New Ideas? Possibly Revelations?

I have two different suggestions I have which I believe would be very effective against the ongoing threat of scamming.

First Suggestion: A possible team organized to fight the threats of scamming. While most know some scams cannot be foreseen, however, most scams are very basic and let's face it most "scammers" aren't very smart. The reason why most people are scammed is because they may want an item so desperately: that they are not patient, they do not ask important questions, they go first, or 50 / 50 without a middleman.

This team would browse the Black Market area of the forums looking for suspicious threads. I.e, threads in which the seller and buyer are about the make a transaction and the buyer is going first. Threads in which the seller has already been accused of scamming, or doing something against the rules. Threads, with sellers who may have a low post count.

A possibility is to eventually have the team, monitor trades via chat as they might assist the buyer(s) and, or seller(s) to make the trade more secure. If a user is to be scammed, a member of the team will have sufficient evidence to instantly ban that scammer, or have the scammer banned.

Be Patient: Talk to the person you are wishing to make a purchase from, get to know them and look for gaps in their "character", or the person(s) them selves. Look for information that contradicts itself, for example: A seller tells you that they are from Australia, but right before you begin the trading process they tell you they are from Bulgaria. Contradictions like this will most likely mean that this particular trade is a scam.

Important Questions: Does your account have recovery questions? Does your account have a member, subscription status? What is the rs account name, so I may check for recovery questions and verify stats? May I see the rs account in game? All these questions are necessary to verify the security of the trade. In my opinion if you do not at least ask these questions, you deserve to be scammed.

Verify: After actually asking the questions you should verify the authenticity of your seller(s) "word". You may do this by checking for recovery questions, Go to http://www.runescape, Click "Recover a lost password", under Account Recovery. Type the username of the rs account you wish to check and then select "I lost my password" for type of query". The Questions to the Recovery Questions should read, "Recovery 1", "Recovery 2", "Recovery 3", "Recovery 4", "Recovery 5", or something to that extent.

Trading Process: When trading ALWAYS request an official middleman. If you wish to do 50 / 50 this can also be done with a middleman, but never do a trade without one. If you are to disregard this advice, you can at least always, offer to do 50 / 50.

Take notice: If you refuse to use a middleman the trade will more than likely be a scam about 85% of the time. Doing 50 / 50 without a middleman will reduce the chance of a scam about 10 percent to 75%. If you chose to go first, it will be a scam more than likely 98% of the time.

---+ Advice +---

SELLING: Always select an official middleman to do a trade, but remember you have to pay the fees it's usually about 10%. NEVER go first in a trade, if you are to go first make sure you can in some way recover an account if the trade goes stale. Get to know the person you are selling with, look for gaps in their "character", see if they are trustworthy in your opinion. A very highly respectable forums user is less likely to scam. However, do not judge entirely how much a person can be trusted on their forum awards, or post count.

BUYING: ALWAYS select an official middleman to do the trade, refuse to pay the fees unless you wish to as the seller is supposed to pay them. If you are to be scammed at a later date, you'll wish you didn't. Mostly everything for buyer security has been said already earlier in the post and the paragraph after this one.

Another big reason why people are scammed is they place to much trust in the fact that someone may have the title "small amounts donator", or a large post count. A scammer, is in the game for money the possible loss of a forums user name is well-worth it so don't be fooled. Not only this, but a username at sythe.org can be rebuilt very easily, which is potentially one of the problems with the current system.

Second Suggestion (Revelation): Accounts that user(s) wish to sell could be submitted to a "selling team", or moderators and administrators. The staff may then check the accounts in several manners to verify that they information given to them is correct.

Possible ways to check the account: Attempt to recover the account using souly account creation details the seller has submitted to the staff.

Attempt to recover the account using membership information the seller has submitted to the staff, if the account is, or has been a member.

Attempt to recover using souly IP and location related information.

Attempt to recover using internal information of the account, friends, etc.

Attempt to recover using past recovery questions, or first recovery questions, passwords that the seller has place on the account.

Hold the account for a certain duration of time, place new recoveries, to the extent that the seller no longer has access to the account, or login information.

A lot of recovery tasks can be grouped together to make account verification more time efficient.

All in all most of the statements I have made will at least cut down on scamming, if not entirely eliminate it all together.

You may be saying, "Submit my account to staff? WTF that will take to long", or "Why should I do that?". The answer is simply is not being scammed worth the wait? That is for you to decide, if you are against the idea of submitted your account to staff for verification. Perhaps, your intention isn't to sell your account as a truthful person? Take note: I am not saying that if you do not support my views that you are a scammer, I am merely saying that a vast majority of user(s) are scammer(s). Please post your opinions below, as I would greatly appreciate it.

 

First things first - I love your grammar. It actually led me to read the WHOLE post, and not just a small bit of it, and I thank you very much for that. Unlike what I usually do, since your grammar has been layed out fairly well, I shall try and do the same for you.

That may actually be a pretty good idea having people monitor the chat, but it would be a very boring job and would definetely require pay, just like when a person MMs. The bad part in this, though, would be that there would be very few of these people, due to the need of extremely high respect and trust needed for the job, and there are not many Sythe members who would meet all requirements. Many people would operate buisnesses monitoring unofficially, and it may result in the account (if applicable) being taken, or a pin being used before the buyer can actually enter it in.

You made an extremely good point about people being too anxious and rushing into trades, resulting in a 50/50 or they go first, which would be an easy scam unless the person is highly trusted and has done many trades before. I myself have been hasty, and I went first, resulting in the loss of about 800k, instead of a gain of 4m.

Another good point you brought up is the "Small Amounts Donater" rank, in which many people think this guarentees the person higher trust, just because they donated 1.5m to the community. They can easily get that back and more by scamming a person who thinks that if they have that rank, there's no way that person can scam.

I agree, being patient is very critical, otherwise you may get scammed being impatient. And you are correct, the majority of users are indeed scammers, although it may not appear that way. Even if someone is your real life friend, it doesn't mean they can't scam you. Also, some highly trusted users, with many vouches and tons of MM's done, have gone corrupt. Take El-Loco-Uno for instance. He was a guru, about 35+ vouches, just finished his Official MM applecation. He had to go and ruin it all by doing fake firecaping. He gave up all of his reputation and respect from others over measley little pixels.

In conclusion, you have indeed made several great points. We may have to test out the monitor idea to see if it would even be able to work though. Otherwise, very good post, and I look forward to seeing more replies.

 

Thank you for your post, it's nice to know someone out there shares similiar views to myself. I too, would like to see the monitor possibilites in action, if applicable. Any other posts and opinions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Feh. Stop trying to get yourself power?

Pathetic...

Oh, and trust me, you didn't earn any brownie points with this, honestly, no one cares...

 

Actually i found it a great post. Idiot.
@ Op, you covered some great points and hopefully some staff will consider this. Good job!

 

Interesting. I don't recall suggesting myself for some position. In fact, at one point, I suggested it might be able to be excuted by the forums current staff. As for the term "pathetic" being used you should consider.. also look up the term leecher and check for similarities.

Thank you for your support, slaveofthebeast.. always appreciated.

 

Why don't the Middle Men just do it for some extra fees.

 

Yea lolz that would take alot of work by the staff off lolz Finding a team and ect. But the only thing theses people need to know Is there are fake emails most people dont pay attention to or people dont add there msn on sythe its annoying so they need to also watch out for these things.

 

I suppose you have to consider if you'd rather have that 15 mill you've lost in scams, or have sythe put in some more work.

 

And the less scams Sythe has, the more people will join and the community will be a lot less scamful. If more people join and really like the site, then there will be many more donations which can go towards making the site better and adding new features. From there, the site will keep growing and growing until it will be the absolute best Runescape Cheating site around. More people = more trusted members = more staff = better community

So I agree, if we just put some more work into Sythe then there will be a lot less scammers (still many scam attempts though), and none of you will be complaining about "getting scammed 20m" or something close to that.

 

That is my thinking exactly.

 

You're first suggestion is sort of like what a middleman is for, but I like it, and the second one is real good. These are actually good suggestions, hopefully an admin or mod will look into this.