Topic: Remove Proxyban (evil fees) - get whitelisted for free (Read 328 times)
You are essentially describing "newbie jail", which the forum used to have. If you do a search for this term you'll find lots of old discussions about it, why it was scrapped, and why it would be a bad idea to bring it back.
Complete KYC. If they comply, they are still banned and the evil fee doubles as punishment. 
Pay the evil fee to an escrow, and if they are not banned in their first 30 days/after their first 100 posts/whatever, the payment is returned. Bonus points for doing so over Lightning to keep fees low.
The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor. Perhaps if the person could prove ownership of a Reddit account, Twitter account, or similar, which is in good standing and has displayed good technical knowledge, but such users would be incredibly rare and even then it isn't a guarantee.
Pay the evil fee to an escrow, and if they are not banned in their first 30 days/after their first 100 posts/whatever, the payment is returned. Bonus points for doing so over Lightning to keep fees low.
The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor. Perhaps if the person could prove ownership of a Reddit account, Twitter account, or similar, which is in good standing and has displayed good technical knowledge, but such users would be incredibly rare and even then it isn't a guarantee.
Then we can put a user from a suspicious IP address in a testing mode. They will only be able to visit certain sections of the forum and make comments. Their exploration into the forum will be limited though they can read everything. If they prove that they have a mindful knowledge then they will get full access to the forum. Not sure if this method will be practical or not, perhaps this will be much more of an annoyance than its importance.
I did not receive any message from about 21/8. This is the longest period since whitelist account created. I do not know if the reason is the lack of new logins, or that proxyban has become less or for another reason. In general, I created an account a few days ago using Tor, and it was not proxy banned.
Since the ban message is in English, it would be useful if your topic was translated into local languages, and the translation was added to the main link.
Since the ban message is in English, it would be useful if your topic was translated into local languages, and the translation was added to the main link.
My suggestion; Enable the newbies welcome message
The newbie welcome message is a proposition for a pop up message which would be visible to new members. Here theymos proposed a rough draft for what the contents of the message should be as well as an open thread for suggestions. That thread was created in 2018 and it's yet to be implemented as at now.
Theymos recently added this feature which allows regular members to whitelist newbies who are proxybanned if they are convinced that those members have not been banned before, this should help reduce innocent members having to pay an evil fee and still frustrate banned members trying to register. But for this to work I think the newbie welcome message would need to be implemented. If I were to stumble on a new forum and get a ban message right out of the blocks, I would probably not stick around long enough to find out ways around it, however if the pop up Welcome massage was up, I would have already read through the notifications, which would contain informations on that.
If the whitelisting option is not that accessible to new members, we would likely be getting mails mostly from already banned users.
The newbie welcome message is a proposition for a pop up message which would be visible to new members. Here theymos proposed a rough draft for what the contents of the message should be as well as an open thread for suggestions. That thread was created in 2018 and it's yet to be implemented as at now.
Theymos recently added this feature which allows regular members to whitelist newbies who are proxybanned if they are convinced that those members have not been banned before, this should help reduce innocent members having to pay an evil fee and still frustrate banned members trying to register. But for this to work I think the newbie welcome message would need to be implemented. If I were to stumble on a new forum and get a ban message right out of the blocks, I would probably not stick around long enough to find out ways around it, however if the pop up Welcome massage was up, I would have already read through the notifications, which would contain informations on that.
If the whitelisting option is not that accessible to new members, we would likely be getting mails mostly from already banned users.
The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor.
It is easy to distinguish between a user who created the account for the first time and a user who has many alt accounts. The style of writing, the boards and posting style make this possible.The problem lies in knowing the reason for creating alt accounts, and therefore are those alt accounts banned, or he want to create more accounts for any other reasons?
Overall, I don't think a scammer would risk being under the spotlight for 600 satoshis. It is also possible to create dozens of accounts and pay for both addresses in one transaction (batching it.)
Generally giving a free pass is important.
Pay the evil fee to an escrow, and if they are not banned in their first 30 days/after their first 100 posts/whatever, the payment is returned. Bonus points for doing so over Lightning to keep fees low.
There's 2 problems with this:1. It makes me look very shady.
2. I can't verify the evil fee they have to pay.
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The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor.
True. I don't want to announce my criteria in public (nor do I have strict criteria yet), so I'll leave it up to the user to convince me.Quote
Perhaps if the person could prove ownership of a Reddit account, Twitter account, or similar, which is in good standing and has displayed good technical knowledge, but such users would be incredibly rare and even then it isn't a guarantee.
All good suggestions 
But I don't want to limit it to users with good technical knowledge.I'll see how this turns out. So far, I had one request, which I rejected.
Complete KYC. If they comply, they are still banned and the evil fee doubles as punishment.
Pay the evil fee to an escrow, and if they are not banned in their first 30 days/after their first 100 posts/whatever, the payment is returned. Bonus points for doing so over Lightning to keep fees low.
The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor. Perhaps if the person could prove ownership of a Reddit account, Twitter account, or similar, which is in good standing and has displayed good technical knowledge, but such users would be incredibly rare and even then it isn't a guarantee.
Pay the evil fee to an escrow, and if they are not banned in their first 30 days/after their first 100 posts/whatever, the payment is returned. Bonus points for doing so over Lightning to keep fees low.
The problem is that unless it is someone I knew from outside the forum (and no one I know outside the forum knows my forum handle), then it is near impossible to differentiate between a user who has previously been banned and someone who has just been unlucky with their IP address/is using Tor. Perhaps if the person could prove ownership of a Reddit account, Twitter account, or similar, which is in good standing and has displayed good technical knowledge, but such users would be incredibly rare and even then it isn't a guarantee.
Only abused IP ranges have to pay a fee. The fee is an anti-abuse measure, and it is not meant to be (and isn't) much of a source of revenue.
If any very-veteran members want to volunteer, I can give you the ability to whitelist users. (All Staff can already whitelist users, as well.) Perhaps then someone could create a topic like "List of email addresses for people who can whitelist you for free", which I could link-to on the evil fee page. However, these IPs have evil for a reason. If it was sufficient for them to just solve a captcha or something, I'd have them do that. Before whitelisting someone, you have to do something to be pretty sure that they're not evading a ban and just going to get banned again. You may get the impression from complaints on the forum that everyone hits the fee and it's never warranted, but this is selection bias: the fee is more rare, and the vast majority of accounts that hit it should not be whitelisted.
(that topic is locked already)If any very-veteran members want to volunteer, I can give you the ability to whitelist users. (All Staff can already whitelist users, as well.) Perhaps then someone could create a topic like "List of email addresses for people who can whitelist you for free", which I could link-to on the evil fee page. However, these IPs have evil for a reason. If it was sufficient for them to just solve a captcha or something, I'd have them do that. Before whitelisting someone, you have to do something to be pretty sure that they're not evading a ban and just going to get banned again. You may get the impression from complaints on the forum that everyone hits the fee and it's never warranted, but this is selection bias: the fee is more rare, and the vast majority of accounts that hit it should not be whitelisted.
I'm posting in Meta to get the attention from established members to help Newbies find their way to Remove Proxyban (evil fees) - get whitelisted for free.
Also this:
If other users with Whitelisting "powers" want to add their email to the list, please post in this topic.
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