Topic: How can we protect Newbies from getting scammed? - page 3. (Read 1538 times)

..this is the act of all scammers..they ran first before the innocent people..if we are trying or doing our best to help newbies in this forum,maybe the number of victims who need a big help will be lessen..but the stupidness of few depends on how people believe or not on what others have said..it should be better for this forum to make a welcome or warning messages for those newbies trying to seek help so that no more many victims will be scammed..

This has been a long ongoing discussion, the forum just hasn't taken any steps towards educating new users. I thought we were close when theymos solicited opinions on a welcome message, as far as I know that hasn't happened yet. I think that every new tab should have it's own welcome/how to pop-up when you first join, with the option to disable after 1 full activity period.

For instance: In messages "Exercise caution when receiving solicited or unsolicited advice in PM. Do not assume everyone has good intentions regarding advice/downloads. Public discussion is best apart from personal/private details" I would also have forum acceptable practices regarding the use of PM's under this message.


In short people are stupid - at least we start out that way. We know nothing, but have an amazing capacity for learning. There's a few ways to do this through experience alone, can be a rough path but generally leaves a lasting impression. We can be shown/taught, welcome messages/warnings are a good way to go about this for people entering a new environment. I've always believed in trying to do more in helping/preventing, could be because I was one of those stupid people until I learned through experience.


There are plenty of members of all ranks out there offering legit advice and assistance. Not everyone is good at offering that advice or troubleshooting so personally I'd rather not see everyone lining up to "help". The problem lies in the naivety of a newbie, who gets scooped up by a scammer before someone with good intentions happens upon them. It's amazing how many people have coins but haven't learned how to secure them, especially after the FOMO of 2017.

This is one of the good initiatives, iasenko.
I support your suggestion.
Weeks ago, I suggested the integration of forum slogan on the right top-corner of the forum, like this:
Slogan, or warning message (as you suggested) should be pinned there.
Both of them looks good, I thought.

Same as the welcome message situation. Maybe the forum has to send a message upon registration with a short Warning like this >

Do not share your private keys, seeds and passwords with anyone on the forum. There is a high risk to get scammed.

Even if we have forums and threads to guide newbies for avoiding scams if the person doesn't even bother to research or at least check the scammer's profile then we cannot help them anymore. I think bitcointalk has already have the informations and guidelines needed for newbies.

Do you mean yourself?
Follow Bitcointalk rules and guidelines.

I don't really think this will help...
A real scammer will buy a different, well ranked account after a successful scam attempt, because of the red trust and because he/she can afford it after a succesful scam.

I just don't uderstand people, here in the forum and sometimes in the real life...
If a stranger tells you on the street that if you hand over your wallet to him, he will show you that there's a secret pocket in it, where you can find hidden money which you haven't been aware before, would you belive him and would you hand over your wallet with your savings?  Greed and laziness helps scammers...

People should understand that they have to think before something happens, and not just after...

Short answer you can't.

The scam is like the doping: first of all, they create the drug, after when it will be discovered the anti-doping control will be created. When people become aware of the control used a new drug will be born and so on.

You can help with showing the trust score everywhere on the forum and disabling pm for newborn accounts and red trust accounts but it will not fix the problem.

Terrible to read about people getting scammed, it happens far too often here but I guess you can’t help stupid. The same thing happens with people falling for fake bank text scams & phone calls asking people for personal info. Some people will always fall victim to scams & fraud.

I don’t know what to suggest, you have to look after yourself & your finances. If you don’t be careful then you are likely to get fucked sadly.

I think that over than 50% of newbies on this forum actually people who were banned and who created a new account or multiply accounts.
Anyway truly newbies can really became an easy victim of scammers. I believe that it's more up to them to be scammed or not than from us, users with experience.

You know what's ironic in this unpleasant situation? Coolserver.host has posted something like a guide on how to recognize, stay safe and not get ripped off just two days prior to him scamming. Let me quote:


I don't know if ultimately his intention was to trick and scam someone or he just saw an opportunity and took advantage of it ...not that it matters and should excuse him for what he did though.


Other than that, I fully support vit05's suggestion and would post under any wallet-related seeking help topics, that you should never under no circumstances accept any help in private messages from low-ranked members:

Agreed with all your above ideas.

About this one, I don't get what you want to say?
Can you clarify it, please.
Which kind of combinations of ranks, trust, and gained merits?
And, which kind of purposes of the combination?

Senior members should guide newbies and tell them what they should do and what to avoid to make their experience here pleasent and safe.

How to do that!... Senior members, should stop arguing about merit system, DT sytem,, and focus more on helping newbies and answering their quetions on boards like "Beginners & Help", "Development & Technical Discussion", "Bitcoin Technical Support"

However, it is not always up to senior members, newbies, also, should make an effort to learn how to secure their wallet, after all it is a new technology and you should learn a lot before starting using it.

In this particular case, the victim owned more than 30k$ of cryptocurrencies and he didn't know how to secure his funds!!
I sympathise with the victim, but it is completely his fault and no one else should be blamed for what happened.

I think it is time to change these ranks to something more significant combining current rank, trust and gained merits.

I think a very small percentage of people read any warning or any other text. Only click on "next" and "submit". At that point, no one is thinking about a possible scam because what can going wrong, it is just forum registration.
Maybe to add a small quiz before registration, where they need to answer a few questions about some forum rules and his own securities.

but as far as I know, Newbie not only pretending to be deceived, I find here senior members who've reported fraud even if they have more experience.

Force them to be transparent. Once a new user ask something, posting users should explain their answer as a post not thru PM.

Why not disable and have a duration time for newly-created users to receive PMs? So all the answer they will receive will be a post and can be seen/scrutinize publicly.

Maybe a 7 days duration of a disabled PM.

What I don't understand is why people don't apply the same common sense they do in real life on the internet as well. I mean if you have problems with your credit card getting declined to make a purchase would you just blindly give your card and your PIN code to the person sitting next to you on the subway just because he promised you he can fix it? Then why do the same with your private keys or passwords?

I am sorry for everyone who gets scammed out of their money but in most cases it is their own fault. Don't give your wallets to strange men on the subway and don't do it with your electronic wallets either.
if you are not willing to accept a bag of strange white powder from a random person who wants to keep it at your place then don't accept weird software from strange online users either.   

Newbie should be welcome so as we have to get a good number of registered users here in the forum. Though the forum has good money circulation but there is a huge percentage drop of the growth of the registered users compared to previous year to where Bitcoin has achieved the ATH market price.

The ranking system also deviates higher rank from the newbie. User's with newbie rank may be intimidated with higher ranks. Besides, newbie will going to rank up with the need of acquiring merit required to rank up. Not all users are good in English and are usually advise to go to local boards and exercise to use their own dialect to have an ease or comfort of using the forum. But, there were no merit source on every local boards and has a huge number of registered users in every local board so how do newbie expect to get even 1 merit?

 Dialect divide us all.

The victim's thread started on the Electrum board, that's where he got scammed. After that, he changed the OP into a scam accusation, so I had it moved to the appropriate board.

Please don't go off-topic. If you have any problem with any of my ratings, feel free to discuss it in LoyceV's reputation thread. But there too: stay on topic! I'm not part of any "gang", and I only take responsibility for my own actions.
I love real new users, it's the future of this forum!

Sorry to hear that, my friend. I understand what you feel. Frustrating of course, but, we can’t change the world easily and I’m sure theymos care about our DT system, that is why he is changing it every month to see how it will work. People hear your point, ac2eugenio - we listen to them, it is your freedom. Change is coming.

thanks theyoungmillionaire i am just talking about the abuse from the new folks here im not saying all of the DT members are abusing the system but most of them,and you know you arent.How about situation like this,a newbie didnt agree with old member's posts and he received a redtrust for not agreeing with these people? would that be fair for the newbie? nah? yes the tag isnt appropriate and theymos doesnt even care about these abuses.What will the newcomers think about that?

A set of new rule for the old members will be a relief for those new so that abuses like what ive said will be less.This place are morelikely turned into political stage,and if you dont have power like the newbies you are nothing here.