Topic: REQUEST FOR ATTENTION OF: All betking.io Signature Campaign Participants (Read 884 times)

No, of course they're not--but 1) Scams aren't moderated on this forum, which is unlike many other forums, and 2) There are probably way more scammers concentrated into the whole of bitcointalk than a random sampling of 10 forums put together (though I don't have data on that, of course).  Newbies do need to be warned in my opinion, because they could easily click on a signature like that of a Betking campaign participant and get scammed.

I do agree that people are responsible for themselves and should be wary in the land of bitcoin as a general rule, but giving them a heads-up about possible scams is a neighborly thing to do.

Yay! And *groan*.  I'm not so sure how many accounts are going to be parked, but hopefully it's a small enough number such that their posts get buried under time and a mountain of other posts until the next opportunity for them to awaken comes around.

For the campaigns yes, there might be some repercussions. I am talking about the users. Give them a good enough deal, there are a lot of people who will still trade with you.
And as we can see there are still a ton of scammy campaigns, including casinos and tokens that will still pay you if you wear their sig.

Since the board is not going to change it's something we can try to fight, but for the most part are probably just going to have to live with.

-Dave

I'd say the image of the user wearing a signature reflects on the image of the service in their signature. That's why some signature campaigns have special criteria for highly trusted users, and I've seen campaigns with special arrangements for Staff members. With negative feedback, I assume viewers are less likely to trust the advertised service. Except for the boards that don't show Trust, unfortunately, and except for guests on all boards. But it's something at least

Pegasus company now just need your phone number to hack you. They will not send you and email, a text message with any link. They will not ask you to click any link. They will just give you a call, and you even do not need to receive the call. Once they call, you are automatically connected to their server, and they can control your device. Now, imagine how far they have gone.

So, they are basically paying the same shills those were hired by Adkinsbet and 1xbit (I guess). At least, a comment left on my service thread indicates this suspension 100% LOL

There is the moral issue.

IMO, a simple PM explaining they are advertising a scam, and why doing so is wrong would be much more effective in stopping betking's ability to advertise via signatures than negative trust. It might not outright stop it, but would curtail it.

There is a warning message on all Long Term (lending) offers, and securities threads. It would probably be a good idea to add a generic similar warning to other marketplace sections of the forum.

The majority of the forum rules are really just codifying what should be common sense for most people. It take a lot to get into trouble for breaking the rules, so if you break a rule as a new user, you will suffer no real consequences if you were unaware of the rule, and are alerted to the rule, unless you are posting malware or plagiarizing, but again rules related to both are just codifying common sense.

No reason why they would not, it's not a lot of money and it lets them go back and say, "look we pay our people, wear our sig next time and get paid too"

And, that is part of the problem here. There are no repercussions for massive negative trust unless you are selling stuff, and even then if you agree to escrow will people care?
If the deal is good enough, and there is no negative trust saying that they stole money, people will trade. Not as many, but enough.

-Dave

Actually, it turns out that they did get paid, but I understand your point and it could have easily gone the other way. It wouldn't be the first time that someone scams signature campaign participants.

These transaction IDs were posted by their admin:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/142fb82c5351dc97c84b073990108f03e2f932951dcb3686054e4bac81c884b5
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/499115b1e095c38a137a76759945979e12a63244958fbc22bc5a9dddd7e17cf9

I compared some random addresses in the spreadsheet to the blockchain info real quick and it seems correct.

The problem is not that, it's  how many people do we loose because of the lack of scam moderation who come in, take a look / get the info the need at the time and then leave never to come back again since there are so many scams here that it just looks like a cesspool and it's not worth their time to have to sort through it.

I *know* and I would like to make this perfectly clear that is *know* not "I heard" or "I think" of but *know* 2 people, who are very into BTC and work extensively with it who will not come to this forum because of the crap here. Both have very successful crypto businesses but avoid this place because of theymos's hands off we don't regulate scams attitude and letting the conspiracy people run around in P&S. Having a free and open forum is good, but thinking that we don't loose useful people because of it is just naive.

There are also a lot of projects that don't come here because of it too.

Is the forum better or worse because of that is tough to say. All I CAN say is that it causes some of us the get help elsewhere which drives other people to get help elsewhere which takes away from the userbase and information available here.

-Dave

More likely: they got free advertising, they'll never pay, and some still wear the signature until now.

The campaign only lasted for 10 days. Maybe they didn't expect such a backlash from the community and decided to cut it short. Looking at all those accounts who participated, there are many high ranked individuals that we would think should know better. All are now painted in red and useless except for similar activities such a scam campaigns and different AMLs. People can fall very low when they smell the opportunity to make some quick money.   

Those are yellow, hence my confusion.

I don't think it's very useful. The threads they create aren't the main problem, and a guest/Newbie warning banner above their threads only applies for the small percentage of their posts that create a new topic.

This is true.

Is there some reason why telling new users that scams are not moderated/bannable on this forum is unnecessary? This is not redundant information. Something along the lines of, "WE DO NOT MODERATE SCAMS! SCAMMERS ARE ALLOWED HERE!"

How about any indication of where the forum rules may be located? As far as I'm concerned, you're just tossed into the snake pit and told that you're surrounded by Full, Sr, Hero, and Legendary members.

---

Thankfully, since people are given the proper tools to learn about the forum, they should take full responsibility for their foolish actions.




I'm not asking for the banning of scammers. Though, some people are... and their confusion could be easily cleared with a simple message, don't you think?

@JollyGood
It looks like Betking finally gave up that ridiculous campaign and "announced ^[yesterday]" it's done and dusted.
^{- Having said that, a lot of them are still wearing those signatures, and since almost all of them are considered as a bunch of throwaway or parked accounts, then there's a big chance that at least half of them would keep wearing it [unintentionally] for the meantime.}

The internet is full of scammers and scams. Even if you receive a phone call from a random number, there is a good chance it is a scammer calling.

Scams are not limited to this forum, and people need to use their own good judgement in order to judge if something or someone is a scam.

You can make someone type a message saying they understand someone they are dealing with is a scammer, and you wouldn't be telling them anything they don't already know.

If there is a case of a specific warning not being obvious to someone giving scrutiny, this should be addressed. But blanket, generic warnings is probably unnecessary and may result in someone missing a specific warning about a potential scammer.

There is an adage that says "a fool and his money are soon parted" and this likely applies to many victims of scams on this forum.

I have nothing against a welcome message, nor a guest landing page.  As I've said before; I think it's a good idea.  I don't expect it to solve the scammer problem on this forum (I don't believe you do either,) but sure, it could prevent a few scams here and there, and it couldn't hurt either way.

And no, it would have no affect on my liberty.  I only brought that up because I've gotten the impression that you would be supportive of more extreme measures to prevent scams.  Perhaps I misinterpreted something you wrote in the past to get that impression.


I don't claim to be Joe Sixpack as I tend to believe I'm more skeptical than most (raising three daughters will do that to a man.)  I've been using and visiting forums for a long time, many that focus on subjects in which I'm well versed and experienced, such as BMW motorcycles, Ford trucks, and American rifles.  I've seen so many posts by users who claim to be experts only to find them spreading the most preposterous bullshit as if it's fact.  I don't pay attention to site specific reputation or reviews.  I assume everyone is full of shit until proven otherwise.


I'm not arguing with you about that, I think we're closer aligned on this issues than not.  My argument is that there are plenty of warning signs in existence already to help newbies and guests avoid scams.  There's nothing wrong with adding one more.  Just don't get your hopes up, because odds are it'll be as ineffective as the current "Red Flags."


I can't say for sure, I'm not an alt of theymos (or satoshi for that matter.)  I always figured it had more to do members' privacy than anything else.

I  meant type 1 flags. Only that I didn't specify the type of flag and ended up looking like I was generalizing.

What do you think if one opened type 1 flags against all accounts wearing the betking signature, which is a known scam? Is it in order, or is it too harsh when it comes to trust flag usage?

Risk is perfectly fine, as long as the willing participants are given awareness.

I was under the impression that a welcome message - an introduction to the trust system + scammer indifference - could bring about that awareness and could be a very simple and non-restrictive measure. I don't think your liberty is going to be compromised with a few extra hand movements as a guest. It is not unreasonable to request a landing page for guest users.

---

Are you able to leverage people's comments in accordance to their actual content via research, or do you place some bias on their site-based reputation? Similarly to as if someone were to trust a member based on rank, the expectation of some local reputation system is perfectly reasonable. Yet, who do you actually trust? Sure, staff can be trusted to some degree, but apparently even DefaultTrust is a bad measure of trust due to the legacy of past exit scams: I would even grant that someone new, having read through enough of the forum, would rather trade (and post) elsewhere unless they wanted to scam others.

Which other forums do you visit to where the rules are inaccessible unless you go to their forum discussion board located at the bottom of the front page, view an "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules" buried within SIX sticky threads, and go all the way to rule 19 to find out that scams are not moderated? This is an excessive scavenger hunt.

In fact, unless you count an warning to use escrow as a direct "scams aren't going to be removed and we're not going to do anything about them" message, then there's almost nothing said about forum policy.

---

Was it a programming issue, integrating a DefaultTrust rating as a guest view of trust (preferably with some description/links to explanations)? DefaultTrust is good enough for registered users, after all, and the only difference is a few minutes!

Or, is it instead a fundamental problem?

Honestly, it's not that cut and dry.  The internet is full of misinformation, and most of us have learned to be skeptical when researching solutions to our problems.  I don't blindly copy and paste code from stackexchange without researching the commands, nor do I assume that the youtube videos about misfiring Fords are going to address my specific mechanical issues.


I tend to agree with theymos, which is the point I was trying to make to actmyname.  We can't protect everyone, nor can we prevent all scams.  I'm in no way suggesting that we stop trying, but we're going to have to accept some risk.  A quote that's often attributed to Benjamin Franklin goes something like this:  "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

It's one of the things that makes Bitcointalk so unique. If I have a problem with my computer, I go to Stackexchange, copy/paste some code, and it works again. The same for car related problems on specialized forums: I follow the instructions, and it solves my problem. But if you do the same on Bitcointalk, you lose your money:

This is theymos' view:

The Currency Exchange board is filled with scammers. Can you imagine a multi billionaire who wants to buy 500,000 Bitcoin and uses an "agent" who barely speaks English to buy it on a forum, paying cash with truckloads of money? The scam is so obvious, if he manages to scam $100 he can buy food for a month again. People who fall for that can't be helped.

Writing a welcome message

---

As it currently stands, imagine you hit the front page of Bitcointalk: there's no way for you to even know about the existence of the trust system unless you see a thread in Meta or some discussion about it. What's the likelihood of that? You accept the risks of a free forum now, because you know the conditions. Anecdotal evidence is not always sufficient, but our sample size well exceeds 10 at this point (in relation to ONE scammer): how many scam victims were ignorant of the forum policies and expected intervention?

Suppose you are a guest and you want to investigate the currency with say, $10. Currency exchange seems good! (and any variety of potential situations as a result of easily-preventable ignorance)

Consider a scammer that exclusively uses Newbie accounts: do we flag them so that guests will see a warning? If so, then what if the Newbie is genuine? If not, then what action do we take to caution users if not a message on visit?

If we're to specifically target marketplace sections and boards where scams proliferate, a warning that uses a significant amount of screen space and cannot be easily-avoided (i.e. a banner that requires scrolling down or a landing page) can be applied to guest users. If this is annoying, all the more reason for people to register and see (at the very least DefaultTrust) defined trust ratings, with numerical degrees of impact. After all, having -1 red trust is different from -8 red trust, and untrusted ratings are only accessible to registered users.


It's not as if you can't make a ^M_W^A_A^S_R^S_N^I_I^V_N^E_G in bbcode.