Account/Skype Hacking Notifications

People are still continuously scammed by hacked Skypes and Sythe accounts.

Can we come up with a more meaningful and noticed manner of combating this?

My proposal is simple;

REQUIRE ALL SHOPS TO HAVE 2FA SKYPES AND ALL OF THEIR WORKERS TO HAVE THE SAME. If they do not, they are held accountable for all customer losses between loss of control and the fixing of the issue.

A mass PM sent to all members when a Skype is hacked. Then there are no confusions on "Well this was not conveighed to me.", or "It was excluded in the particular section I was in". Etc.

The current system of posting the same old sticky, unbolded, same color as all other stickies is consistently not working.

Just drafting this quick for input as i walk out, add anything additional as I will later as well.

 

Unfortunately, this is the first thing Gun has said that i'll support... smh.. Support.
A simple mass message would help a lot of people know, and a lot of scams can be removed from this.
Even a "News" Section that updates us on users that have been compromised ect, It's very hard to find the stickies sometimes.

 

a pm isnt gonna happen, that's annoying as anything. i think the current announcement section is fine, but maybe make it red or orange or something? kinda blends in with the current background

also, i like the idea of requiring shop owners to 2fa, but that will never be enforceable without hurting the market, so it most likely won't happen

 

I highly disagree, PMs (or a mass alert) IS the ONLY way to properly notify all active users of an important issue/announcement. Announcements repeatedly fail to protect users and have since 2010, I was only staff for like a month but I personally handled many scam reports of people trading with announced hacked users. The current system (and the past system) did not work.

I don't know about requiring the 2FA thing either, Sythe has stressed that this is a free market and there is a responsibility for both traders (seller and buyer) to try to go about it securely.

 

not everyone participates in the market and wants more pms

and re: 2fa, definitely bring it up with richard. i agree that it would be a better world, but how many people would go to a different site if they had to 2fa before even using sythe? maybe it's smaller than i'm thinking...

 

Sure, an alert would work better then a PM but how exactly are 3-5 PMs (at most) a month going to negatively affect users?

If it protects newcomers from getting scammed by hackers then it's worth it. It could even be a weekly PM (if needed) of all the announcements for the week.

 

Sending a PM is the only indefinite way to reach every Sythe member. All it takes is a click on the message, those caring will read it; those not so caring will just click out of it to get rid of the notification.

2fa Simply requires making an Authenticator based www.hotmail.com account and registering it to skype. Takes all of 2 minutes; from there they can transfer contacts and use clownfish to send mass messages and requests to their previous contact list. It's not that hard of a transition.

If 2fa isn't required then they need to be held liable for all scams during that period regardless of the announcement.

What is more important? Them losing a couple sales in a transition period or losing lots of big customers in a day to a hacking?

 

I support 2FA being required for all gold sellers that have been previously hacked on Skype forcing everyone to do it is just not fair, innocent people who have never been hacked shouldn't have to lose hundreds possibly thousands of contacts, I also support alerts for announcements too.

 

. im gonna have to agree with gun on this, Edit the Announcement so its bigger / stands out more. if somebody big is hacked. then the current system doesnt really help, hardly ever notice it, and everybody scrolls down straight away, so its easy to miss the way it is. making it bigger / making people want to read it more before scrolling down.

honestly if your not looking for it you dont even notice it
as for 2FA how about requiring all Big Sellers/buyers/MM's to setup 2fa.
it might hurt the market. but it will IMPROVE the market in the long run, alot of people can get scammed easily, and for something as simple as 2fa. maybe even make a new minirank to reward everyone who has it.

 

Agree with a mass PM/Alert, but this should only be happening when a staff member's, OMM's and/or a very active member's (3-4k+ posts and has a lot of reputation/vouches) Skype is hacked.

So that would be like no more than one notification per 1-2 months.

 

Forcing 2fa is a quick way to damage the market, if people choose not to 2fa they will pay the price(Much as I did), most shop owners can afford it and just move on.

I think I recall R2anne's skype/accounts being hacked multiple times before, same with oblivionrage.

I don't support requiring 2fa.

I also don't support spamming us all with a message everytime someones skype is hacked.

I do support making the announcement more noticeable.

 

hm, ok, fair points... i suppose the pm notification is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

universal 2fa is another point though. seriously, ask richard what he thinks. nothing's gonna happen without his approval

 

@Sythe
Would requiring site employees to have a 2fa'd Skype too much to ask? Especially since returning customers could just pm on skype not knowing it's hacked

 

I support making the announcements much more prominently visible. I could swear before they were clickable and you were directed to a thread of all the recent announcements. I don't know if this is still here or where it is.

The PM's seem an ok alternative, however if you don't give a crap for certain peoples skypes, if you're not in the market, if you're a DNT, it would be daft to get PM's constantly for people's skypes being hacked. In the long run it would be more beneficial I guess.

The 2FA for skypes would also hurt a lot of the market. It makes sense to have as a precautionary, but it's meant to be a free market, (buyer&sellers) are expected to understand the security and actively look for announcements that tells you a persons skype is hacked etc. Aren't people already liable even with an announcement?

In addition multiple people just contact via skype and tend to trust you there on out; so the whole PM system is somewhat flawed in that sense.

 

PM's- I'm sure there is an option somewhere for an admin to start a conversation with all members. This is the ONLY way to reach all members effectively. If you do not open a conversation the notification remains there which would annoy any normal human being, requiring all parties to "Read" it.

An announcement, regardless of how you color or resize it will only be available to those that leave the the main page.

Let's say a previous customer is just getting on for the day, opens up all of his sites etc. and goes to message the gold seller. Guess what? He opened Sythe and saw the notification that said skype was hacked and alternatively used their live chat and blocked that Skype. Even if there are only a few instances of this, it's a success. Again, just an instance where it could be successful on top of an announcement.

In end, keeping it to just an announcement is going to continue to have a very limited effect.

So instead of taking a hit for a few days transitioning over to a 2fa'ed skype now R2 Anne owes $512 to ONE person out of who knows how many others were scammed... Tell me how this being a normal occurrence among shops is a positive? You're allowing things to happen and just hopefully be fixed later, rather than creating a preventative action.

 

+1, I 've been scammed by hacked skypes especially yday -.-

 

I like this idea.

And if not a mass PM at least an alert

 

Or maybe just when you press on this users profile it shows like a " warning this account may be hacked" you kno?

 

It needs to be direct to the individual, not something you need to go searching for.

 

I would be fine with a Mass PM if you opt into the PM system (check a box on your profile that has "PM me announcements?" As for actual design preferences, I could support having a slight design change to make it more eye-popping; but if this is the case, the option to hide the announcement should be there.

Requiring 2FA for all sellers is too big of a stretch and as already posted, would likely hurt the market; however, there may be a happy medium and require sellers with multiple employees, or sellers that do over X amount of business, or some other stipulation to incorporate 2FA into their accounts.