Users who are blocked without even writing a single post on the forum

[Daniel91]

I'm aware that this topic has already been discussed here but I would like to talk about one particular aspect of this problem.
So most of you already know what I'm talking about.
A new member register on this forum and wants to become an active member of our forum community but gets the message that he is on the evil list and that he has to pay a certain fee to unblock himself and that he could start writing.
Okay, I understand that there are a lot of scammers on this forum and it's probably one kind of protecting our community from them.
Let us try to approach this problem from another angle.
Someone heard about bitcoin from a friend for the first time in his life, he has never earned or bought a single bitcoin, he is skeptical and wants to know more about it.
He finds this forum through Google and wants to register because he wants to use the opportunity to participate in discussions on this forum and find out more.
Instead of welcoming and simply registering, he gets the message that he is on the evil list and that he has to pay a certain fee to unblock himself.
At this point most of such new potential members will simply give up and leave.
First of all, they don’t have the ability to pay with bitcoin nor do they want to pay for the right to write on the forum.
Couldn't this be solved in another way?
Let's say that all such new profiles receive a flag (with restrictions on writing in trading or receiving merits) and that a review of such profiles is made after 30 days.
If everything is ok after 30 days, all their restrictions are lifted and they can write normally and everywhere.
What do you think?
I think that all new members should be given an equal opportunity and they shouldn't be discouraged from registering and participating in this forum.

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[Charles-Tim]

From what I have noticed, IP of a particular country and VPN can be blocked by a website owner, this is what has being implemented on this forum, the reason? I do not know but most likely because most people that register from such countries are participating in malacious activities, but not only that, also this can be as a result of most of the posters from the countries are shitposters, if 90% of the posters are spammers, plagiarizers and shitposters, this will lead to the IP of their country to pay for the ransom, for just to reduce the shit posting members can lead to this because it will create more work for moderators if there are too much shitlosters. If ransom is paid, the members that pay it will be more careful of not get banned.

But, your idea is very good, but only remain for the moderators to accept this, not even only admin, if moderators have the time to allow this members and ready to be deleting their malacious and useless posts, they can agree and propose this to the admin. I will even like it, because my country is part of the country that new users are paying for ransom on this forum. But, if moderators say the shitposts are too much in a way they can not handle, it will remain like that.

But, it will be good if theymos can find a way to allow this to be removed and find alternative ways to solve this issue. Like making new members to post maybe 3 times daily at first and also not participating in market place unless copper membership is paid for.

[ranochigo]

Okay, I understand that there are a lot of scammers on this forum and it's probably one kind of protecting our community from them.

Spammers.
The evil score is calculated with regards to how much spam has originated from that IP block. As such, the nature of most Tor and VPNs will result in some form of evil score. It's quite rare to be able to get an IP without any evil score on it when using Tor from my own experience but paid VPNs tends to be abused less. Having a newbie jail, or anything similar that you've described isn't an option, as theymos has mentioned. The problem is not with the scams but the problem is with the spams they would bring.

The way around this is to use your actual IP or go to a local coffee shop to register. You can continue using tor after that if you want.

[tranthidung]

From Evil users (suchmoon's topic)


Additionally, there are spikes in last 3 months, I believe but I don't see your points to review or automatic release the restriction. People can easily create accounts and use the one does not have evil IP issue and evil IP score slowly decays over time. Is it an unofficial second chance?

Of course, I know it can be inconvenience for them.

Your suggestion, if is applied, can create a loop hole for spammers. As is presented there: total daily new accounts are on upsurge. More than 11k new users a day is very crazy.

[friends1980]

A new member register on this forum and wants to become an active member of our forum community but gets the message that he is on the evil list and that he has to pay a certain fee to unblock himself and that he could start writing.

As said above, AFAIK only people who are using IP blocking/spinning services like TOR or some VPN are blocked, as they are often linked to bots, spammers etc. and of course ban evaders. There are many regular websites who use the same system to block entry to their website, for the exact same reason (f.i. try to visit rottentomatoes with Tor).

People have the possibility to register with their regular IP address freely (and with no cost whatsoever). I think people who wish to have an extra layer of privacy, also realize the exact same services are used by people with less noble intentions and they shouldn't be surprised a small token of good-will is demanded to use these boards. It's a small favor compared to having the complete protection of your privacy guaranteed.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Most often this probably comes from public VPNs, or from IPs that are blacklisted.
https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

I noticed a long time ago that newbies appear, with a registration date of 2018, for example. They come up with stories that he registered and forgot, and now the time has come, he remembered about this account.
In fact, newbies who come to spam or register 101 accounts know the market for ready-made accounts very well.
Therefore, my opinion is that you need to buy a good non-public VPN, or, as ranochigo said, register with your IP provided by your provider.

[Charles-Tim]

In fact, newbies who come to spam or register 101 accounts know the market for ready-made accounts very well.
Therefore, my opinion is that you need to buy a good non-public VPN, or, as ranochigo said, register with your IP provided by your provider.

I have a friend that opened Bitcointalk account recently after disturbing me about the forum, that he wanted to know about it too, I personally told told him to use paid VPN for it because our country's IP can not escape paying the evil fee, it was surprising that the paid VPN is also paying for the evil fee. Which means any of the IP that has been used by shitposters will pay the fee. Although, very possible using another country on the VPN could have not led to such.

Also, many newbies will not know about this and ways to go and just leave the forum because they do not even know much about bitcoin and bitcoin wallet.

[dkbit98]

I know some people I invited to join the forum, they don't use VPN and never before registered on Bitcointalk forum, but when they tried registration they received Evil fee message, and you can image their surprise when they saw they need to pay for that.
This can be due to the fact that their internet provider is reusing shared IP addresses or they tried registration from public place, but it doesn't change the fact that we are hurting good users in process of preventing evil ones.
Maybe we need to think of some better solution and I know this is not easy, one thing could be message that tells new member to try registration from different location, friends home etc.

[Daniel91]

Most often this probably comes from public VPNs, or from IPs that are blacklisted.
https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

I noticed a long time ago that newbies appear, with a registration date of 2018, for example. They come up with stories that he registered and forgot, and now the time has come, he remembered about this account.
In fact, newbies who come to spam or register 101 accounts know the market for ready-made accounts very well.
Therefore, my opinion is that you need to buy a good non-public VPN, or, as ranochigo said, register with your IP provided by your provider.

I wouldn't agree with you completely.
I recently talked to a friend about bitcoin and he got interested.
I suggested this forum for more information and he tried to register.
He got this message saying he had to pay to unblock himself.
He tried to register from home and I'm 100 % he didn't use public VPN but IP from his Internet provider.
Of course he has completely given up on this forum and has no plans to pay anything.
Even if he wanted to pay he can't because he's just heard about bitcoin, he doesn't even have an open btc wallet, nor does he even know how bitcoins are sent or received.
He's a complete beginner on this and it's really funny of people like that, who by mistake or by chance ended up on this list, to ask them to pay to unblock themselves.
It's just not right and fair and no one can convince me otherwise.

[FIFA worldcup]

I know some people I invited to join the forum, they don't use VPN and never before registered on Bitcointalk forum, but when they tried registration they received Evil fee message, and you can image their surprise when they saw they need to pay for that.
This can be due to the fact that their internet provider is reusing shared IP addresses or they tried registration from public place, but it doesn't change the fact that we are hurting good users in process of preventing evil ones.
Maybe we need to think of some better solution and I know this is not easy, one thing could be message that tells new member to try registration from different location, friends home etc.

Yes, if you make an account and it has an evil IP banned message, you can switch the VPN IP or go to some other place like your relative home to make an account. Even in most cases, restarting your internet router will give you different IP and you may be able to register but the problem is that your username which you decided on the first place, can no longer be used because it is already registered with an evil ip. If you need that username of yours which you thought initially, you will have to pay for it now.

[ranochigo]

Also, many newbies will not know about this and ways to go and just leave the forum because they do not even know much about bitcoin and bitcoin wallet.

Do you need an account to see the posts? Most newbies that only seeks to use Bitcoin probably won't bother to use the forum at all.

I suggested this forum for more information and he tried to register.
He got this message saying he had to pay to unblock himself.
He tried to register from home and I'm 100 % he didn't use public VPN but IP from his Internet provider.
Of course he has completely given up on this forum and has no plans to pay anything.
Even if he wanted to pay he can't because he's just heard about bitcoin, he doesn't even have an open btc wallet, nor does he even know how bitcoins are sent or received.
He's a complete beginner on this and it's really funny of people like that, who by mistake or by chance ended up on this list, to ask them to pay to unblock themselves.
It's just not right and fair and no one can convince me otherwise.

That's unfortunately one of the tradeoffs associated when you have to actively try to fight spammers. If you were to take away evil score, it would be way easier for the forum to be filled with SEO spams since you don't have the need to rotate the IPs when creating an account. It's not possible for them to hide a newbie's post because it would be tedious for mods to be sifting through the numerous posts every single day on top of the normal spams. Newbie jails or any sort of it's derivatives does not serve useful in the long term; limiting newbie's discussions to a section will inevitably result in a single section having way lower quality posts than the rest and wouldn't result in most of the normal forum users to be engaging in discussions in that section. What's the use if you were to create a ringfence around them and not letting them discuss on the other parts of the forum?

Evil score is probably here to stay. Most users shouldn't be facing too much of an issue when joining unless their IP range has been infested with spammers and/or their ISPs assigns a very small IP range and you happen to be in the same IP range as the spammers. Here's a visualization of the evil score situation back in 2018: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4101785.0.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

[actmyname]

IP from his Internet provider.

Some ISPs provide dynamic or rotating addresses, which could have resulted in a collision.

I would like to hear of a better solution to the evil score problem - how else do you ban mass waves of rule-breakers when they sign up? I would actually argue that the evil score system is incredibly generous as users can pay for those specific accounts to be unblocked and for the evil to be removed - typical permabans for IPs aren't usually that friendly.

[meanwords]

I know some people I invited to join the forum, they don't use VPN and never before registered on Bitcointalk forum, but when they tried registration they received Evil fee message, and you can image their surprise when they saw they need to pay for that.
This can be due to the fact that their internet provider is reusing shared IP addresses or they tried registration from public place, but it doesn't change the fact that we are hurting good users in process of preventing evil ones.

This is actually a case in the Philippines because our internet service providers (mobile data internet providers) is reusing shared IP which is why almost every IP has evil score in it. Though they aren't that expensive (mostly less than $1), most of my friends still refuses to pay (so I payed for them lol). People would be reluctant to pay because most people would question why would a forum ask for money, that will be suspicious af for those who don't know what's going on.

Though would it be a good idea to, let's say, instead of permanently blocking newbies with evil score, give them a 14 days restriction to familiarize themselves to the forum? Like every person who registers in an IP address with blue or less evil score will have to wait 14 days to post in the forum.*

Edit: Yup, I can imagine spammers taking advantage of this.

Or maybe like instead of paying the fees, they have the option to insert their BTC address and sign a message? and after registering, direct them to a tutorial on how to get a Bitcoin wallet and how to sign.

[Rikafip]

I would like to hear of a better solution to the evil score problem - how else do you ban mass waves of rule-breakers when they sign up?

Thing is, those that are creating accounts en masse always find a way to circumvent that evil fee thing and keep on creating new accounts either via VPN or something else, while legit users most likely won't bother with that when they get the message that their IP is flagged due something they didn't do. They might even think that this is some kind of scam and won't come back ever again. Especially now when there are so many different platforms and forums are not as popular as they used to be so they have choices.

I would actually argue that the evil score system is incredibly generous as users can pay for those specific accounts to be unblocked and for the evil to be removed - typical permabans for IPs aren't usually that friendly.

I wonder how many users that had no previous contact with bitcoin, never bought or sell any would do that for the first time just to get an access to this forum. By the way, how much is that evil fee at the moment?

[actmyname]

Though would it be a good idea to, let's say, instead of permanently blocking newbies with evil score, give them a 14 days restriction to familiarize themselves to the forum? Like every person who registers in an IP address with blue or less evil score will have to wait 14 days to post in the forum.

Here's the way a mass-account abuser would take advantage of the 14-day grace period:

Break rules until evil score starts to increase.
If your new wave of accounts is starting off with a very low evil score, just wait.
Break rules until evil score increases past 14-day grace period, or whatever arbitrary threshold you designate.It would definitely help Newbies, but think about their position: do you really want to join a forum that locks you away for 14 days when you have no fucking idea what is going on?

[ranochigo]

This is actually a case in the Philippines because our internet service providers (mobile data internet providers) is reusing shared IP which is why almost every IP has evil score in it. -snip-

Though would it be a good idea to, let's say, instead of permanently blocking newbies with evil score, give them a 14 days restriction to familiarize themselves to the forum? Like every person who registers in an IP address with blue or less evil score will have to wait 14 days to post in the forum.

Or maybe like instead of paying the fees, they have the option to insert their BTC address and sign a message? and after registering, direct them to a tutorial on how to get a Bitcoin wallet and how to sign.

It sucks that dynamic IPs are abused so easily and that behavior lies with your ISP. The ease of changing IP just makes spamming a lot easier.

Unfortunately, the best way to deter spammers is through some financial penalty. The measures that you describe would probably put off most newbies when you subject them to such a long wait and the second wouldn't do anything to prevent spamming.

I wonder how many users that had no previous contact with bitcoin, never bought or sell any would do that for the first time just to get an access to this forum. By the way, how much is that evil fee at the moment?

Not much, but presumably some if they are low enough. Residential IPs are not as blacklisted as VPNs and Tor IPs, unless those IP in the same range happens to be spamming the forum. I would think that it would be reasonable to allow those with higher evil units to purchase a copper membership from the beginning. After all, they could get something in return for paying the evil fees.

The evil fees decay with time and it's dependent on how many people abused that range of IP.

[UmerIdrees]

IP from his Internet provider.

Some ISPs provide dynamic or rotating addresses, which could have resulted in a collision.

Almost all the ISP gives us dynamic addresses. It is very expensive to own a dedicated IP for a home connection. They have a pool of addresses which they assign randomly (through DHCP Server) to all their regular users who are on non-dedicated IP plan. That's the reason that someone may be assigned an IP by the ISP through which the bitcointalk accounts have already been made and is declared as evil.

[sujonali1819]

From the beginning 2017 I invited some friends to join this forum. And that time I also faced the problem when I helped them to create the account on their mobile/computer. But they did not know about bitcoin before or even they did not visit this forum. Then I force them to use VPN to create new one.

Btw the new way really helped to reduce scam/spam where most of the accuser don't care about red trust on the profile dealing with ?

[LoyceV]

IP from his Internet provider.

Some ISPs provide dynamic or rotating addresses, which could have resulted in a collision.

Units of evil are also collected by "neighboring" IPs:

When you register, the IP that you used when you submitted the registration form is used to calculate your evilness. The more frequently this IP or its neighbors were banned, the more evil is associated with your account.

Some (old) stats:

In the last 30 days:
 - 16441 users registered.
 - 4040 required a fee, and the average required fee among them was 0.00127297 BTC.
 - 99 paid the fee, and the average fee paid was 0.00116449 BTC.

I'm not necessarily bothered by the number of accounts abandoned due to fees, since many of those will probably be spammers searching for a no-fee IP. The fees actually paid (by people who are presumably not spammers) may be a bit high, though: I feel like it should be about a tenth of that.

The last sentence is what this topic is about: if there are 99 paying users, I reckon there may very well be be more non-spammers who instantly abandened their account.

Though would it be a good idea to, let's say, instead of permanently blocking newbies with evil score, give them a 14 days restriction to familiarize themselves to the forum? Like every person who registers in an IP address with blue or less evil score will have to wait 14 days to post in the forum.

I've registered to forums that made me wait a few days before I could post. That's terribly annoying! But if you're a spammer who registers hundreds of accounts, the 14 days don't matter at all. Take a look at loyce.club/patrol/: almost all of the first posts made by 100 new users are spam. And that's despite the current restrictions on new users.

[Crptomagma]

Oh really? I never knew users without any post on the forum can be blocked but I strongly believe if it happens then there must be a tangible reason, maybe the IP address have been used to commit evil previously on the forum. Sometimes the new user of the device might not be aware of such previous actions by the other user.