Topic: Be careful of not getting red-tags by advertising a known scam in your signature (Read 448 times)

I made my guide there:
Guide on avoid red tags by supporting already known scam projects
Hope that it is helpful for all, and for the topic as supplementary document, in particular.

To guard against this ensure you follow up on the project you are promoting as a bounty hunter,also check through the scam section to watch out for the project, that has been tag as scam project.

Agreed. I even think it would be fair to send a warning via PM to that user to warn them of the consequences, if he or she continues to wear that signature. Some people do not regularly visit the campaign page or the ANN thread, so they might not have noticed the warning in those threads.

A PM will also send a email to the member, so he or she will not have an excuse that they missed the PM on the forum or that they have not logged into the forum to read that PM. 

I think DT won't tag them when a project turns out to be a scam but it wasn't clear to see, even not for investigation experts. Red tags are mainly given for confirmed scams like when someone would adverstise for Bitconnect for example or other scams.
I can imagine that DT will also only tag accounts joining the campaign after they posted a warning in the thread.

We can not held responsible if a project turns out to be a scam afterwards, almost the entire forum would be red.


For this problem I can imagine that DT will only tag people applying for the signature after they announced the scam. No post of the account in the signature after scam was announced = no red tag. Or like CryptopreneurBrainboss said to refer to last posts of the account.

A Merit Source or someone who is spending his limited sMerit can be well aware which account will receive his Merit and most of them will decide to give the Merit to an account who was not involved in shady activities. Or at least I would do it and send my Merit accordingly. The Merit Sources know most of the accounts who have a red tag.
Just ask yourself - where you would rather send your limited sMerit.
Trust is another thing additional to your post history. If your post history is filled with bounty reports it's harder to get a Merit.

Maybe my words were a bit too strong and "almost no merit" is a bit exaggerated. At least a significant lower number of Merit will be received compared if your account isn't red. I don't know an example, where the received Merit didn't decrease after a red tag.

DT knows all the scammers here, no need to hide trust ratings on some sections.
Trading words with caution means to be sceptical of the arguments of the person. There are also some accounts tagged for things to be discussed and they are honest people but a red tag is very often tied to shady activities like accounts-sales, scams, Merit-trading etc etc. And in my opinion 95% of all tagged accounts should be also traded with caution in discussions.

Simple, the last time you posted before you came back online and became active again will be used as the last time you were active on forum. You can find that by visiting profile, scroll down and you'll see "Show the last posts of this person" check the date and time posts was made before that day (day viewing the profile)

In the aspect of not receiving merits due to a red tag,i do not think it's quite correct as a red tag cannot affect the quality of one's post that'll deprive such member from earning merits.
There are a whole lot of forum members with red tags that receive quite a large amount of merits,and are still quite active in making high quality posts that earns them merits.

Also having a red tag doesn't mean such members discussions won't be taken seriously or correctly if  they are.
A red tag can only prevent members from trading or engaging in transactions with you.

But once you are online the last active that will show is 'Today at...' so how do they know the last time you are up?

You can always appeal a red tag because only the user that gave the red tag can removed them except on rare occasions administrators interval and remove false tags. You just have to send the DT member a DM politely explaining yourself and if he doesn't give you a positive respond then you can start a thread on the Reputation board to defend yourself with valid evidence.


Your activities are made public on your profile. The last day you were active (login) or made a post can be seen from your profile. That's were the information are gotten from.

How do they do it? Is there a log for all accounts that we can actually check publicly or only moderator/staffs can access it?

Yeap, I think that DT members will check last active days of applicants before dropping red tags on them.
Applicants who still been actively in the forum, but simply ignore warning should be tagged, whislts in-active ones should not be tagged.

I have one question in mind.

Is it considerable if someone's been away for a week not touching his account and within that timeframe the signature campaign he's been wearing is being accused as scammer. After getting back from his account he received a negative trust from a DT member, can he prove it that he's been away around that time and too late to know that the campaign he joined is scam?

This probably doesn't make much sense actually. Merits aren't based on the trust of a particular user. They are purely based on how good, witty, constrictive and helpful the posts are. Meriting a person by judging his account is not right. Merits aren't meant for that. They are introduced to highlight good posts from the ordinary redundant shit prevailing all over the forum. Though, I am not completely contradicting your statement but Merits and Trust and independent. There are many instances where a highly negative trusted user has got decent merits.

 No, not all the boards displays Trust of a user. Only Bitcoin and Altcoin Marketplace boards displays trust. Others board doesn't actually need to display trust as there isn't any trade going on!
I don't get your point. What do you mean by traded with caution

More than that, supporting shitty projects, that asked for pumping their ANN topics are one of riskiest way to put accounts under red tags.
In a nutshell, I think there are several reasons that might lead to red tags, besides account/ merit/ trust sellings:
1) Join and support scam projects.
2) Posts with ref links or phishing link in signature (violates the #4 and #6 rules there: Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ)
3) Joining pumping services and get rewards from scam teams.

I think you need to incorporate few more ideas in your thoughts, it is not about red tag only. Have you ever guessed your signature can cause permanent ban if it has phising link?

Anyway quoting my one of old post here for adding more points that are not discussed here.

Don't think participates will be tagged immediately a project is proven to be scam. Just as this user suggested 
An active campaign participant needs to be active at least once in every 24hours and should always visit the campaigns OP at least once in every 48-72 hours to check for possible updates. Although I suggest one week interval before anyone wearing the signature gets tagged since most campaign managers update their thread for payment and open slots weekly and that's when participate check for updates.

They can't, and the best scams are the ones which aren't obvious. If someone genuinely believed the project they were promoting was legit, and there was no evidence to suggest otherwise, then I don't think it would be fair to red tag that person (situation dependent).

However, as OP has shown in his screenshot, when a project is discovered to be a scam, usually someone posts in their ANN/bounty/campaign/whatever thread in big red letters stating it is a scam, and giving everyone time to remove their signature or stop posting their bounties. If you heed this warning, you aren't red tagged. If you ignore this warning, you are. I think that's fair.

Thanks to this thread, I only noticed how serious DD's scam was. But I feel it's unfair for those unaware to be suddenly red-tagged.

I am afraid that most people who participated in Cloud mining signature campaigns back in the day, would get a red flag status now that it is clear that most of those Cloud mining projects were a Ponzi scheme.  

I cannot see how someone could be held responsible, if they did not know that the project that they supported in their signature, were a scam.

It is something different, if it was confirmed that the project was a scam and that the member continued to participate in that signature/bounty campaign.  

The large majority of ICOs are scams, so this has huge consequences. 

I typically find stock images or images from places other than the ICO page are pretty good indicators that the bounty or ICO you're representing is a scam; back when BTC was near its ATH, many, many ICOs I found on this forum had fake team members with stolen images, and it really doesn't take a long time to investigate this particular facet of an ico: simply hover your cursor over the image you're trying to research, right click, and at least in Chrome you should see an option called "search Google for this image" in the white box that should come up.

Everything that has been said so far in this thread is correct, and people should absolutely keep an eye out for warnings and scam accusations posted about projects they are interested in or are helping to promote. But having said that, you shouldn't be relying on others to point out if the project you are involved in is a scam.

Do your due diligence. A lot of these ICOs and bounties can be discovered to be a scam with minimal effort. Go to their website, look at their team members, visit their LinkedIn profiles, read their whitepaper. Be on the look out for fake team members, stock images, fake profiles, stolen ideas or images, plagiarized whitepapers or roadmaps, etc, etc. Spend some time getting to know a project before you either throw your money at it or agree to advertise on their behalf. Don't rely on others being your safety net.