After some recent events of members getting scammed, I've had to make a few tough decisions regarding membership. Right now, we are not allowing new members. This is a temporary stoppage to hopefully allow us some time to come up with ideas on how we can safeguard our wallets and maintain a safer site -- I'm open for any ideas on this one, but I've considered making this a referral-only site.

I've removed over 100 accounts, using the following criteria (in this order):

1. Users who have never logged in (ever) ~75 users

2. Users that have email addresses that bounced (e-zine) that had a 0 post count ~ 10 users

3. Users that had a 0 post count that haven't logged in within the last 30 days ~30

4. Users that created an account in the last 30 days that haven't posted or appear to be suspicious (ie, scrambled name, and email address that has words like 'sly', 'evil', etc...). ~ 5 users

If anyone hears from a user that was removed, just let me know and I'll restore their account.

At this point, I'm really open for new ideas on how we can create a safer community for everyone.

-Dain

I had disallowed guests from browsing earlier (locked forum), but re-enabled it so that our wonderful scammers can see the actions we'll be taking. At some point, we may lock down to disallow anonymous browsing. Thoughts?

We need a widget that will auto alert us anytime a bad IP logs in. That way people like Hounder can't slip back in on us again. Sucks that we have to take these measures but scammers are getting smarter and more a part of everyday life.
~~NGD

Make the "Buy , Sell and trade" forum invite only ?

Or when you buy stuff from someone , ask him for his address. If you get it, send him a postcard with a secret code on. If he can tell you the code, you have his address


If he can't , he's a scammer (probably)

King Neptune fooled us all, so making it invite only would only slow him down a little. Maybe we need to make your name/addy a required field when you log in and display the info. Of course when you have 5 emails and use 3 names that wouldn't really matter much either. There is no way to stop them, just slow them. But once they are caught like David we "can" do something.
~~NGD

King Neptune was the scammer? WTF? Please clarify NGD

I like the Idea of invite only.

it silly but maybe every time there's a new member, maybe he has to be okay'ed by a certain number of people that have dealt with him/her/it in other places.  or maybe they need an ebay rating of like 200 or something.  Something.  who knows.

But maybe address, and some other stuff is needed to sign up for the site. 

have 6 members, look at the "new members questionaire" with references, and vote on it......
that way there's not one person dropping the Golden Axe on his Head.....

Any info (names, emails, addresses, phone, ip) is way too easy to fake. When you are only selling the address can be completely fake and it won't matter. Even if you verify the address/phone exists you still won't be able to link it to the user. I could pick a random name from a website and there would be no way to check. Doing PayPal's small bank deposits is the only thing I know that works.

Blocking people that don't post is nice to keep the user list clean but won't stop any scammers. They will be posting to advertise their stuff.

The post cards is an interesting idea but may be too slow or annoying for people to use. Too easy to have friends receive the card but then at least you would have a valid address to start the tracking.

User photos may work but then there are the same privacy problems as freely posting names/addresses. Take a photo of yourself when you join, take a photo of you holding item when you are selling. That would at least show you have at least one of the item in your possession, and if you are using a friend it would have to be the same person for that fake account. You could require this to only be done for sellers, not for general users.

Locking down any forum is usually a bad idea. New users will be less likely to join if they can't read it. If you lock down just the buy/sell then new buyers won't be able to buy, and won't be able to get a reputation. It pretty much means you will have no new people.

The biggest thing will be doing item first when buying from new people, and cash first when selling to new people. That should be a stated policy somewhere that people can point to. Of course that still will not solve the "build reputation then dump" problem.

Honestly I think you should be a member here to view threads. It would be alot safer and harder to con.

I think the issue here is with the buying/selling forum; it doesn't really matter what a scammer reads/posts/thinks about for most of the other stuff. AA and DP already lock out their marketplace forums to all but logged in members, but clearly that isn't enough. I think the only real solution will be to implement the new site with a feedback profile and have newer/lower feedback members ALWAYS send first NO MATTER WHAT. That is the only real solution I can see that won't have deleterious effects.

But becoming a member is not hard, and can be done with 100% fake info. Pick a random name from a movie, fake address in a different state, get a free email account from hotmail. The members are the ones doing the selling, so locking people out doesn't solve the problem.

We may have to make it so you have to be papal verified to be able to have access to any feature on the site or to sell anything. That way we know you have to have a paypal account linked to checking account. We are working on other measures as well.
~~NGD

I agree with Morbis, the feedback system is crucial. IMO this is the only solution. Locking down things will only prohibit our growth, and right now with all of our efforts to expand the site and our user base, retarding things because of one idiot is really an obstacle.

What's being discussed is martial law in what was essentially a democratic environment, because of one recurring cell of cancer. You can never prevent scammers, no matter how hard you make it for them - there's enough money in these games to make it worthwhile.

And if we do expand this board to include a high-traffic marketplace in the future, Paypal verification I'm sure will be part of the solution, but we all know Paypal does little to prevent true scammers, and in fact promotes the right kind of scams with their absolute policies.

The real boil-down, is it's up to EACH INDIVIDUAL to police their own trades, and if they're taken advantage of it's unfortunate, but I don't believe it's the responsibility of NA or anyone but them to protect and safeguard. If they feel like spreading the word about a scammer that's part of the community but there's of course no way to enforce this either.

Sorry it's the libertarian in me but I'm commonly against preventative laws. I think I said elsewhere about some other topic; making this place as great as it can be, for free, and then taking it away from those who would abuse it, is the best possible punishment and the threat of that is the best prevention.

Also wanted to CC my mention in this thread, anyone who wants to make a few extra bucks with a high reputation can start an escrow service for high-value transactions. They just gotta be willing to ship things on a timely basis after both parties parcels are in hand. Someone who sells a lot on eBay wouldn't have any trouble doing this at all.

I'd actually be willing to do it I guess. Costs to use the service would include postage rate of forwarded merchandise, and handling fee to cover verifying items, probably taking a picture and sending it to each party to confirm the right thing's in the box, and I think that's it. Each person would pay exactly 1/2 of all charges while the items are in-hand.

I agree -- I think we need the new feedback system and discourage members from straying from it. It's not fool-proof, but it will make it more difficult for people to scam.

I've removed the new user restriction, and at any rate, removed the users who have never logged in -- not like we removed anything important, as they never posted, but they can always re-join if they want to.

-Dain

I agree as well on the feedback trade system. The member with the higher star, as in the ebay color star system, should allways recieve the item first then pay to the member with the lower feedback or star.

Beware of new users on this site whose first post is a trade or for sale list. They are the most obvious to spot scammers. That is if you allready did not know or if the moderators have not cleared that up yet.

DAN,
I am more than happy to help with the escrow service idea. I like that but there are some issues that would have to be hammered out.

1) All PayPal fees would of course have to be paid by the buyer that the escrow person gets stuck with.
2) Escrow person would have to get a fee to cover time, travel to post office, and packaging supplies. I think the fee could be like a nominal $2-3 or something, maybe a little more depending on how much stuff has to be repackaged.

Again I am more than happy to help with this and if someone ever wants to do this through me I live about 3 minutes from the Post Office here in town and I have an entire garage full of Boxes of all sizes as I save all my NES packaging boxes and supplies that come to me with ALL the stuff I buy.

Now what I would suggest would be to have maybe a person on West Coast (ME) someone in middle of the US and someone on East Coast. I think this could work very well. West coast to west coast stuff could go through me. East coast to east coast stuff could go through someone on east coast. And trades across country would go nicely through someone in the middle of US.

Just my thoughts!
~E~

Great idea keeping it on coasts Erik. I'm east coast so if someone would raise their hand for the great plains I think we have a cabal.

As far as repackaging goes, it's easy if you're just careful with a sharp knife to open any package, and resealing's just a matter of using sturdy packing tape. I think all packaging should be between the 1st and 2nd parties; it's beyond the scope of what escrow is, really. For the kind of expensive stuff we'd be handling, really all shipments should be in priority boxes anyways, not mailers, so that eliminates 99% of all problems right there.

If we're keeping it coastal then we should arrange things by postal zone, so we can set flat rates for the service that already include shipping costs, with surcharges for excessive weight. This way the fee is already built in.

I'm not sure about one party paying the escrow fees in all cases; the service protects both parties, buyer and seller in simultaneous-send situations. Keep in mind, this is also a valuable service for those users on the same "tier" as far as feedback goes; the users who would send simultaneously (whether they're both zero FB, or both 100 FB).

Of course if a person with zero FB was to send first and wanted to do escrow instead, they'd be liable for all fees.

This does mean we need to set FB tiers for the NA system. It's tough to get feedback really so they should be nowhere near eBay levels. I'm thinking

0-5
6-10
11-20
21-50
51-100

k all typed out