Topic: The Art of Exploiting vs the Bad Habit of Scamming (Read 743 times)

Well, it's not about me, actually. I was just thinking like a cheater would (probably) think, following his possible train of reasoning. The truth is, it is not so much about being true or false in an objective sense but rather more about sounding plausible. Put differently, a would-be cheater is not so much concerned about finding the truth as about looking for an excuse that would justify his actions in a way that is acceptable to him personally

In a wider context, this is how our minds work internally. We may indeed look for objective evidence coupled with strict logical reasoning (aka formal proof), but whether we accept the conclusions we arrive at or decline them is essentially the same set of processes that guide a cheater in his pursuit of self-justification

The link should work now

In general I think a 1% house edge is fine, unless we know the turnover a certain casino has, because 1% can be huge or tiny profit. Since no casino will publish their turnover, I would then assume that it's not a rip-off, until I get those numbers. So to answer your question: Do we know for sure that it's not a rip-off ? No.

The house edge is so small, because casino will always win longterm - risk-free. Could it be even lower ? Probably, but without numbers hard to judge. I have no idea what it costs to run an online casino and what turnover you can generate. The sheer number of casinos popping up suggests they are making good money though; in a market that never seems to get saturated.

With this higher bankroll thing (link doesn't work btw), I already told you that it's too far from reality for me. Yes, you have your street games example, but everyone is free to have a higher bankroll than the house and you can't call people rip-off artists just for that.

That's definitely a rip-off

With that said, though, how can we be so sure that a 1% house edge is not a rip-off? We just feel that's kinda normal (read, small), but do we really know that for certain, as in justified true belief (the classical definition of knowledge), with emphasis on true? Has it never occurred to you why exactly the house edge is so small? Would it really be enough to cover the costs if it were only for the house edge and nothing else? If most profits actually come from the casino's bankroll as discussed in this thread (with which you must be familiar), then even a 1% house edge might be a rip-off, after all. And then things may start to look differently (to a cheater, at least)

House edge is fine imo and no excuse. The casinos have some costs and they are running a service that you actively choose to use, so they should get paid. What I dont like is, when they have super high house edge only because they are incapable of running their business properly or are simply greedy. Offline slots in pubs here often only have a payout of 60% - 70% and this is just rip-off imo, although there are higher running costs compared to an online casino. But they have big lobby, because their big profits also means big taxes and thus the state protects them kind of (and the state always struggles to get taxes from online casinos).

It is not scamming in the strict sense

But the terminology used is still mostly a matter of convention. You could call it, for example, cheating. In this manner, the person who found a bug and took advantage of it toward his monetary gain could justify his actions by appealing to the very advantage of the casino itself over the players, that is to say, the house edge. He could think something like "they have an advantage over us anyway, and by rigging the odds in my favor, I just set the things straight as they should be". Is it a legit excuse for milking a casino?

Its not okay to take advantage of the glitches if its violates their laws and most of the gambling ToS says they have rights to hold the rewards if it happens mistakenly so the player will complain here it as scam if they didn't paid as regular rewards.When the site failed to detect the issue before the money gets withdrew then the site can't claim it as scam done from the player side.

I see your point

You basically say that to scam a scammer still requires you to be a scammer deep down inside ("to have it in your DNA") even if it can be justified on some moral high ground. However, if it is a good thing in its own right and serves a good end, you might try to reframe it. For example, disobeying an unlawful order:


The trick "I was only following orders" doesn't work out in most cases. And we can draw some parallels here, i.e. not scamming a scammer when you are able to pull it off can be thought of as being involved in the scam. If you look at it from this angle, your conscience should remain clean and intact

In the case of the software glitches, it really depends on the intention of the user if he wants to take advantage of it or report it to the website or casino software developer. But I really don't think that it is a scam because the user did not use any deceptive action to gain the trust of someone so he can get their money. Some would call the glitch a bug which then blames the developer for having the bug in the first place. I don't see the software issues as a scam but rather software issues that is being, wait for it...EXPLOITED by the users.

I honestly wouldn't be so sure. Most of the scamers don't work alone but in a group, where they get orders from their bosses including scripts, what to say/write in which situation and they just play the scripts. There was a documentary about it on german television, I can link to it if you are interested.

There are also a lot of "Scam the scammer" videos on Youtube and co. where exactly such cases are shown, where the scammers themselves were tricked:



Source: Google Search

Some of them are really funny to watch, but some also leave you sad when you realize that the scamers only do this because they were ordered to do so ...

Yep, something I had in my mind for discussion too at a later point. Like does scamming a scammer make you a scammer yourself ? From the general answers so far in this thread, I would assume that most users would be ok with doing it and you are no scammer per se, more like a modern Robin Hood maybe. But then again, a lot of users showed high moral standards (which is good) and even scamming a scammer is not easy to square with your conscience. You either have it kind of in your DNA or not imo and feel bad for doing it yourself, no matter the circumstances. Technically it will be hard anyway, since they are pro with scamming most of the times and you are not.   

This seems to be a good place to start out (you should have probably made it #1 item in the list)

It is obvious that traders filling your orders are unaware of the fact that your bot went nuts. Moreover, they themselves may be using bots. In this way, you can't call them scammers or cheaters. And even if it looks like something went totally wrong on your side, there is no certainty of that. To sum it up, in trading the answer is pretty straightforward. You cannot call scammers those people who are filling your allegedly wrong orders as there's no knowing

Indeed, it is more complicated with casinos as little doubt arises when something is totally off, e.g. when you start winning all of a sudden and that is definitely not due to a streak of luck. With that in mind, there are two major choices to be made. If you consider the casino in point as a legit and honest one, then exploiting the bug will be cheating (I don't think scamming is an appropriate term here). However, if they are themselves scammers (e.g. refuse to pay out jackpots or anything to that effect), then cheating on them can be morally justified (as I see it)

Well i can't imagine a scenario when that would be possible. Might be because I don't trade or know what happens if someone places an order insanely lower than the market price.

All things being equal and I'm first to have the chance. Here is how I'd go about it. I'd buy them, and would feel good about it. Not because I got a deal, but because my first reaction is going to be to contact the exchange support stating I think there was an error, and ask them to contact the seller. This is why I would buy them because I know how I would proceed, and don't have enough faith in the rest of humanity to do the same.

If nothing comes of it and support either doesn't hear back or at all from the seller then great for me, if not then they get their coins and I take my $1000 back. I try to operate in the digital arena the same as I would irl, and this reminds me of someone clearing out their kids stuff and having some random valuable that they have no idea it's actual worth. Some businesses will work out a fair market price, others will low ball it and then reap the rewards.

Again not knowing the intricacies of placing orders for trades, and how I would get an order filled that far below market while others would be passed over; it's hard to comment on. I feel it would be a similar situation for me though. I would check in to see if there was an error and sort it out in a manner that seems fair.

I get why some may think it's okay to do things another way and grab a 100K score off someones error, but that's not me. I'd love to have a score like that but not by directly taking it out of the pockets of someone else.

It's true that the size of mistake plays a large role, and people know that often times when a mistake is small, the company might not even respond to them, so it's not worth the effort to notify them. But with smaller business, it can be really important to disclose such incidents, because these mistakes might be vulnerabilities that can cause serious damage to them. And in our case, I think all crypto casinos are still rather small, and since some of them have public bankrolls, it's better to not ignore such things if you encounter them.

Here you could have different layers/scenarios again. Lets assume this is just a one-time glitch and not something you can exploit again.

If your order was for $5 and through this glitch you got $5 on top. Would you want to give the money back no matter what ? I think most people would take the extra $5 and move on. Now if you got $100k plus $100k, this is a different ball game. There is an individual threshold with being "honest" and the higher the amount, the more likely you will be honest imo.


I think 99,99% would take the 10 BTC. You see the opportunity and grab it in the heat of the moment, without thinking too much, this is just normal human behaviour (when you know someone else would do it, if you don't do it). And it's anonymous. The interesting thing is what happens afterwards - I guess the overwhelming majority would feel guilty and even try to somehow give the money/BTC back to the rightful owner. I could even imagine a scenario, where you put the BTC up again for $100 and let someone else deal with those feelings

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Some years ago there was a Youtuber, who made some tutorial about a wallet installation or whatever. He had a good stack and was cautious, as you should be, by blurrying his private keys for the video. But when he minimized a window, his private keys were visible for the split of a second. One viewer wrote down the keys, imported them into his wallet and send the funds away. Not for stealing them, but to protect them and give them back to the Youtuber. Very proactive, noble and honest

I think where the situation got a little muddy with  LAngel and Bitcasino was that he did not cheat Bitcasino.io... but rather cheated on another site where he exploited a weak point and then he used that money to gamble at Bitcasino.io

So it makes this case a bit more complex, because the question is... Can they void your winnings, if you did not exploit a bug on the casino where you won the jackpot, but you used money to bet on that casino that you exploited on another gambling site.

I think legally you stand no chance in court to justify your case, if you used any money that was gained illegally through any means. Whatever gives you a unfair advantage over the "house" and other players, should be deemed illegal.    (Bots are mostly based on skill, like they are doing on that "Seuntjies" site, so if your skill in bots are superior and it is allowed on the site, then I do not think it is wrong.)  

I personally would hesitate so long (because I just couldn't believe it) until the order is fulfilled by someone else who would be less worried about whether all this is true

But I see the subtle difference just like you do. Actively fulfilling the order and taking advantage of someone's "mistake" is much harder than having the order filled automatically by a bot, for example. The latter would make me happy, the former I would most likely just not do.

When you trade on an exchange, the orders might be placed long before they get executed, so in your scenario of bot malfunction, it's more like you are mistakenly fulfilling someone's orders, rather than the vice versa, so it's not a scam.

As for exploiting and scamming, strictly speaking, scamming is using persuasion to trick humans, while exploiting is using flaws of the software to steal something. They are both bad, obviously. Sometimes people passively benefit from software flaws, like receiving double orders for the price of one - in that case a honest person should notify their counterparty about their mistake.

If it was me, I would feel good because I got a huge discount and I don't see any wrong on that action. In the sense of being ethical, I believe it is because the buyer bought it legally.  This case is almost the same as seeing money on the street and picking it up not knowing who lost it.  The only difference is that we know that the seller intends to sell that BTC, whether there is a price error or not is out of my concern, I do not forced or trick him to sell at such low price so why would I feel that I wronged him.


It does in a sense of awareness. 

Well you did your part then and they are just careless
this has happened with me in another site where I reported a feature that can make players have frequent +EV bets , they said they will study it and get back to me
well they never replied back but they changed their ToS and made it that they have the right to cancel that feature for bettors whenever they want 

I agree with that of course

But lets look at it from the the other side. You see a 10 BTC sell order in a self-regulated exchange for $100 per BTC and you buy them. Would you feel good about it ? Would you consider this behaviour ethical ? If you don't buy them, then another user will buy them. Would you hesitate to buy them to not have any compunction ?

Does it make any difference, if you actively buy them or just had a order in the market that mysteriously got filled ?

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I never saw it for 1X2 and AHC too, but there was for example a bookmaker in the past, where in Formula 1 you could parlay odds for winner & Top3 market. When I told them, they never got back to me and didn't even fix it.