Topic: Solving the Problem of Agent Provacateurs - page 2. (Read 3098 times)

How about a e-mail verification to a bank account with your name on it, along with a credit card or driver's license?

At least, once it was verified, you could not really sign up again with another alias, right?
That would be very difficult I would assume, but if people were willing to do it voluntarily, we would at least know for sure who we could trust, right?

Or who we could at least have some more confidence in, initially, correct? or no?

I think a combination of not being overly paranoid and not being overly reactive will protect us from this oh so very ominous threat. Frankly it would still be easy for the all the "CIA agents" that are on here to become verified, and then whip out their diabolical plan of crying about how they lost their bitcoins. So you'd still be suspicious of verified posters. Also the "verified" would be a bit confusing to some, who might interpret it as some kind of endorsement or official authority.

But I do think it is a good idea to incorporate a reputation system, the kind that is pretty standard on vbulletin boards. Users can +rep or -rep posts, a lot of neg reps will mark someone as having a bad reputation. Though there are some drawbacks to the reputation system as well.

Even assuming for the sake of discussion that such a thing is desirable, I don't think there's any kind of verification system that would be convenient enough for the masses, yet robust enough that it can't be spoofed by an agent provocateur.

Case in point, MeowMixer arrives and posts at 8:13:16 that they were hacked, and at 08:18:33 am, AllinVain is there to reply and offer support for them. Can I really believe this?

How do I know AllinVain and MeowMixer are not one and the same?

Are the Mods checking for this, somehow? Can this problem be fixed somehow?

Instead of allowing the forum to turn into a viper's den of victims and accusations how about some kind of verification of people who register here? I certainly would not mind, if only the forum owners knew. I trust the forum owners.

Just a simple "Verified" sticky next to the name would help everyone tremendously, because I foresee people coming in here and claiming bitcoins did everything from being lost, stolen, and kidnapped, to being trafficked in child slavery and sold to Arabs in the desert, never to be seen again. I can imagine people will come here by the hoards and claim to have this and that happen to them, and their bitcoins...but if people have the option of being known by someone, then the risk is lowered for lies and falsifications.

I just don't know who to trust on here, and who is an agent and who is telling the truth when someone claims their bitcoins were stolen or pilfered or hacked and it just seems that without some protection against this, or advisories, somewhere or an option to be trusted, then it will only continue to get worse from here on out. After all, anyone can register as many times as they want, from a number of different addresses, and only the site owners know if the IPs are the same, but who is checking anyways. If you have to provide proof of who you are, to someone, then I cannot imagine people will say anything but the truth, if they happen to be hacked or stolen from.

If we don't implement this, everyone will be scared away from bitcoins by a few people who constantly post lies and disinformation and unwarranted fears.

And then the real problems and hacks and fears will go on ignored potentially.

Can we introduce a verification system for the forum? Voluntary of course.