theymos, please automatic nuke them: a group of scammers.

[OcTradism]

Urgent!

29 Sep. 2020
Please shut them down ASAP

They came back today:

Earn up to 0.10 BTC from NitrogenSports.eu Beta Tester PROMOTION (in gambling)
Earn up to 0.10 BTC from NitrogenSports (in Bitcoin Discussion)

Reports from Legendary members
Theymos! Please ban/disable this phishing link from forum. by Coolcryptovator in July 2020
A scam targeting NitrogenSports users by OmegaStarScream in March 2020.


I don't know where they come from but they posted on the scam give aways. Two threads were locked but I don't know who locked those threads. Please check and nuke them.

If you see others make same posts or topics on the same giveaways, please report.
❤️ Earn up to 5 BTC for becoming a Beta Tester for NitrogenSports! ❤️ by Klopaskoss
Double your Bitcoins for becoming a Beta Tester [up to 5 BTC] ✔️Working by hasker123
❤️ Earn up to 5 BTC for becoming a Beta Tester for NitrogenSports! ❤️ by whitecalifornia
❤️ Earn up to 5 BTC for becoming a Beta Tester for NitrogenSports! ❤️ by deMalkosa19
Podwojenie BTC przy użyciu bonusu na stronie bukmacherskiej. [Nawet do 5 BTC] by Rockeman

Some are found later

A new crop of accounts have surfaced sharing similar content as the recently nuked ones across several boards and also locked topics to prevent people from pointing out their scam;
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261461.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261462.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261464.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261465.0

More found recently
Easy way to double your Bitcoins (tested myself) by mekantos

• Earn up to 5 BTC for becoming a Beta Tester for Nitrogensports.eu [PROMO] by ayken131
• Earn free BTC for becoming a Beta Tester for Nitrogensports.eu [PROMO] by danilogalinarrri

Easy way to double your Bitcoins (tested myself), doblekosia

[JeromeTash]

They links directly users to download add-ons that i believe are infected with malware. Just usef the report to moderators button. The mods will nuke them. You can also report the posts to this thread - Report Malware and Suspicious Links here so Mods can take Action !

[acroman08]

you can add this guy Rockeman to the list. all account was created today.

Podwojenie BTC przy użyciu bonusu na stronie bukmacherskiej. [Nawet do 5 BTC]


all of the account in that thread are shilling the website and most likely an alt since all of the account are created minutes apart (I used a translator to see what they were saying)

[Upgrade00]

All the UIDs are similar so all accounts are related and they probably locked the topics themselves to prevent others from accusing then of being a scam, so an unsuspecting newbie could click on the link with no warning.

[cryptoaddictchie]

They links directly users to download add-ons that i believe are infected with malware. Just usef the report to moderators button. The mods will nuke them. You can also report the posts to this thread - Report Malware and Suspicious Links here so Mods can take Action !

So they knew that scam boards are highly visited to check scams but this guy is tricky using multiple account to spread giveaway associated with malware, of course users here loves to check those discovered scam. Very wise, but Im glad OP, reported it here.

All the UIDs are similar so all accounts are related and they probably locked the topics themselves to prevent others from accusing then of being a scam, so an unsuspecting newbie could click on the link with no warning.

Intelligent scammers, thought locking their thread would avoid them getting nuke. Probably the accounts created purposedly what else could it be done for. Im afraid even those accounts get ban hammered they would just come back again with new created one.

They would not probably used their same IPs to avoid evil points, so there must be a layer of security for incoming registration to give those aliens a hard time

[AverageGlabella]

They are probably bot accounts and they will ditch the account and create a new one and spam the same thing again. I think the only way to combat this would be to make registration harder. The points of evil system only prevents a small minority of scammers and other bad members from signing up. The majority will probably be using clean vpns from something like openvpn and moving onto a different IP everytime making it almost impossible to prevent this happening on a large scale.

The captcha system can be exploited for pennies and that again is only preventing those that are not willing to spend anything but most scammers are willing to spend some money to earn money in return. I think our best option would be to making registration harder by including randomly generated questions related to the forum so they are both being taught how to use the forum as well as having to answer questions about it. These questions could be changed every 2 weeks or something to prevent bots learning how to answer them.

Another option would be the shadow ban that has been talked about a lot. I think this would probably be the most effective way although again for this specific scammer attack they would learn to get approved by a staff member and then continue on their way of scamming but this would probably stop bots being able to easily exploit the forum.

[Yaunfitda]

I've also reported scammers using Nitrogen sports here;

[1] [Warning]: Double your bitcoin in Nitrogen Sports
[2] [Scam]: Nitrogen Sports Beta Testers!

[UserU]

They are probably bot accounts and they will ditch the account and create a new one and spam the same thing again. I think the only way to combat this would be to make registration harder. The points of evil system only prevents a small minority of scammers and other bad members from signing up. The majority will probably be using clean vpns from something like openvpn and moving onto a different IP everytime making it almost impossible to prevent this happening on a large scale.

The captcha system can be exploited for pennies and that again is only preventing those that are not willing to spend anything but most scammers are willing to spend some money to earn money in return. I think our best option would be to making registration harder by including randomly generated questions related to the forum so they are both being taught how to use the forum as well as having to answer questions about it. These questions could be changed every 2 weeks or something to prevent bots learning how to answer them.

Another option would be the shadow ban that has been talked about a lot. I think this would probably be the most effective way although again for this specific scammer attack they would learn to get approved by a staff member and then continue on their way of scamming but this would probably stop bots being able to easily exploit the forum.

Maybe about time to introduce hCAPTCHA. Ironically reCAPTCHA is easy on bots, hard on humans.

[Lucius]

I think our best option would be to making registration harder by including randomly generated questions related to the forum so they are both being taught how to use the forum as well as having to answer questions about it. These questions could be changed every 2 weeks or something to prevent bots learning how to answer them.

The idea makes some sense, but I think it would make registration quite difficult for some of the legitimate members. It should be noted that a large number of new members do not come from an English-speaking area, and that they would probably not understand the question/s - and would give up registration. It seems to me that this is not just about bots, but a lot of real people who have bad intentions and see in this forum an opportunity to achieve them.

Another option would be the shadow ban that has been talked about a lot. I think this would probably be the most effective way although again for this specific scammer attack they would learn to get approved by a staff member and then continue on their way of scamming but this would probably stop bots being able to easily exploit the forum.

I have to admit I had to look up what exactly it means shadow ban, and it is true what you say that there has been much discussion on the subject in the past. But taking into account the number of newly registered members (a year ago 20 000 new accounts per month based on this thread) some conclusion is that the staff/mods would have about 3000 posts per day to check on this basis alone, and to that should be added all the regular reports.

Yet the idea has potential, perhaps this post gives a better insight into how the whole thing might work.

[noorman0]

Maybe about time to introduce hCAPTCHA. Ironically reCAPTCHA is easy on bots, hard on humans.

There is now a limit for newbies to spread links, for example
but it seems to only work on certain types of links.

This may be the only solution without increasing restrictions on sing up or rank up requirements , it's just that need to add more types of links that can be suspected or even not allow all types of links even though inserting them as quote or code in some boards that are likely to be targeted by scammers .

[Lordhermes]

The rate at which these scammers gets in here posting giveaway in BTC now is high. This is Mod responsibility to delete such post when ever it comes up.

[NotATether]

Why not automatically temp ban people whose topic titles are similar enough to the ones OP mentioned, and have it expire for a week or so? Most scam topics have something like "[WORKING]" or "✔️Verified" or "Earn up to {x} BTC" so an automated banning bot can look for those key words.

[OcTradism]

Why not automatically temp ban people whose topic titles are similar enough to the ones OP mentioned, and have it expire for a week or so? Most scam topics have something like "[WORKING]" or "✔️Verified" or "Earn up to {x} BTC" so an automated banning bot can look for those key words.

Only theymos can do so. Last year he did it with Yobit.

[jademaxsuy]

They links directly users to download add-ons that i believe are infected with malware. Just usef the report to moderators button. The mods will nuke them. You can also report the posts to this thread - Report Malware and Suspicious Links here so Mods can take Action !

It seems also effective posting it here for awareness not only for the mods but also for the users in this forum. All users here were free to post and that is the good thing but there are really users here abuses this freedom.

It is really helpful in promoting the forum and reporting the likes of this scam posts. We had been hearing a lot of this scam activities and there are users also fall for it.

There is no really end of this scamming activity but the good thing is that it could be minimize. Well thank for the mods for that.

[UserU]

There is now a limit for newbies to spread links, for example
but it seems to only work on certain types of links.

This may be the only solution without increasing restrictions on sing up or rank up requirements , it's just that need to add more types of links that can be suspected or even not allow all types of links even though inserting them as quote or code in some boards that are likely to be targeted by scammers .

They can still bypass if they do not include the protocol, like abc.com instead of https://abc.com.

About the link you posted, the contents were removed. What was it about?

[LoyceV]

Why not automatically temp ban people whose topic titles are similar enough to the ones OP mentioned, and have it expire for a week or so? Most scam topics have something like "[WORKING]" or "✔️Verified" or "Earn up to {x} BTC" so an automated banning bot can look for those key words.]

MindlessElectron reports posts based on keywords. It's up to the Mods to manually verify the reports.
Automated banning will lead to false positives, and scare off real users.

[UmerIdrees]

The rate at which these scammers gets in here posting giveaway in BTC now is high. This is Mod responsibility to delete such post when ever it comes up.

The mods can't check if every giveaway is real or a scam. So this is practically impossible for the mods to perform this job. We all have to do our duty as if we come across any such scam posts, we should report it. Once many people report it, the action will be taken on it by the moderators.

[Upgrade00]

A new crop of accounts have surfaced sharing similar content as the recently nuked ones across several boards and also locked topics to prevent people from pointing out their scam;
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261461.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261462.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261464.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261465.0

This seems to be a targeted attack at new members, their accounts would eventually be nuked, but would have already been viewed by some and as the topics are locked a curious newbie could follow the link to find out more. And the cycle would be repeated again.
A suggestion is to restrict topics from being locked until xx hours after it was made. This could be limited to brand-new/newbie accounts

[OcTradism]

A suggestion is to restrict topics from being locked until xx hours after it was made. This could be limited to brand-new/newbie accounts

Thank you for reporting them (that I think you did) but the idea is not necessary. Locked topics or not locked topics by them does not affect your report process. Report locked topics from scammers, moderators will step in and do their works. Or you can report topics and bring issues to Meta board, like me.

[Upgrade00]

They were reported and all four of the users has been nuked at this time.

Locked topics or not locked topics by them does not affect your report process.

It doesn't, but due to the queue of reports needing attention from the mods, it could take a while for a report to be handled, during this time the threads have already been viewed by other users. Usually, I'll reply a warning message to such posts pending when the report is handled, however due to the topics being locked that cannot be done.
The fact that the scammers are repeating the process may suggest that it's attracting some unsuspecting users.