499]

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[TheBeardedBaby]

Same as the welcome message situation. Maybe the forum has to send a message upon registration with a short Warning like this >

Do not share your private keys, seeds and passwords with anyone on the forum. There is a high risk to get scammed.

[tranthidung]

This is one of the good initiatives, iasenko.
I support your suggestion.

Same as the welcome message situation. Maybe the forum has to send a message upon registration with a short Warning like this >

Do not share your private keys, seeds and passwords with anyone on the forum. There is a high risk to get scammed.

Weeks ago, I suggested the integration of forum slogan on the right top-corner of the forum, like this:

Specifically dedicated the position on the above corner at the right of the forum for a slogan, in which describe mission and vision of Bitcointalk forum.
Why not?

A ANN topic might be un-necessary, but a slogan is good, I think.
Something like this:

Slogan, or warning message (as you suggested) should be pinned there.
Both of them looks good, I thought.

[Steamtyme]

This has been a long ongoing discussion, the forum just hasn't taken any steps towards educating new users. I thought we were close when theymos solicited opinions on a welcome message, as far as I know that hasn't happened yet. I think that every new tab should have it's own welcome/how to pop-up when you first join, with the option to disable after 1 full activity period.

For instance: In messages "Exercise caution when receiving solicited or unsolicited advice in PM. Do not assume everyone has good intentions regarding advice/downloads. Public discussion is best apart from personal/private details" I would also have forum acceptable practices regarding the use of PM's under this message.

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.  

In short people are stupid - at least we start out that way. We know nothing, but have an amazing capacity for learning. There's a few ways to do this through experience alone, can be a rough path but generally leaves a lasting impression. We can be shown/taught, welcome messages/warnings are a good way to go about this for people entering a new environment. I've always believed in trying to do more in helping/preventing, could be because I was one of those stupid people until I learned through experience.

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 befaure starting using it.

There are plenty of members of all ranks out there offering legit advice and assistance. Not everyone is good at offering that advice or troubleshooting so personally I'd rather not see everyone lining up to "help". The problem lies in the naivety of a newbie, who gets scooped up by a scammer before someone with good intentions happens upon them. It's amazing how many people have coins but haven't learned how to secure them, especially after the FOMO of 2017.

[Carrelmae10]

..this is the act of all scammers..they ran first before the innocent people..if we are trying or doing our best to help newbies in this forum,maybe the number of victims who need a big help will be lessen..but the stupidness of few depends on how people believe or not on what others have said..it should be better for this forum to make a welcome or warning messages for those newbies trying to seek help so that no more many victims will be scammed..

[joybella]

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.

I think disabling Pm will be a great start and also the forum can disable the ability to post email or any contact address. If a user asks a question, the user should be able to get the answer on the thread the question was asked there should be no private response. 1% out of every newbie count gets scammed due to this private assistance. I would also suggest if it's doable the forum bans anyone asking people to pm them for a solution to their worries.

Truth be told someone will always get scammed not everyone is patient enough to read or use Google to get solutions to their crypto related problems especially wallet and exchange related.

[actmyname]

Wherever there is a tool, others will find ways to exploit it.

There is no perfect safeguard apart from hard research, which most are unable/unwilling to do.
If you prevent one scam from being founded, scammers will try and sneak their way to a different kind of scam.

Some time ago, a user was scammed because they had trusted a fake Telegram account with the same name as mine.
They were certainly not new to crypto but had a lapse in security. This happens frequently and is unavoidable.What is most important is to ensure that users are constantly cautious and verify what others are saying.

[LoyceV]

Bump!

Another victim:

Thank you for taking care of the forum and fighting the scammers..
Actually, I started following the malicious advice as soon as I obtained the message through e-mail notification.
This way, nervous newbies like me can miss flags/trust scores etc.

I hadn't realized this before, but indeed, if a user follows a link in the email notification, he doesn't see negative feedback or flags!

(Unless this is already included in the email, but I have no emails from negative trusted users to check)

[ololajulo]

Everyone was a newbie at a point and I dont think its depreciating. I believe the topic was brought to this forum to see what the forum can render. I beleive we have credible member as moderator and staff in these forum, they wont want to tarnish there image for any amount. They can open a thread with credible staff; capable of being escrow and handle other blockchain/crypto technicalities. I dont support a free service but probably ridiculously low. The forum should do more to protect the space and new members

[Upgrade00]

The forum should do more to protect the space and new members

The forum is already doing a lot to protect newbies from scammers, but it is important to note that not all newbies on the forum are new to the cryptocurrency space i.e. they may not be complete novices.
It's almost impossible to fully protect the public from getting scammed.

When getting into Bitcoin, and when one has actually purchased or earned some bitcoins, they should be able to protect themselves from some basic scam attempts.

I'd still like to see that welcome message implemented, to see how much it improves the firumy

[cabalism13]

I hadn't realized this before, but indeed, if a user follows a link in the email notification, he doesn't see negative feedback or flags!

(Unless this is already included in the email, but I have no emails from negative trusted users to check)

Actually you don't have to do anything for them, this forum has already gave its best to prevent scams, its already up to us on how can we further strengthen this security, it his mistake by the way for not getting know who the sender was.

If a message was anonymously sent by other user, they should first try to check them first. Its not our duty anymore, for they're responsible for their own. We also have been through this and I can't think of any more solution that could help them realize what things works as suspicious. Even trusted person can suddenly turn into bad guy.

If a mistake was already done, we can not redo it, just learn from it and might share your experience for the others to be aware. And that's already enough as a warning.

[wwzsocki]

...If a message was anonymously sent by other user, they should first try to check them first. Its not our duty anymore, for they're responsible for their own. We also have been through this and I can't think of any more solution that could help them realize what things works as suspicious. Even trusted person can suddenly turn into bad guy...

This is so true. When I was reading the OP and what happened I just couldn't believe how naive people still are after so many scams. Crypto is exploding with scams everywhere, everybody heard hundreds of scam stories but still people will give they private keys, download something or even send they password if somebody fully anonymous asks them for. There are so many threads "how to avoid to get scammed" or "watch out scam attempt", that already everybody should be alerted and treat security as the key when dealing with cryptocurrencies. I just can't understand how and why somebody acts like this, especially when it goes about 30.000$? I can understand if this is not a significant amount of money for this person then ok, hard but I can grasp such an explanation.

Lately, I got also a couple of PMs from old and new accounts and half of them was a scam attempt. Of course always in such situation, the first thing which I do is to check these accounts and PM if it was for sure sent by the real account owner. Checked this account but everything was ok, active for a long time and with a good reputation. But additionally, I always respond to such PMs and ask if this is real and this time member responded back, that he never sent this PM and don't know what is going on. Hackers get into his account but never changed the password, only acted as the real owner. This is a real threat because everything looks fine, they delete PMs immediately after sending, login only when the real user is offline and if you are not lucky enough to get to the real owner with your PM, you can be scammed very easily if you fell into this great promotion or anything else they offer, which is very hard to say no of course. I have to add this was a high-rank and established account, which is really scary and I think is worth to know that something like this already happened.

Of course, I got plenty of PMs from newbie accounts, which ask to discuss further on Telegram and there they offer this super something on which you will make a fortune, but this is so obvious scam attempt that there is no point to talk about this further because everybody already knows about this.

[Pmalek]

Hackers get into his account but never changed the password, only acted as the real owner. This is a real threat because everything looks fine, they delete PMs immediately after sending, login only when the real user is offline...

From how many different devices is it actually possible to be logged on at the same time? If someone has my password and I am logged in and using my account right now, can the hacker also use it at the same time? How about 3, 5, 10 devices

It would be good if this could be limited somehow to the number of devices we use. If I use only 2 (my pc and mobile phone) I could set that limit to 2 devices. In case a 3rd device logs on the account gets locked or the password is reset.

[tranthidung]

Lately, I got also a couple of PMs from old and new accounts and half of them was a scam attempt. Of course always in such situation, the first thing which I do is to check these accounts and PM if it was for sure sent by the real account owner. Checked this account but everything was ok, active for a long time and with a good reputation. But additionally, I always respond to such PMs and ask if this is real and this time member responded back, that he never sent this PM and don't know what is going on. Hackers get into his account but never changed the password, only acted as the real owner.

I don't think you should make things complicated like that. 

If someone go first and ask for financial supports or invitation to join groups, projects, and so on. I ignore such PMs all because they don't deserve my time to investigate who send those PMs, real users or hackers, and which intention they want. Such things always (or mostly) relate to bad purposes.

In contrast, if someone send me PMs to ask for help, such as ask for my permission to do translation from my threads, or ask for anything that I can help from my knowledge and skills, I will do reply and help them.

This is a real threat because everything looks fine, they delete PMs immediately after sending, login only when the real user is offline and if you are not lucky enough to get to the real owner with your PM, you can be scammed very easily if you fell into this great promotion or anything else, which is very hard to say no of course. I had to add that this was a high-rank and established member account, which is really scary and I think is worth to know that something like this already happened.

In serious cases, I think admins or global moderators can step in, but it is rarely without government/ police requirements, eg.
If it is personal issues between users, I don't think admin or global moderators will spend their time to do this, because basically it is not their responsibility.
Forum stores data on users' PMs 6 months after PMs deleted by senders and all recipients

Until the sender and all recipients delete the PM, plus about 6 months

[CherylltheBombshell]

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.

This topic is actually very helpful to newbies however we need to face facts that we, ourselves are the one who can only  protect or save us from scammers. In the first place, when we join bitcoin we are already starting to take the risk. We need to bear in mind that there are numbers that can be scammers so we should be conscious and should mind over matter always. Dont be driven with excitement or emotions rather think before we click. Read and then ask but dont take answer as a yes always.

Remember it on us as always. As the saying goes, trust no one!

[slashz9]

"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

so, do you think this will continue to happen?
when someone who just joined, must pass the scam , I think your words are a bit cruel but that's the reality.
but that is humans when they are distressed they will ask for help from others, it's just that we don't know which will help / fool us.



and the best way for help them is remind them every day, even though things won't work out.
at least this will help reduce the number of people affected by scams, I don't know whether scams will continue to get victims.
we will only help, remind, next is how the person's attitude responds to it.

[wwzsocki]

I don't think you should make things complicated like that.  ...
If someone go first and ask for financial supports or invitation to join groups, projects, and so on. I ignore such PMs all because they don't deserve my time to investigate who send those PMs, real users or hackers, and which intention they want. Such things always (or mostly) relate to bad purposes...

I don't think I am making things too complicated because so far I wasn't scammed so it works.

You are right that most of these PMs are scam attempts, as I said multiple times already in my posts above, but why should I ignore all of them?

They are sent sometimes from a high ranked account, which is active and has a good reputation. Of course, if this is a newbie account, created a couple of days ago and already red-painted for scam attempt, then I will not bother to reply but I fill obligated to check these accounts because in the past I got a couple of very lucrative invitations to random promotions or even work agreements as a project or ICO advisor in the crypto boom time 2016 -2018, exactly from such a newbie accounts but to be honest it was before the introduction of a copper membership.

From another site, if I found something suspicious I can warn the community about such a scammer, report, add negative trust annotation or distrust in my trust settings, so why not if he asks for?
There are many options if you know what you are doing and at least suspect who you are potentially dealing with.

[tranthidung]

I don't think I am making things too complicated because so far I wasn't scammed so it works.

You are right that most of these PMs are scam attempts, as I said multiple times already in my posts above, but why should I ignore all of them?

Everyone has to start as newbie, me too. From my experience, I open my door to newbies, and don't disable PMs from newbies in my profile settings.
However, if any newbie send PM this way. I will ignore all their later PMs because they obviously give me scam indicator with their very first PMs.
Depends on what they write in their PMs, I will decide to reply them or ignore them later.

If someone go first and ask for financial supports or invitation to join groups, projects, and so on.

[wwzsocki]

From how many different devices is it actually possible to be logged on at the same time? If someone has my password and I am logged in and using my account right now, can the hacker also use it at the same time? How about 3, 5, 10 devices ...

I am quite sure that we can be logged to an account only from one device at a time.

One will be automatically logged off when there was another successful login attempt to this same account from a different device.

This is quite easy to check if a targeted account is active because everybody can see this in each member account summary.



Additionally, if a member is posting frequently, then is just very easy to follow his active hours. Everybody has to sleep sometimes.

This is really scary because they can post and send PMs in your name, later remove it and there is no sign that somebody was in pour account. The only way to have the best odds, to catch the real account owner, (if we suspect something is not right) is to wait for his active hours when he starts to post something. Hackers would have to delete their posts after a while and the real account owner will let them sit there, so this is the time and opportunity to get in touch with him.

[LoyceV]

I am quite sure that we can be logged to an account only from one device at a time.

One will be automatically logged off when there was another successful login attempt to this same account from a different device.

That's incorrect. I sometimes use LoyceMobile from a private window on my PC, and it doesn't get logged out on my mobile.
You can however use https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php to check if anyone else is sneakily using your account.