Newbies be careful with old members, when they PM you for business.

[HajiBagi]

I saw a thread some weeks ago where someone was complaining, that he received a message about investment from someone in this forum.
Most of this old members that are messaging newbies in other to scam them has already been given negative feedback by DT members in this forum, so when you see a PM from old forum members, what you should do is to check their feedback and from there feedback you will know the kind of person they are.
But I will advise, regardless of their feedback tell them to make it public or forget about it.

And for the DT members if you are giving trust to someone, make sure the member is trustworthy because if they are involved in scamming newbies here, and the newbie says he believed the member was trustworthy because of the trust you gave the member, you too will be held accountable to some extent.

Any newbie should never trust anyone who messaged them to help them about bitcoin, forum is a place where both old members and newbies are able to learn about bitcoin and other important things about bitcoin, if you are not a scammer why will you be the first person to message a newbie to teach them about bitcoin, anyone who wants to learn about bitcoin will surely understand it from the forum or the person will be the one to message you that he or she wants to learn from you.

We should be very careful with each other and not allow some newbies should see some old members as a scammers, let not use newbies as an opportunity to make money, we are here to learn and enlighten each other about bitcoin, we should not let the forum should be seeing as a place where we can not trust each other anymore.

[qwertyup23]

Just to add on the discussion of OP, there are multiple accounts that were recently sold just to do this scheme. This is the reason on why practicing vigilance would be the recommended especially if you receive a random message asking for an investment.

Regardless if the person that messaged you was an old member or not, it is very important to always observe being careful. If you feel like there’s a potential red flag on that transaction, listen to your gut and avoid it at all cost.

Yeah there are more newbie scam but don't forget hack or bought account many of these owners gets these account for malicious purposes.

Well, I do believe that there are still people who buy and sell accounts because I did receive a PM on telegram if I am selling an account and only accept hero and above rank. If it's about hacked accounts then the owner would be creating an alt account for recovery purpose so the hacked account may be used to scam someone unless the account is reported hacked so that it can stop someone from getting scammed.

This is exactly the situation that happened in what OP was describing.

Like what OP mentioned, always check the post history and even their commenting habits if something had changed. Additionally, you can also ask that person to create a general thread about their so-called “investment opportunity” if they are really keen and interested about it.

[Zlantann]

Any newbie should never trust anyone who messaged them to help them about bitcoin, forum is a place where both old members and newbies are able to learn about bitcoin and other important things about bitcoin, if you are not a scammer why will you be the first person to message a newbie to teach them about bitcoin, anyone who wants to learn about bitcoin will surely understand it from the forum or the person will be the one to message you that he or she wants to learn from you.

We should be very careful with each other and not allow some newbies should see some old members as a scammers, let not use newbies as an opportunity to make money, we are here to learn and enlighten each other about bitcoin, we should not let the forum should be seeing as a place where we can not trust each other anymore.

You don't need to look at the rank of members when dealing with them. Scammers could be any rank member. There have been reports of scammers buying or hacking high-ranking accounts and using them to defraud people.

I don't care about ranks when it comes to financial or other important issues. The forum has many respected members who offer escrow services. Any financial payment or excange would go through these escrows because only few people are trusthworthy.

OP is correct that checking the trust of members is an imoportnat menas of determining the intergrity of members. 

[notocactus]

You don't need to look at the rank of members when dealing with them. Scammers could be any rank member. There have been reports of scammers buying or hacking high-ranking accounts and using them to defraud people.

I do look at forum member rank for any business deal.

If it is a newbie with clean history, I can not check and trust that user, so I would like to skip that user for any business deal. If the user rank is higher, even Hero member or Legendary rank, it does not mean I automatically trust that user. At least, I have less doubt than a newbie account but I must check other things too.

Account rank is important but other things are more important like account history, trust feedback, trust score that can help me to have enough overview about that account, but before doing any business deal, I will also look at the forum seclog page or third party site with information on the account security changes: like wake-up, password change, email change and others, before making a business deal.

[pawanjain]

I saw a thread some weeks ago where someone was complaining, that he received a message about investment from someone in this forum.
Most of this old members that are messaging newbies in other to scam them has already been given negative feedback by DT members in this forum, so when you see a PM from old forum members, what you should do is to check their feedback and from there feedback you will know the kind of person they are.
But I will advise, regardless of their feedback tell them to make it public or forget about it.

And for the DT members if you are giving trust to someone, make sure the member is trustworthy because if they are involved in scamming newbies here, and the newbie says he believed the member was trustworthy because of the trust you gave the member, you too will be held accountable to some extent.

I have seen people getting contacted on various social media platforms and being asked to invest in scam platforms.
But I have never seen someone on bitcointalk being asked to invest in scam projects.
We have to be cautious while investing our hard earned money and look for potential red flags.
The major red flag is being contacted by a random person and being asked to invest money.

[348Judah]

This is not even about old members or new ones, we shouldn't relate with strangers when they message us and we don't know them, we should not easily trust people like that, because anything can come shady from having encounter with a strange person, we should not easily trust strangers, they are not to be trusted the same way we cant even trust on those we already know, anything that has to do with money or business must be thoroughly investigated.

[Awaklara]

This is not even about old members or new ones, we shouldn't relate with strangers when they message us and we don't know them, we should not easily trust people like that, because anything can come shady from having encounter with a strange person, we should not easily trust strangers, they are not to be trusted the same way we cant even trust on those we already know, anything that has to do with money or business must be thoroughly investigated.

I am sure even newbies won't take the risk of engaging with strangers offering business. Even if the account sending the message has a positive tag due to past transactions or trust from others, it is still possible that someone might use an account that has changed hands to commit fraud.
But if we are really coming for business, we might need to consider some suggestions from other users to avoid choosing the wrong partner.

[Antotena]

I saw a thread some weeks ago where someone was complaining, that he received a message about investment from someone in this forum.
Most of this old members that are messaging newbies in other to scam them has already been given negative feedback by DT members in this forum, so when you see a PM from old forum members, what you should do is to check their feedback and from there feedback you will know the kind of person they are.
But I will advise, regardless of their feedback tell them to make it public or forget about it.

And for the DT members if you are giving trust to someone, make sure the member is trustworthy because if they are involved in scamming newbies here, and the newbie says he believed the member was trustworthy because of the trust you gave the member, you too will be held accountable to some extent.

I don't care if it's old member or a new member, whatever who that person is, even if it's moderator and it's a scam, I will speak up with a thread. There is nothing any accounts is not capable of doing. Many times in this forum, we have seen accounts that used to belong to a reputable member get sold to another person, the account changes hands but you wouldn't know, they don't even bother to change the password to avoid suspicion of the person.

My dm is open for everyone and it's not restricted to members below Junior members, I want to have a meaningful expansion with everyone but I'm doing that with a discretion so I don't become a victim of what I don't expect later in the future. If you are a newbie and you feel someone sent you a dm that is smelling scams or want to take advantage of you, speak up and let others decide but please don't leak people's pm that doesn't scam you for no reason, there is a reason it's called private messages.

[NurseHub]

For me I just know one thing that unsolicited PMs as the forum calls it and not DM, are not to be accepted untill it's proven to be accepted beyond doubts, we should always treat PMs as a threat untill they are proven not to be a threat because you really see someone send you a message without a sole purpose so, what the purpose of the PM is, is exactly what we should be skeptical about and not just give in to whatever they say. Whether the have everyone in the forum trust still don't give a 100% trust of what they say in private, some things are meant to happen in the public space so we should suggest that.

I met this thread late!!

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

Some old members who dont even have bad feedback will not still be caught, and if these old members could see that neg tag will ruin there reputation, they got to use new account to message new members. Those newbies who usually got this type of private scam message are those who constantly ask for help and direction about investment, seedphrase and often related questions that has to do with needing help.

These old account tends to help these newbies who has no clue of how things work and decieve them off their hard earned money.

Thats how this thing works, be careful here. 

[Cryptoprincess101]

I have snubbed many PM in the forum whether they came from high-ranking profiles or low profiles, the only PMs i pay attention to are those that calls my attention in a post where i might have made a mistake and maybe the supernotifier bot didn't notify me or i missed the notification but any PM about a business or a contest, i just ignore. Anyone who wants to avoid scammers in the forum must also learn to avoid PM from strangers they do not know even if they are reputable.

[goldkingcoiner]

Theres an old saying in real life "Dont talk to stranger" might be good to do that if you are newbie thats the best prevention to scam.

That is basically the only thing in life you need to understand. Just keep yourself out of trouble by not needlessly talking to some strangers who may or may not wish to talk you into some financial business...

[Bobrox]

I got PM from old user in bitcointalk forum offering about investment at specific coins but I know its scam way and ignore them, nowadays the scammer never quick how to scam exactly for beginner trough interesting return offering more than 10% until 20% easily acceptable by newbies. The same ways some one opening the investment way will offering profit every month 10% to 20% easily make many people blame without make research how its possibility earn consistent return of profitable every month.
This scam trick not only at bitcointalk forum but also most often getting trough telegram, many unknow person send us PM trough telegram offering the interested investment and unbelievable with the profitable return sometime for weekly and monthly.

[Franctoshi]

I saw a thread some weeks ago where someone was complaining, that he received a message about investment from someone in this forum.
Most of this old members that are messaging newbies in other to scam them has already been given negative feedback by DT members in this forum, so when you see a PM from old forum members, what you should do is to check their feedback and from there feedback you will know the kind of person they are.
But I will advise, regardless of their feedback tell them to make it public or forget about it.

What you said in the post is real and I did receive about 2-3 of their pm's during the time when I was still a newbie, even from the pattern of their messages, you can tell that they're potential scammers, I immediately reported them after some verification on their accounts. As a newbie just ignore whenever you receive such messages from any unknown member promising you huge business profits, you might be their target profit with that little you have.

[Zlantann]

You don't need to look at the rank of members when dealing with them. Scammers could be any rank member. There have been reports of scammers buying or hacking high-ranking accounts and using them to defraud people.

I do look at forum member rank for any business deal.

Maybe I didn't choose the right words. My thought was that members shouldn't be deceived by ranks. This is because any member, regardless of rank, could be scammers. Nevertheless, ranks could be one of the indicators to watchout for while having a deal on the forum. A newbie has a higher tendency of scamming people because their account doesn't have much value. They can easily create a new account. This might not be the case of a Legendary ot Hero member who have invested time and other resources to get to this level.