How we’re killing scams on Telegram

[sAj1420]

So I just spend 30 minutes typing about our marketplace, then my iPad died and it didn’t save as a draft, so now you guys get the cliff notes  

I don’t post here much, in crypto about 3 years on this site about 2 years - mostly used to just read now I spend all my time on Telegram.

Got sick of scammers and spammers, so set out to create safe marketplace and fight scammers with a vengeance. Marketplace currently has about 2,300 members.

Our groups are www.t.me/HardwareMarket and www.t.me/HardwareMarketChannel and then our discussion group, www.t.me/MinersPeak

A sister group of ours created By Scott Offord is www.t.me/cryptominingscams - where scams and scammers can be openly reported and discussed

So here’s what I did about all the bullshit I was seeing:

I created a bot, @curatorbot “The Curator” and his features are pretty impressive:

1. Maintains a database of Verified users in the group - verified means they have completed KYC with us and we have their ID, selfie, phone, email, an keybase.io profile on file (PS to admins, would be great if bitcointalk set themselves up to be connected to keybase like twitter, reddit, hackernews, and many others)

2. Maintains a database of Reputation points, rep points are given for successful completed deals, 1 point to buyer one to seller.  Deals are thoroughly checked for the first few rep points (tracking info, TX ID, screens of convo etc) and then randomly checked after the first few. Anyone abusing the system loses all rep points

3. Users can call !check on any other user to check their status, including if they are verified, what their rep is, country they are located in, keybase.io profile, username, and user ID number.  We also created a private message check, so anyone that is chatting with another user can call on curator to post a button that the other party should click before transacting, this proves you are actually talking to the verified user and not an imposter.

4. Cross network ban - we created this as an in-house system to ban users across all of our groups, then we realized we could use this to fight scammers and spammers on a larger scale, so now anybody that adds Curator to their telegram group and makes it admin can use all of the features, including access to the !check command, and any spam / scam user that is banned by admin in one of our groups instantly is banned in all groups Curator is admin of (currently about 30-35 groups)

These are just a few of the features we are using to fight spam and scammers in telegram. If you have any questions about the system you can DM me on telegram @theTRUEsaj - or just reply here, but I am not here as often as TG.

Thanks everyone hope to see you in our groups.

[offordscott]

I support this initiative.

[milewilda]

I like the idea but this line would just put this into trash

1. Maintains a database of Verified users in the group - verified means they have completed KYC with us and we have their ID, selfie, phone, email, an keybase.io profile on file (PS to admins, would be great if bitcointalk set themselves up to be connected to keybase like twitter, reddit, hackernews, and many others)

If exchangers would handle out our documents then its considerable but kyc just for telegram verification? I think not.

[offordscott]

He is talking specifically about sellers who have gone through an extensive KYC process. Those sellers identified as “verified” have connected a few account with Keybase, provided their real phone number, and provided their local government photo ID. We also do a check with the seller via webcam.

[davis196]

I was recently scammed by a Telegram faucet bot with around 0.001 BTC.I don't care that much about the BTC I've lost.I just wanted to try the bot and find out if it's legit or not.It was a faucet without any captcha or ads that was "paying" between 100 and 999 satoshi per click every 30 seconds(which is insane,I know)
I just tried to upgrade in order to withdraw some BTC.
I wish I should have known about your project earlier.
Good luck with fighting the Telegram crypto scams.

[arpon11]

He is talking specifically about sellers who have gone through an extensive KYC process. Those sellers identified as “verified” have connected a few account with Keybase, provided their real phone number, and provided their local government photo ID. We also do a check with the seller via webcam.

It is a very nice process to identify and fight scamming on transactions and business that deals with decentralized and anonymous. Telegram has turned to the home of scam. I do receive ton of messages in my telegram account daily and sometimes after much verification, I do discover that those projects are completely scammed. Scamming will reduce if we began to ask people to do KYC before doing business with them.
I am for privacy and that is what bitcoin was created for. Making transactions without KYC or third party knowledge! However, because of the scamming, that is going on that has changed.

[sAj1420]

He is talking specifically about sellers who have gone through an extensive KYC process. Those sellers identified as “verified” have connected a few account with Keybase, provided their real phone number, and provided their local government photo ID. We also do a check with the seller via webcam.

It is a very nice process to identify and fight scamming on transactions and business that deals with decentralized and anonymous. Telegram has turned to the home of scam. I do receive ton of messages in my telegram account daily and sometimes after much verification, I do discover that those projects are completely scammed. Scamming will reduce if we began to ask people to do KYC before doing business with them.
I am for privacy and that is what bitcoin was created for. Making transactions without KYC or third party knowledge! However, because of the scamming, that is going on that has changed.

Sure of course, everyone has the option to deal anonymously, and we also can offer escrow for that if you choose, but most have really embraced the new system we created, and all the active sellers have become verified now, so it has been working very well. No system is perfect but it has reduced scamming considerably.

[hugeblack]

In short, you tend to create a soft regulation market after identity verification.
This approach will be useful if we trust the identity of the people who are verifying the identity and thus consider their assessment as certified.

There are many ways to ensure that the person you are dealing with is trusted but most of them require a third party as Bitcointalk escrow, Bitify, Localbitcoin,..etc.
There are some decentralized methods that allow peer-to-peer trading, but the rule is simple. If you don't trust the person, don't send money to him.

[veleten]

an interesting approach , but KYC verification is too much for my liking
it does reduce the scam overall , but if some shrewd scammer is able to get inside it will be way more damaging
since this is like a trusted circle of people and the offers from them are treated accordingly
is this like some sort of a decentralized localbitcoins or exchange you are building ? is there any revenue that you are getting from running the bot / groups?

[sAj1420]

an interesting approach , but KYC verification is too much for my liking
it does reduce the scam overall , but if some shrewd scammer is able to get inside it will be way more damaging
since this is like a trusted circle of people and the offers from them are treated accordingly
is this like some sort of a decentralized localbitcoins or exchange you are building ? is there any revenue that you are getting from running the bot / groups?

We work very hard to make sure that scammers don't get inside, and if one did, It would still be way less damaging than the amount of people that were getting scammed before.  I'm not getting any revenue, we just charge $25 to cover the fees associated with running KYC and the time I put in / bot development, but otherwise I just do this for free to better the community. Trust me the $1500 or so I have received in fees barely pays for the verification and dev costs. But the $25 also doubles as a barrier to entry that many low level scammers wont consider paying.  There is no bitcoin traded, it is just hardware sales.

[STFU!]

easy! uninstall and don't use telegram.