Site Anti-Scamming Question (requesting member input)

[thperez1972]

That's the ultimate problem.

With a 10 post limit, new members will go into the new member section and reply "welcome" ten times to meet the post count.

Or resurrect some threads that haven't had any activity in 2 years.

 

[cyclone1970]

I really hate criminal behavior, scammers and others. Austin and all that try to keep this board free of trash have my full support and gratitude. I wish it were so easy as upping the posting numbers, but has already been well said the crooks can be cleaver. Since I have not done any selling or buying here, I unfortunately have no first hand experiences to offer.

 

[LACamper]

Raise it.

There was a time when BS.com was a discussion board with a few trades between members. Members were often friends in the real world, or became that way. Now it's a classified page with an occasional discussion. The site was better before.

 

[thperez1972]

I really hate criminal behavior, scammers and others. Austin and all that try to keep this board free of trash have my full support and gratitude. I wish it were so easy as upping the posting numbers, but has already been well said the crooks can be cleaver. Since I have not done any selling or buying here, I unfortunately have no first hand experiences to offer.

There are two types of scammers. Some are looking for a quick score with little to no work and others are willing to put in some time. For the latter, changing the post requirement won't affect them. But just because not all would be stopped does not mean the idea is worth exploring. Changing would decrease the former but it could also decrease the number of new members here only to participate in the classifieds. So it becomes a balance of raising it high enough to make it so there's a little work needed by the scammers without raising it too high to scare off any legitimate members. And the limit only affects the ability to PM. Users would still have the ability to reply to ads.

 

[Rocko68]

Raise the limit I say, whatever it takes. F scammers! Check feedbacks, be concious, all the above.

 

[DAVE_M]

Or resurrect some threads that haven't had any activity in 2 years.

Those are easier to spot.

 

[krotsman]

On the flip side, most of us can spot this crap right away, so raising the posting isn't really going to protect us against much.

Just curious, if anyone cares to admit it, has anyone been really scammed by someone on this board? Not annoyed or stood up, but really scammed out of $$$.

I've been annoyed by a maybe 2 or 3 flakes, in almost 10 years, but never came close to losing cash over anything.

 

[XD-GEM]

Random thoughts...

Austin, is this concern over the board's possible liability in a fraud case? If so, then doing something that can be demonstrably an "industry best practice" is how you might want to go. If there isn't any such thing, then you need to show that you tried to address the concern in some logical way. That likely would mean a minimum post count. Is it possible to make the post count requirement be done in multiple categories? That would reduce the "just post welcome" scheme.

 

[DAVE_M]

Random thoughts...

Austin, is this concern over the board's possible liability in a fraud case? If so, then doing something that can be demonstrably an "industry best practice" is how you might want to go. If there isn't any such thing, then you need to show that you tried to address the concern in some logical way. That likely would mean a minimum post count. Is it possible to make the post count requirement be done in multiple categories? That would reduce the "just post welcome" scheme.

Require private emails to join the forum.

 

[AustinBR]

Random thoughts...

Austin, is this concern over the board's possible liability in a fraud case? If so, then doing something that can be demonstrably an "industry best practice" is how you might want to go. If there isn't any such thing, then you need to show that you tried to address the concern in some logical way. That likely would mean a minimum post count. Is it possible to make the post count requirement be done in multiple categories? That would reduce the "just post welcome" scheme.

No, it's just to further protect unsuspecting members. Most of the folks on here who have been on for awhile know what scams look like. I'm not worried about people like Emperor, Dave, Krotsman, and etc getting scammed. The worry is that a new member comes on here to sell a firearm and it's their first time doing so and they fall for a scam. Due to the terms/conditions and all of the things we have done to make it tough on scammers, the board doesn't really have much liability.

Require private emails to join the forum.

How would you define a private email? In my mind, I think emails other than gmail/yahoo/outlook and etc. I'm not sure that something like that would work because most people don't want to use their work email for a firearm forum. Plus, many people only have gmail emails.

 

[AustinBR]

Require private emails to join the forum.

Also, we already manually screen every user who joins. It's just tough screening 100+ a month without missing a scammer. Additionally, we already have automated processes that detect certain abnormal things.

 

[snipehunter7]

Also, we already manually screen every user who joins. It's just tough screening 100+ a month without missing a scammer. Additionally, we already have automated processes that detect certain abnormal things.

That’s a ton per month given the number of new member intros you see. Thank y’all for doing all this!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[AustinBR]

That’s a ton per month given the number of new member intros you see. Thank y’all for doing all this!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To be fair, it's not me...the other admin (site owner) reviews all of the members. I do more of the fun front-end administration and fiddle with the settings.

 

[Kraut]

Almost all of the scams involve sending cash somewhere and an item being sent back.

I'm not aware of any of our members falling for it, but it's still an annoyance. Due to the potential impact of making the limits harder, I'm leaning towards not changing anything. The duty of not being scammed falls on each buyer/seller, but it's nice to do our part.

I don't think things should be changed if it's just an annoyance and there is no known incidence of anyone actually succumbing to a scam. I've referred people to this site to look for a purchase or try to sell something, not everyone's going to want to hang out in an online forum conversing on other topics just to be allowed to complete a transaction. I've done numerous successful transactions related to this site, just be careful and communicate clearly.

 

[AustinBR]

I don't think things should be changed if it's just an annoyance and there is no known incidence of anyone actually succumbing to a scam. I've referred people to this site to look for a purchase or try to sell something, not everyone's going to want to hang out in an online forum conversing on other topics just to be allowed to complete a transaction. I've done numerous successful transactions related to this site, just be careful and communicate clearly.

This is the route we are leaning towards. Right now the limit is at one post to send PMs. We were considering changing it to three posts, but I'm leaning heavily towards not.

 

[DAVE_M]

This is the route we are leaning towards. Right now the limit is at one post to send PMs. We were considering changing it to three posts, but I'm leaning heavily towards not.

Solve the problem by limiting access to the Welcome forum to those with 5 posts.

People who want to come on the forum and instantly by and sell don’t care about telling people their life story in their first post.

This way people will need to make a first post elsewhere.

 

[Bosco]

I'm curious what kind of protection you guys already have in place and how the scammers are circumventing it.

Do you geolocate the IP address and block anyone with an IP out of the country from registering? Do you compare the IP address to known VPN IP addresses and block those from registering? Do you have an email verification that doesn't allow the known temp "10 minute email" domains?

Is there a modern captcha on the registration page that bots can't circumvent? Is there an anti bot question on registration like "which of these is not a fruit? a) apple b) pear c) potato d) orange"? Once you make it where computer programs can't sign up, then you are left with real life humans who will try and sign up. These will be people who are either in the USA or using a VPN IP that is not showing up on the public lists.

If they're trying that hard, then no minimum post is going to stop them. You can make it a real PITA by locking new accounts down to a single subforum and forcing them to post a bio and interact with trusted members of the forum before releasing them from the quarantine but that's going to prevent a lot of legit new accounts from joining.

This isn't the only vbulletin forum out there that does buy/sell/trade. It's not the only one that is targeted by scammers. Instead of reinventing the wheel, look at what other message boards are doing.

For instance, the official vbulletin 4.x addons has a tag for "anti-spam options" https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=245

You can go here https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/search.php?f=245 and then filter the Find Threads with Prefix option to the anti-spam prefix and see all of the topics with that tag. There's a lot out there that will be more helpful than raising the minimum post count.