Topic: New investigations board & restrictions on posting personal information (Read 18649 times)

Is it intentional that Copper Members can view and post in Investigations? I'm specifically thinking about this post.

It looks like the investigations section allows for self moderated threads. I would think the intention would be to make these threads similar to scam accusations in that people are allowed to respond and self moderation is disabled.

Thanks!

Just use to the report to moderator link and ask that it be moved to the Reputation board.

How do I report or suggest a thread to be moved or deleted from the forums for doxing?  I'm not sure I understand what steps to take but I would like someone to review a post from 3+ years ago where my personal information was posted even when I tried to negotiate paying at a later date but the lender insisted on posted my image and license in the thread so that anyone who looks up my "firstname lastname" on google gets all of that information as the first search result and google image result.    I don't have a criminal record and so wish I could have the images (at least) removed.   

Side note, the same guy that labeled me a scammer actually ended up scanning a large number of people out of a group buy and even though someone had his dox they refused to post them.  My information was posted over less than $75 I believe.   I was at fault for not being able to pay the lender back on the scheduled day but I was told the images were going to be posted that day no matter what..


Thanks for your help!  Sorry to bring back an old thread. 

Hey why does this guy get to post personal information about members?

Look at the trust for PedoMartinLawrenceVod, and Gerald8.

@theymos

Why don't you rename this thread to
No investigations board - solved by silencing or not replying & non restrictions on posting personal information for your other trolls with license to break all rules.

First: Give us a list of your trolls who are allowed to break rules, I want to exclude these usernames in any thread that starts.
Second: Give us a list of forbidden names

@Quickseller
I vote for you to become Mod. Actually I dont know you more than "we had once to do with each other" but you are the only of this team who handled everything in right and expected way, no ignorance, no sliding away, no threats. Thanks, you have my vote and if theymos wouldn't be blind, you would be already in a team, not crime supporter cyrus who became admin.

I did not let anyone release your dox, nor anyone else's dox. I am not aware of any scam accusations against you at this time. As I mentioned in the PM that I sent you, if you send me the exact name that you want removed, and the threads that contain your name, then I can make an attempt to get your name removed from those threads.

I don't think there is any minimum threshold of an amount stolen that is required for someone's dox to be released, although from a moral point of view, I do not think it is good idea to dox someone because of a dispute regarding a single very small trade. I think this really depends on the specific facts of the situation, but I think most of the time, it is not appropriate to dox someone for no reason other then they dox'ed you first, although there might be some exceptions to this depending on what exactly happened.

I would like to hear your explanation why did you let anybody release doxx on me? I scammed someone? Really??  Who? So, will the answer be that rules changed and it approves the doxx itself and excludes her from ban, but you do explain that she needs to steal 100btc before she is accused in public? Why do you ignore doxx on me at all like if it has never happened?

I dont think that I dont understand you, it seems to be all the time same problem, you judge about me because I accuse but nobody bothers about explanation why moderation and administration supported doxx on me. Was it maybe ordered too which would define again what this forum is about and its not about bitcoin and even less about its adaption, development or anything else.

Thanks. Hopefully there will be some discussion in that thread regarding the merits of moving his dox to the public soon.

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In order to publish someone's dox, there needs to be some kind of trade dispute. If you are publishing suchmoon's personal information, then she should owe you, or someone else money, and should have paid that money sometime in the past. If you can establish that suchmoon has committed some kind of a tort against you that has inflicted serious financial damage, then there might be an argument for releasing her personal information, however I would think it most cases it would not be appropriate to do so.  I don't think suchmoon releasing your personal information, in itself a reason for you to release her information. I think suchmoon is a bit of a troll, and that she tends to take the side which has significantly more 'power' in disputes, which is not a quality that makes someone deserving of respect, however AFAICT, she is not a scammer, and I cannot condone the releasing of the personal information of a non-scammer without their consent.

I agree with your interpretation of the current rules. I moved it back.

This is a situation which I only vaguely considered when writing the rules, so maybe in the future I will change the rules to better address this.

Very interesting question but if you look closely, you are not allowed to post it even in investigations thread, it's just an social engineering trap if I look at the results. For sure you did not miss me posting reuqested part here in this thread, I was banned for doing so by theymoss even if he was the one who wrote that it is allowed, only here.

Conclusion => its just a simple trap which could serve usefull, ie. to get the heat down, especially in accusations threads.

I would say it does not matter where or what you post, it only matters if your issues are ignored or not and we can clearly see this missusage of this forum. Looking at your rep level, I wouldnt say that you are on their list as 007 with license to lie, scam...., I dont think they will tolerate anybody doing it.

May I ask why would you want to publish someone's information? In my case it is clear, suchmoon and her friends used my IRL data in very illegal way. Now everybody does talk only about "why do you think its her", there is actually nobody who asks what was wrong on that which usually should be the case, it was ignored and still is. This is very interesting turnaround, especially the ammount of staff members involved and what they actually did. Isnt it the way, someone from board must approve you first. Who was it for suchmoon? Was it cyrus who took part on spreading lies about me and opening and allowing opening such threads including closing mine and removing my posts but at the same time totaly ignoring my reports? No connection at all ?

Maybe cyrus just did not want to look stupid to outside after he supported this so he decided to finish it? Then we have mprep who ignores the issue. Every mod reffers to theymoss because he is the highest court here. Well, theymoss then traps me by telling me about investigation thread, later banning for the same and forbidding me usage of a name where nobody of staff members could imagine that it is correct which followed in accusation that it is hardly to believe that theymoss wrote me such, until it was proven. Now there is silence.

It is really not hard to count 1+1, my advice would be, publish this info elsewhere and bring this information to discussion table here. This is BTW not forbidden or lets say undefined. Grab you python script available on git, upload documents to the chain and post your txid/wallet/.. , with that you will not break a single rule.

For me it is very alarming what is going on. theymoss controls the biggest part of cryptocommunity and he is not a person that would like to share it with somebody. Sadly exactly such intimidation cases are dangerous as they might become everydays business if they arent already. This is exactly the reason why it is alarming and why do always more and more people leave bitcointalk and threat it as some illegal spam forum, here it is only about intimidation, doxxing and arguing whit mods who allow/disallow it.

I had a thread of mine moved to investigations that did not meet the above criteria because no references to any online identity were made in the thread.

Does this mean that no IRL identities can be posted outside of investigations? If this is not the case, then can theymos provide some clarification about what can be posted outside of investigations?

Please advise.

@theymos
Is investigation going on or is this issue ignored? If so, could you share some info?

@theymos
as long as investigation goes on, you deleted my signature where you meant I only changed the name.

Can you define how else is this forbidden. Ie. if I link a screenshot which is available on the internet instead of direct linking to the facebook. In this case it is legal as long as someone legally hosts this data (pic).

Please define it. The same would be for linking text or any other source of information. After all, if you decide that all forms of links should be deleted, what will you do with h++p:// urls or even blockchain data. I can't imagine that posting bitcoins txid's on bitcointalk would ever happen to become forbidden, which already means I could upload anything that I want to the blockchain and add it as signature.

Explain me sophisticated degree of this rule. Like, how intelligent can a dox be/is allowed to be? Who decides how sophisticated is it, like placing data into blockchain or even send data over sattelites? I think you must define this too.

Please explain me, what is forbidden and what is not forbidden if it is impossible to keep on this rule, especially without disabling forum functions like linking. Does this mean you suggest linkless forum?

You deleted whole signature which actually shows indirectly pretty same message as this:
BITCOINTALK STAFF SELECTIVELY ENFORCE THE RULES IN AN ATTEMPT TO CREATE A CHILL EFFECT AND PERMANENTLY REMOVE ME AND OTHERS FROM THIS FORUM AS RETALIATION FOR SPEAKING OUT ABOUT THEIR ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR, AND THAT OF THEIR PERSONAL CLIQUES.

This is now again double standard, I see this sentence few posts above and I am happy to see somebody but I can't explain me how you do apply rules and how you dont. In this case, there are no rules, only one rule is that there are no rules and it depends only on the interpretation of somebody who can be/have: A) has some interest on it B) plays fool C) is really dumb.

Basicly I understand this rule and your action as silencing those who you dont like and giving free pass to those who you support (very questionable support).

You ask me to report but I never get some answer on reports, I can only see the opposite. Suchmoon does not reply too, cyrus and mprep are also not replying in this thread.

I need public confirmation from you that we can talk in this thread, like publishing all data and sources, like suchmoon explaining us her involvement in this story and what kind of documents and from where did they use. I am sure this will be very, very interesting story and investigative case.

Answer now, why did you and your friends use my name? Why did you use stolen documents? Before you answer that you are lame sheep not knowing anything, then you must add the reason why didn't you report on this user and why didn't you bring theymos to start this topic when you used my name for your dirty agenda?

@theymos
You say investigation thread, lets investigate here, or how many times do I have to report?

Mods can choose to not leave a MOVED post when moving topics. If you see that a mod has accidentally left one which contains personal info in the title, please report it. I deleted that one.

There is a bit of a problem with some of the threads that get moved. While the thread itself ends up in Investigations the title remains where it originally was and it may contain part of the dox (e.g. person's name) and is probably googleable.

For example: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--1589476

@suchmoon
exlpain your actions and shitting around and mainly the reason why you and your gangbang users should be members on this forum. You should be banned, especially if you are silent. You though it is funny to threat people with the shit like you did and the result that you got is making clear who is who and showing who does what. If you threat everybody like a piece of shit, it will catch you sooner or later. You know it, but you ignore it, authorities are slow but dont be in illusion that they dont investigate your identity theft and support of it.

Explain here everything and why you should not be banned from this forum, I request your ban for all rules that you broke, last one was to make a giveaway.

As last, after you trolls tried to intimidate me by posting data from stolen documents , well it is another point why authorities are maybe interested in you, what you do and who supports you.

@theymos
can you reply in public and discuss about it in public?

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And yeah, after real data of suchmoon is public, now you care about signatures because all shutting up methods failed, like removing ontopic post? I really want to get this answered by cyrus, mprep and theymos.

I am available for such duties, whenever I can be online, if volunteers are needed.


I assume these posts will be dealt with accordingly.

Funny how all the rules around here seem to change when it effects staff directly. You need to ask permission from mommy and daddy to make certain types of posts now, only older accounts can ever do so, and posts that are deemed "acceptable" are widely open to selective interpretation. What could go wrong with that? Of course there is never any conflict of interest around here is there? Funny how the people who claim to be "anarcho-capitalist" the most are usually just budding totalitarians.

I like the step taken by Theymos.

It will prevent paranoid users from spraying negative trusts on their perceived enemies.
 

The link between whatever (say, a bitcointalk account) and his/her RL Facebook account is not public information.

Legally, his facebook account and any personal information contained therein is none of your business.



Good point.




You are suggesting this person is impersonating you, misusing your identity and should be banned? Or that all doxxing should be made against the rules and deleted? Or both?

The last part ( calling this person a bitch) is probably tolerated here.

May be he left bitcointalk?



Sure, why not?

Oh, does my signature cause this discussion? Until now, nobody asked me to change it. Moderation and Administration should be aware about the issue.

Does anybody ask me to remove my signature?

I appreciate if we clean this up.

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EDIT:
There is ton of deleted post, I can upload it if someone needs to verify. How do you explain double standards by moderation? Another moderator was involved in opening thread spreading lies about me. In my case, moderation was clearly following double standards, in meta they could not do the same, in altcoin section they still did. Why do you support calling people bitches in their signature? Lets review this case to understand why and how moderation is involved here.

@theymos
I wrote you PM, you never replied. Mprep only answers that either I am dumb, trolling or complaining about my language skills:


There are maybe 2-3 PMs, the rest deleted, from ION thread


Best on all this, mprep and suchmoon never complained about doxxes and never wanted to check if someone is using my name, simple sms or a call would be a proof. But what happened in real? Maybe moderation can explain all the reasons of deleting my posts and keeping doxxes, calling people bitches, intimidation, spreading lies, starting giveaways in another altcoin then the xpy giveaway in ion thread without any permission (payout in btc ), harrasing bitcointalk members, ..... @theymos, why do you support it?

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Who is responsible? Person posting, servers providing this information or the owner of the place where doxx happens?

In my case, it is currently about identity theft and is clearly forbidden by the law in the state of the accused person:
https://oag.ca.gov/idtheft

What if doxxing is used as identity theft for intimidation purpose, speaking in someone's name in harming its reputation and so on. How do you explain these actions backed up by moderation? Everybody involved clearly knows it is me but still using my name and still not banned.

You can't apply any rule on a forum where your staff does not follow any rules, not one! Whoe's fault is it?

BTW, moderation answers that if doxxing is by itself criminal act then authorities should be contacted. Why are all other posts removed, but not obvious identity theft+doxx+calling another real world people bitches. Please comment on this, you can find all links in my signature.

As moderation clearly does not see any reason to remove this other posts which do complain with suggested rule of the OP, I ask again in public, if this is allowed, what do you want to forbid ?:

obvious identity theft+doxx+connect another real world people (2nd doxx if you want to define, plus harrming its reputation) (in my case calling this person a bitch).

I see in this thread suchmoon, who still tries to play police in applying a rule and showing up as helpfull. Suchmoon knows about the doxx, not reporting on it, supporting it in all. Supporting it and posing here around about rules, come on , this is not serious, such people should be banned, especially because they play fool game with moderation and administration.

The public information trail can be falsified by posting the evidence elsewhere then claiming it belongs to someone else. Happens all the time in copyright instances.

The forum doesn't enforce 3rd party TOS, else we would not see the MSDN resellers day after day trying to make a quick buck on costs of Microsoft.
(I'm not saying you should use data gathered from facebook in doxes, but rather that the forum doesn't care whether or not gathering those data is against any TOS.)

It is against facebook's TOS to take a user's data without making it clear to the user that you are doing so. hence illegal

I think that publishing his Facebook info was still legal. All one needed to do was create a free Facebook account and they could've seen the exact same thing as MrTeal did, so I'd consider that public information.

Well one way to handle that would be to remove doxes posted without a public information trail.

+1. I think this discuss on Meta before posting personal info will eventually work out.





I agree.

Well must say this is a good step.
1. You cannot find a doxx on bitcointalk using search engines.
2. You cannot find it if you are not logged in.
3. You cannot just register an account to view it.

Would be great if it will be made better.



I believe the negative consequences win. Discussions can be done in private.




How? (He could refuse. He could use a shill.)

I will tomorrow.



The thing is that the Investigations board is really public, as all you need to do in order to access it is be around for two months, and make enough posts. In theory, this information could even be mirrored by the websites that pull content from here for ads. It is also possible that a new user might be asked to mail cash to "John Smith at 123 Main St." after this person has already been dox'ed, but would have no way of knowing this is a bad idea.

It is not so much that publishing a dox accomplishes a whole lot, but more the fact that the threat of a dox can potentially accomplish a lot. A good example of this is the master-p case, in which master-p was threatened with his dox being released if he did not refund all the money he stole from several people. master-p ended up refunding about 1/2 of what he stole and had his dox released.

If a dox is accurate (and the person is actually, and is released publicly (including being accessible via search engines), then it can make it more difficult for a scammer to engage in transactions that require his trust, make it more difficult for him to gain employment, and can potentially aid police in deciding to investigate a crime. A note on the last example -- say for example, someone steals a lot of money from someone, they get dox'ed, but no police report is filed, then this person turns around and scams someone on LBC, again gets dox'ed but this time a police report is filed; if the police question the scammer, who denies scamming anyone, then the decision to continue an investigation might hinge on if the police can find any evidence that this person has committed any similar crimes in the past.

On the other hand, if a dox is inaccurate and/or if the person is not actually a scammer, then all of the above could happen, but to an innocent person. For the most part, there will be no appeals process, and once information is published, it is published forever (even if it is published in the investigations section as it is setup now).

I am not sure if the potential negative consequences outweigh the benefits of allowing the publishing of dox's. I think a good compromise would be that anyone who publishes a dox should be forced to "show their work" in a sense that they should be able to prove that they got their information from public sources.

Another issue is the potential for illegal harassment of anyone who is dox'ed. I think the risk of this happening is there regardless of if dox's are available to only "members and up" or if they are searchable via google and other search engines.

There is a case that a full dox should be released, even information about friends and relatives. If someone wishes to sue someone, they will need to serve them, and friends/relatives can potentially be used for skip-tracing purposes. A similar argument can be used if someone wishes to attempt to collect on a debt via means that are legal under the FDCPA (or other local equivalent), which allows for a debt collector to contact relatives of a debtor for the purposes of determining the debtor's contact information. 

I agree with you, in my country it is forbidden to take personal data of people and expose the forum or anywhere without permission from the owner of the data.

- moral damage. when someone offends the honor of another person in social network or blog, messages, comments, responses or otherwise.

- Crimes against honor (Libel, Slander, Libel) when you hurt another's reputation. In such cases, the authors of the offense will be subject to both criminal consequences: serving sentence ( the victim compensation) of his act.


take personal data from people without their consent is a crime.
I think that expose personal data of anyone here in the forum without their consent is a crime.

How is the investigation authorized? What is the explanation for making personally identifying information of the target public?

You are essentially saying that if I suspect you of stealing my money I have the complete right to search and find and make public your personal information so anyone is the world is free to do whatever they please with that and that you are not entitled to any legal protection or rights.



It doesn't. Google is a search engine. You cannot find any personal information on Google that you can use for doxxing.




If the Facebook details were not removed, it wouldn't be legal. (I am not sure that, as it is, is perfectly legal.)

Exactly. I think it's important to back up how you're getting your information so that it's transparent for others looking to verify themselves, as well as for others to confirm that you didn't find this information illegally. A prime example of a quick, effective and legal dox was Jason Boyko's (the guy who ran PBMining) done by MrTeal. It would be nice to see more dox's done like that because I'm not so sure that some of the doxes here on BTCT are completely legal (and of course I know a few doxes are probably incorrect too).

You quoted the same line twice. Knowingly ?

How is a new section going to incentivize more doxing?

You could dox anyone, anywhere, for any reason until now. Now such dox will be moved to one section or removed ("if there are no remotely-plausible trade complaints"). Even under the most liberal interpretation of "trade complaints" there is no "new incentive".

Lol, this is stupid, If you think people wont use this new section as a weapon then you are out of your mind theymos, doxing used to be done when it was necessary, this new section gives people a new incentive, people will be doxing for fun. It will be very interesting to see who decides if a dox needs to be removed, im gonna go ahead and say that any dox of any DT member will most likely be deleted, im looking forward to seeing the dox of the hate squad being posted.

Its also impossible to verify that those details can be found publicly and that they're even correct which is a much larger issue. For example I could 'dox' Lauda by saying he/she is actually a sentient rabbit who lives at 123 Wartership Down and its public information or can be found with paid searches. How can anyone else verify that?

Exactly how is an investigation falling under any of those verbs? Unless you think that this places them *at risk of jail time* (I doubt that this is what was meant by that). There is also a fair amount of sources claiming that doxxing is legal. Generally, I'm pretty sure that this is not illegal around the globe.

No, it matters a lot.

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Update: Fair point ndnh. Jurisdictions aren't my strong suite, but I'd say that if it were generally illegal that it would be disallowed on the forum.

I mean
Revealing “documents or personal information” about a person, without their permission, with the intent to Threaten, Harass, Intimidate, Shame, Humiliate or Place at Risk…. is illegal in my jurisdiction.


Where you find it is immaterial.

Why is this new announcement needed as of late 
There was an investigations section in scam accusation section all this time

I'm not sure why it would be illegal to (e.g.) summarize your information taken from a social network and post it here? There is information that may be illegal to post (e.g. social security number), but I wouldn't consider details that can be found via google to be illegal.

Are you already looking for mediators or was this just a thought?

Huh?

Right from Wikipedia
Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents),[1] or doxxing,[2][3] is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.

I am sure that is not legal in my jurisdiction.

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http://theothermccain.com/2012/11/19/update-walker-v-kimberlin-et-al-also-why-doxing-is-always-illegal/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/11/28/the-illegal-activity-of-doxing-revealing-documents-or-personal-information-about-a-person-without-their-permission-with-the-intent-to-threaten-harass-intimidate-shame-humiliate-or-place/

Not allowed.


That's unusual, and would probably depend on the situation.

what if someone else is carrying a link in their signature,trust page etc.. which leads to the dox. It is not directly posted on forum.

what if someone is doing a giveaway and writing the dox as a "Public Note:" in the transactions.

I just want to know what are the rules when dox is not posted directly on the forum ?

No. Report that by posting to Meta.


It has to be moved to Investigations. Unfortunately, there's no way that I can easily make the forum allow them to see just their own thread, which would be ideal. I guess they'll have to work through a Member+ mediator. It might be helpful if some people would volunteer to act as mediators in these cases, and then I could list them in a sticky.

Interesting situation, but the newbie account in question was created only yesterday.
So it is probably a throw-away account created just to dox somebody.

So when newbies (or juniors) post stuff that would go into the Investiation board, what's the right move for that?
I've recently reported a post^[1] of one that got afterwards moved into the section, which currently locks them out of accessing their own thread.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--1576669

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It's not that thread in particular, but the situation generally that catched my interest.
Also would like to know how to handle reports/comments on reports in those cases.

Thanks. What about trust feedback? I know those are not googleable but visible to users below Member (which is the threshold for "Investigations"). Is doxing allowed there?

For non-local content of that sort, please post it in Investigations and then export any conclusions to scam accusations.

Yes. They'll at least be nuked, and then maybe I will rename the user.

Here is another one. There's a user who created a few puppets with usernames that are supposedly real names of other users... i.e. the dox being the username itself, there was some personal text too I think (not the sig but the one on the left side). Is that reportable too? How would that be handled? Even nuked users still remain in the user list, right? Indexable by Google?

I see where you are coming from with regard to "in house" BCT scammers and accusations, but my interest is in the wider picture of Bitcoin investment generally.
If I see a Bitcoin scheme in the wild which I think could do with a closer look and I find something of interest, then I will post about it here because this forum reaches a wide BTC audience, in the hope that when people see the bigger picture behind the scheme, including the principals' history, it will inform their judgement about whether or not to invest in it.
This one for example, which I posted in the local sub forum most likely to reach people with interest in it.
It is not a scam accusation, but contextualizes the scheme on offer and its prime mover's history. It would be meaningless without identifying the actors involved. Also, further useful input may be contributed by others who see a name, picture or other "dox" type detail and recognise it from the past.
To relate the current scheme on offer to past ones operated by them, "doxxing" the people involved is an essential step, not because there is any benefit per se in exposing their meatspace identities, but because it is the link between the two and establishes a pattern of behaviour.

How will the new regime affect this sort of post?   

OK, I changed the text.

But you are telling people that the Google search is recommended. Maybe you could add some kind of disclaimer that users should use the forum search when looking up "real" names, and to specifically not use the google search for these searches.

Yeah, only public sections are indexed by Google. If you're looking for something in Investigations, you'll have to use the forum's built-in search.

The search page encourages people to use the google search. So if a person who is a full member, were to be doing a trade with "John Smith" from "Springfield" and this person is sending a Western Union payment and expects to receive Bitcoin in return, then this person might use the custom Google search to search for "John Smith Springfield" then the Custom Google search will come back with no results, even if there is a thread in investigations warning people that "John Smith" from Springfield has scammed many people for smallish amounts each (all adding up to a large sum).

I assume there's an exception here if you're posting your own dox.

I don't know enough about those cases to say. If you think so, create a new topic in Meta with your reasoning.



For now, I'm thinking that maybe the whole idea of publishing dox should be reexamined. What does it really gain? If people are going to use the dox to illegally harass this person, then that's not a good result. If people are using the information for legal cases and police reports, then that is good, but I think that in most cases this can be done from the non-public Investigations board.

On a case-by-case basis, I'd like to see a utilitarian argument in Meta about exactly what is gained by publishing specific bits of uncovered info. For example, maybe there is significant utility in publishing this person's name and general location, to warn others, but not his full address. Another thing which must be addressed is how we can be sure that the person being doxxed is the person who did the scamming, and that they are actually guilty of the scamming. I certainly don't want to return to the scammer tag era of me single-handedly deciding these things. After a few of these cases are hammered out in Meta, perhaps a uniform policy will emerge.


Yes, cross-linking is good. Post your conclusions in Scam Accusations (eg. x is an alt of y, x has a history of scamming, etc.), but keep the investigations themselves in Investigations. My idea is that trustworthy members will export any important information about alts, trustworthiness, etc. from Investigations, while keeping the actual private information in a non-public section.


Report one of their posts. If they don't have any posts, post in Meta about it.

When a user is autobanned (ie. a specific type of permaban initiated by moderators, but then put in place automatically), their signature is cleared. If a user doesn't deserve a permaban, then either they can be autobanned and unbanned by one of the mods with manual-ban permissions, or else an admin can adjust their signature directly.


They'll be deindexed a while after being moved.

How will the custom Google search (found in between help and donate) handle threads in the investigations section?

Thanks. Just making sure there aren't obvious loopholes. I already reported the BST thread in my sig to get moved because it has dox in the OP and much more further down the thread. Since the sig itself doesn't dox anyone I think that should be good enough.

AFAIK no moderator is able to directly influence the signature of another user. However, in this case they would be breaking the rules and thus they would be warned and asked to remove it. When a user gets banned their signature will get removed (this is a 'recent' change), and thus they could just be "re-banned" which would remove their signature. This is generally the work area of global moderators, but this is how it could be handled (from my perspective).

Fair enough. Will you move all of their posts or ask nicely to change the sig? What if the user is banned?

No, it is not. A DOX is (usually) a collection of publicly available information.

Usually when we are talking about a multiple of posts (for whatever reason), reporting a singular one is going to be enough if the report is properly written.

If someone has dox in their signature do we report one post or all posts and how will moderators deal with that?

Really good move!



I think that is a positive.

In my views, I don't encourage posting personal information of anyone. I believe doxxing is illegal?

Theymos
Say there is a thread in "Service Announcements" promoting a scheme which appears suspicious, posted by username XYZ.
A bit of research done perfectly legally by searching publically available data linked to XYZ and his scheme on company names, addresses and other info provided in that thread shows that in real life XYZ is John Doe, with an MO of questionable practices/outright scams/failed enterprises.
Will this new initiative prevent posts in that thread linking XYZ to John Doe and asking whether or not this is him and his history?
Instead, should I post a new thread in "Investigations" and crosslinks in the two threads? Will this be acceptable?

As you have currently set it up, "Investigations" is buried as a Child board of a Child board in a Sub Forum.
Is this an indication of your personal view of the (lack of) importance and desirability of these type of posts?

IRL, I conduct due dilligence and background checks daily as work. In order to be of some assistance (in my view, maybe not yours or scammers) to the Bitcoin community I post background data from time to time about what appear to be questionable schemes floated on BCT and other places, and the people behind them. I believe that this has been of some help to newbies in avoiding being scammed.
I am confused about whether you are signalling now that this sort of posting is unwelcome. You appear to be sending out mixed messages at a time when scamming is as rife as ever.
Please advise.

Do you think this would meet this criteria (also this thread should probably be moved)? Would this ("...go away or I post your dox...")?


I would argue that this probably meets the criteria for an exception -- this guy has scammed many people for a large total amount over a very long time.

My first draft of this policy was 3x longer and had a process for moving info out of Investigations, but the other mods and I were thinking that this was too complex.

Let's wait and see how much demand for moving stuff out of Investigations there really is.

That makes sense to me, and seems to be a fair way to protect people who may just have had bad luck and fallen victim to an incorrect dox. However, on the other hand I think it's also beneficial to have accurate dox information publicly accessible for everyone, especially potential employers of these scammers. With the Investigation board made private, this information won't be easily accessible and employers may be hiring people who have stolen millions of dollars in bitcoin without even knowing they've done things like that before. I realize that background checks for employers isn't Bitcointalk's responsibility, but the Investigation board will be removing valuable background information on scammers from people who aren't actively part of this community, such as potential employers.

Yes. In fact, reporting is especially important for this because you often have to follow these cases pretty closely to notice doxxing. I was only able to quickly find a handful of threads that should be moved.


No, that's the point of the Investigations board. I was receiving many reports from people who were apparently incorrectly identified in this way, or from people who may have actually been innocent, and it just seemed unreasonable to leave the posts where Google can index them. However, in the interest of free speech and open debate, they can exist (even if incorrect) in the Investigations section.

I'm interested mainly in this part:


Would it be beneficial to report posts/threads that aren't in the Investigation section yet but should be located there?

I'm also curious about protecting the innocent when attempting to dox scammers. If a dox is made of the wrong person (for example, someone with the same name as the scammer, or living at the same address as the scammer) will this information be removed from the website if proof is given that the information is inaccurate?

The reason that doxxing has been allowed up until now is that it's occasionally very useful in scam investigations. However, oftentimes doxxing someone is used as a weapon in itself instead of a part of any investigation, and as a result innocent people are sometimes hurt. So to protect the innocent while hopefully not hampering scam investigations too much, here are some new rules on doxxing:

1. Personal information must be confined to the new "investigations" board (under Scam Accusations), which is only visible to Members and above. Personal information is defined as anything which links a user's online identity (username, email, etc.) to their meatspace identity, excluding links that the person himself has posted. It is not allowed to post somebody's personal information in any other public place, including in signatures.
2. It is not allowed to post someone's dox if it is especially obvious that you're just using the dox as a weapon. For example, if there are no remotely-plausible trade complaints, then the person can't be a scammer, and their dox should not be posted.
3. As before, anything that the legacy insecure government/banking system requires to be secret is not allowed anywhere. This includes social security numbers, credit card numbers, and certain account numbers.

This applies retroactively to old posts. If a thread contains a lot of personal information strewn throughout it, then the whole thread will be moved to Investigations. If it's only a few posts, then those will be split off. From now on, it's probably a good idea to create two threads for big scammers: one in Scam Accusations and one in Investigations.

From time to time there may be cases where it is very desirable to publish some results of an investigation. For example, if a class action lawsuit is filed, then the person's username should probably at least be publicly linked to the legal case so that other people can join in. For now, there is no uniform policy for this, and if you need to make some personal info public, post in Meta and we will deal with it on a case-by-case basis.