It's way too complex and take our time, how about you just recommend people to buy/sell bitcoin at trusted exchange, 3rd party wallet service or localbitcoin instead.
Also, would be better if we can encourage people to stop buy/sell bitcoin on ePay/Paypal, i think it's pure idiot unless people can find someone they can trust.
Topic: Cheating a Bitcoin Cheater on eBay/Paypal. (Read 779 times)
Which is why, no serious buyer would ever buy Bitcoin on eBay. Only those who doesn't know better, dubious sellers looking for idiots they could swindle, or the so-called buyers hoping for someone they could cheat.
Who buys at +40, 50% market price anyway?
Who buys at +40, 50% market price anyway?
how the hell do you send bitcoin without paying tx fee when its automatically being deducted?
Most desktop wallets do have an option for paying without adding a fee, I think it's even possible on Blockchain.info when you use the advanced send. 
well it never happened with me and actully i have never bought any coins from ebay or somewhere else i only trust my local bitcoin trader and i know he always takes few cents extra than others but its ok he has to do a little profit too
Same here i never tried to buy bitcoins in ebay. but if you are dealing in other payment like paypal i think you can reverse the payment once you have a buyers protection so that you can get refund and contact the support of paypal to guide you..
well it never happened with me and actully i have never bought any coins from ebay or somewhere else i only trust my local bitcoin trader and i know he always takes few cents extra than others but its ok he has to do a little profit too
how the hell do you send bitcoin without paying tx fee when its automatically being deducted?
An interesting read, but it somewhat hinges on the scammer being impatient and not waiting for any confirmations. Once the sent coins get even 2 or 3 confirmations, a double-spend would be much harder to pull off. All the scammer would have to do is wait, if I'm not mistaken.
On the other side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not also be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days before being able to safely spend the coins?
On the other side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not also be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days before being able to safely spend the coins?
An enthralling entre, but it somewhat hinges taking place for the scammer mammal eager and not waiting for any confirmations. Once the sent coins profit even 2 or 3 confirmations, a double-spend would be much harder to complete. All the scammer would have to make a get of is wait, if I'm not mistaken.
On the subsidiary side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not furthermore be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days back monster practiced to safely spend the coins?
On the subsidiary side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not furthermore be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days back monster practiced to safely spend the coins?
Might I ask why you paraphrased my post? Interesting choice of words, to say the least ;-)
An enthralling entre, but it somewhat hinges taking place for the scammer mammal eager and not waiting for any confirmations. Once the sent coins profit even 2 or 3 confirmations, a double-spend would be much harder to complete. All the scammer would have to make a get of is wait, if I'm not mistaken.
On the subsidiary side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not furthermore be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days back monster practiced to safely spend the coins?
On the subsidiary side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not furthermore be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days back monster practiced to safely spend the coins?
Did you at one point consider that you actually turn into a scammer using this method? How do you even know the person intended to scam you in the first place?
By not adding a tx fee, you basically do not deliver the product to the buyer, therefore the dispute they open is not even an attempt to cheat you out of your bitcoin, it is an actual dispute because the goods were not delivered!
I wouldn't recommend anyone to do this.
By not adding a tx fee, you basically do not deliver the product to the buyer, therefore the dispute they open is not even an attempt to cheat you out of your bitcoin, it is an actual dispute because the goods were not delivered!
I wouldn't recommend anyone to do this.
This is a funny read on how the scammers were gamed with zero-fee transactions. It was an experiment that proves to be a success? Gaming the scammers? But also proved the skewed Paypal is always on the buyers' side.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Interesting,but i don`t think that there are still people who use eBay to sell bitcoin.
Anyway,we all need tricks and tips to protect our btc from scammers.
Nice share.
Glad you enjoyed this article. I took a glimpse at eBay, and yes, there are still sellers on eBay selling bitcoins; look at the number of positive reviews they had. So, how did they evade chargebacks?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-001-Bitcoin-0-001-BTC-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/142129054916
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-4-Bitcoin-100-SECURE-SELLER-INSTANT-DELIVERY-TO-WALLET-ID-/131949034602
http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Litecoin-5-LTC-Litecoins-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/181645698107
http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-bitcoin-BTC-Deposited-Into-Your-Bitcoin-Wallet-/272395388689
http://www.ebay.com/itm/02-Bitcoin-0-02-BTC-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/282178361580
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Bitcoin-1BTC-Direct-to-your-wallet-/172313881433
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-1-Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-Fast-Delivery-To-Your-Digital-Wallet-/131955173387
Though, I think there might be some unknowledgeable people who still buy from these scammers, probably nor that many though.
This is a funny read on how the scammers were gamed with zero-fee transactions. It was an experiment that proves to be a success? Gaming the scammers? But also proved the skewed Paypal is always on the buyers' side.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
Interesting,but i don`t think that there are still people who use eBay to sell bitcoin.
Anyway,we all need tricks and tips to protect our btc from scammers.
Nice share.
Glad you enjoyed this article. I took a glimpse at eBay, and yes, there are still sellers on eBay selling bitcoins; look at the number of positive reviews they had. So, how did they evade chargebacks?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-001-Bitcoin-0-001-BTC-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/142129054916
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-4-Bitcoin-100-SECURE-SELLER-INSTANT-DELIVERY-TO-WALLET-ID-/131949034602
http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Litecoin-5-LTC-Litecoins-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/181645698107
http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-bitcoin-BTC-Deposited-Into-Your-Bitcoin-Wallet-/272395388689
http://www.ebay.com/itm/02-Bitcoin-0-02-BTC-Direct-to-your-Wallet-/282178361580
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Bitcoin-1BTC-Direct-to-your-wallet-/172313881433
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-1-Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-Fast-Delivery-To-Your-Digital-Wallet-/131955173387
That's something really well known about PayPal in general regarding BTC, they don't accept any evidence regarding BTC payments. If you send BTC for PayPal it should be to someone you completely trust that won't open a claim because other than that PayPal always sides with the buyer.
This is a funny read on how the scammers were gamed with zero-fee transactions. It was an experiment that proves to be a success? Gaming the scammers? But also proved the skewed Paypal is always on the buyers' side.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
Interesting,but i don`t think that there are still people who use eBay to sell bitcoin.
Anyway,we all need tricks and tips to protect our btc from scammers.
Nice share.
interesting. won't this mes up the blockchain technology to which the transaction stays in limbo for too long?
so in the second transaction, you scammed the scammer. what possibly can be situation when the scammer can't prove the unauthorized transaction?
so in the second transaction, you scammed the scammer. what possibly can be situation when the scammer can't prove the unauthorized transaction?
Selling for paypal is always risky and not only selling for paypal all other reversible payment methods are risky to deal with bitcoin. I even have my skrill account got blocked when i received funds from localbitcoin when selling my bitcoin there, don't know that was because buyers claimed un-authorized transaction or not but its got blocked just next day after i received funds from buyers in localbitcoin. Almost all of the reversible payment processors are against bitcoin related deal.
I'm a little confused here. You said the second "scammer" paid you the money for the Bitcoins and never received his Bitcoins. If you're taking his money and not sending him the Bitcoins, does that not make you a scammer instead?
Not if this is done to scam the scammer. The moment the scammer tries to reverse the transaction, you know he is trying to scam you. You rely on two things happening with this, which would be that PayPal would reverse the transaction and that the zero fee transaction would not be picked up by a miner, doing a good deed for the day. ^hmmmm^
I would not recommend people to try this, because it can back fire and you could lose a lot of money. Just buy Bitcoins on a exchange or Localbitcoins.
I'm a little confused here. You said the second "scammer" paid you the money for the Bitcoins and never received his Bitcoins. If you're taking his money and not sending him the Bitcoins, does that not make you a scammer instead?
An interesting read, but it somewhat hinges on the scammer being impatient and not waiting for any confirmations. Once the sent coins get even 2 or 3 confirmations, a double-spend would be much harder to pull off. All the scammer would have to do is wait, if I'm not mistaken.
On the other side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not also be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days before being able to safely spend the coins?
On the other side of the coin, if the buyer is legit, would this not also be a hindrance to the buyer, making him/her wait several days before being able to safely spend the coins?
This is a funny read on how the scammers were gamed with zero-fee transactions. It was an experiment that proves to be a success? Gaming the scammers? But also proved the skewed Paypal is always on the buyers' side.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
http://forklog.net/revealed-cheating-a-bitcoin-cheater-on-ebay/
Online scams and fraud are increasing every day and, sadly enough this activity often includes cryptocurrencies. Moreover, fraud is not about the darknet only, one can be cheated on trusted sites like eBay as well.
Oleg Khovayko, CTO of Emercoin, shared with ForkLog one such instance along with a simple way to give scammers a good lesson.
If you check Bitcoin price at eBay, you will see something really extraordinary: it is nearly 50% higher than the average market price. For instance, if the current Bitcoin price is around $600, on eBay it will be close to $800. One might think of a great speculation opportunity – just buy bitcoins at an exchange and sell them on eBay with huge profit of 40 per cent a week which is an average item time. Dreams come true!
But, as it often turns out, the only free cheese is in the mousetrap, and chances are high you don’t see something bigger. What we actually see is a fraud scheme that works as follows:
1. You post an item (Bitcoin in this case) on sale.
2. The scammer buys it from you and sends money to your PayPal account.
3. You send the bitcoins to the scammer.
4. The next day, the scammer opens a PayPal dispute regarding an “unauthorized transaction”.
5. PayPal contacts you requesting the tracking number of the item sent.
6. You provide them with the Bitcoin TXID and the buyer’s affirmative response.
7. PayPal ignores your evidence and, for reasons only they know, makes one of two decisions:
7.1. Unauthorized transaction is not proven, so you keep the money. This way, you have successfully sold your bitcoin.
7.2. The transaction is considered unauthorized, and PayPal sends the money back to to the scammer who now has both his own money and your bitcoin. And all you have now is the negative feedback rating.
As we can see, it’s nearly a safe game for scammers: they either buy bitcoins from you (at a higher price, though), or they take them for free.
Just to have some fun and at the same time in order to test Bitcoin for deliberate double spending via manipulating priorities of block additions, Emercoin experts have designed and tested a counter-strategy ensuring you 100 per cent sell bitcoins to Ebay scammers at a higher price.
To be honest, we have experimented with this only twice, yet our assumptions were fully proven. After that we stopped researching the topic as it no longer interested us. And certainly we took measures so that tricks like this wouldn’t work in Emercoin.
However, people kept on asking, so below is our counter-strategy in detail. It is all about the artificial double spending to get your bitcoins back. So, this is how you cheat the cheater on eBay.
1.You post an item (bitcoins) for sale. We tested 0.1 BTC, so that’s the recommended amount.
2. The scammer buys the item from you and sends money to your PayPal (so far everything is going according to his plan).
3. You create a backup of your bitcoin wallet, wallet.dat.
4. You send bitcoins to the scammer with zero fee on any business day.
5. The zero-fee transaction normally freezes in pools awaiting confirmations. It might take several days.
6. The next day, the scammer opens the “unauthorized transaction” dispute.
7. If the transaction is still not confirmed (i.e. it’s not on the blockchain), you have almost won. And since the PayPal transaction is not authorized, the payee is not entitled to receive your bitcoins. And that’s what you do next:
8. You check the wallet outputs used for the payment to the scammer (for instance, on blockchain.info).
9. You recover the wallet.dat file stored as a backup. It, of course, has no information about the transaction to the scammer, while the UTXO outputs it employed look unspent.
10. Using transaction control, you spend the same outputs (actually, one will be enough, but you may use all of them just to be on the safe side) to create a transaction sending the same bitcoins to yourself or any other trusted address. And this is where you don’t have to be greedy about the fees, be as generous as you can.
11. After receiving the second transaction with a higher fee (and, consequently, with a higher priority) miners will be happy to add it to the blockchain. Now blockchain contains a transaction (see item 10), while the unconfirmed transaction (see item 4) causes conflicts and never makes it to the blockchain. Furthermore, even if the scammer has already spent the money, his spendings are now in conflict as well, and more problems with his counterparties are guaranteed. As a result, you have your bitcoins and turn the tables with the scammer.
12. In such a manner, if PayPal acknowledges the transaction is not authorized and repays the scammer, you still keep your bitcoins. However, if PayPal says “the unauthorized transaction is not proven”, you have the scammer’s money while still keeping your bitcoins.
We’ve run two experiments by selling two 0.1 BTC items on eBay, and we’ve seen both responses from PayPal. One of the scammers opened a dispute a week after the purchase and was reimbursed by PayPal. However, the other scammer faced the music: he paid the money without getting bitcoins.
Eventually, we managed to sell bitcoins at the eBay price and proved our counter-strategy successful. Also we proved vulnerability of the Bitcoin priority queue.
We do not recommend the aforementioned counter-strategy for profit-making. Even if you succeed, PayPal will soon close your account as the one that causes constant troubles.
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