Do not ban for current offsite activities...

I continuously read this thread and like the position it is currently at.

I think the deep and soft interest should be defined here. It can either be acquiring knowledge or applying or a combination.

Lets get to the most obvious:

If someone "hacks" someone by giving them a fake keylogger - This is bannable (in another forums)

If someone asks how keyloggers work and ask for one? - This is soft?

More input?

 

I just like what I posted. If it is against the rules of another site that they have done something wrong on, and were banned for it, then ban them here too. It removes grey areas which are bad.

 

I think I misunderstood at first: by 1,2, and 3, I take it you mean all three must apply simultaneously?

If so, I thoroughly disagree.

I think there is room for discussion of such issues before the user joins Sythe.org. After all, there are things that are normalized and accepted in different cheating atmospheres, and under such circumstances, people may not feel like there's anything wrong with their actions. (Ripping music is a popular example. Technically it's illegal, but the fact that no one really cares makes people more willing to do it themselves.)

Still, once someone becomes a member here, there is no excuse.

It's stupid to take someone who has been socialized to accept phishing, allow them to continue their actions offsite, and expect, somehow, for them to feel like they're doing something wrong by emailing phishers to our own members. That's simply not how morality works. We define, through experience, our own limits of what we are willing, and not willing to do, and something as minor as the particular URL one happens to be on has little impact on said limits. At best, the fact that it's against our rules will only determine their willingness to be caught.

 

The feeling I have is that actually phishing or what not on a site will be frowned upon no matter where it occurs. However, the discussion of it may not be. Phishers, hackers, crackers, Ddosers, etc, do not need active Sythe accounts to harm Sythe members. My feeling is that banning people who seem to be taking interest in these potentially harmful activities will only put Sythe members at more risk. If they get mad at us by being banned, they will be more likely to seek revenge against us. The rules can not be made in order to create some perfectly moral member base as Sythe is filled with mostly teenagers, who by nature experiment with things all the time. Smoking pot won't end your life so why should asking how phishing works end your Sythe life?

 

I don't understand the separation you're proposing. First you seem to be prohibiting the actual use of phishers, but then you offer an argument in favor of 'experimentation'.

Clearly, when people ask about phishing, their goal is to try it. So, at the least, I'd like to break down the illusion that there's a difference between talk and action.

That said - and referring to your rules on the first page - should we only care if we find a member banned on the website they learned how to phish from? Should we care if we find them banned for phishing on any forum that disallows it? And if we know, that by asking about phishing, they're going to end up banned somewhere (or that if they don't, it's only for lack of being caught), then what difference does it make that we have the link to their profile to prove it?

It seems entirely arbitrary to say that talking about phishing (and, implicitly, actually phishing) should be okay, as long as we don't find out where they did it.

As it stands, Sythe.org's official position against phishing (and the knowledge that many of its members are ardently against), is a genuine deterrent from people trying it. If that position changes, and phishing is no longer stigmatized, then people will act differently as a result.

Put another way, Fagex wasn't overrun with phishers because everyone who did it gravitated there. It was overrun with phishers because, by allowing it, Fagex actually increased the number of people who were willing to try it. Since morality is socially constructed, there's a sense, in our minds, that if so many people support it, how can it be wrong?

Same thing with weed. It's the "everyone does it" argument that people employ to justify its use. (Incidentally, there are some urban cultures where cocaine-selling and gang rape are justified with the same logic.)

I'm no idealist, and I agree that we cannot create a perfectly moral member base, but the rules do actually have an impact on our user's actions, and intentionally driving down the standard doesn't strike me as the best idea.

 

Offtopic: You seem like the only person that can formulate a real argument.

Ontopic: Firstly, I do not believe that Sythe can hold Sythe members responsible for actions that take place off of the forums, with no relation to the forums. Secondly, you are stating that discussing phishers means that the user will end up phishing, which is just not true. It increases the chances that they will phish, but does not make it certain that they will. This makes it so that discussions that have no relation to Sythe cause members to be banned when they would have done no harm to Sythe or its members.

Secondly, deterrents make people not want to get caught. People are less likely to phish on Sythe itself as there is a much higher chance that they will be found out. However, they will not stop discussing or phishing offsite. Instead they will simply better hide their identifies so that Sythe does not find out. Even if Sythe does figure it out and they are banned, they will most likely ban evade. Both of these situations make it so that Sythe does not know who the phisher is which puts Sythe member in more danger than if the staff knew that a person was interested in phishing.

In relation to this issue, there are two extreme stances. One being that Sythe rules apply on Sythe and Sythe alone. The other is Sythe rules apply everywhere, real life and on the forums and you can be banned for anything. The current policy is the banning extreme and a compromise in the middle may be more beneficial to Sythe.

 

Right now people get banned all the time for talking about phishing on other sites that allow it. They shouldn't be banned here for that. But if they scammed on another site and got banned there for it they should be.

 

I maintain that the difference between talk and action is trivial, even if not everyone who asks about phishing actually does it. Maybe they can't figure out how it's done, are unwilling to spend money for the supplies needed, or have some other artificial impediment. What matters is that, by the time someone asks how to phish, they've overcome the one barrier that truly matters: the moral one that dictates that it's 'wrong,' and therefore nothing they'd seriously consider doing.

The term 'gateway drug' doesn't apply just to the craving for a bigger fix - it's related to the fact that, if you emerge yourself in drug culture even for something like weed, you build up the contacts to obtain harder stuff, are more likely to exchange experience stories with people who have tried harder stuff, and, finally, by accepting weed, you've already torn down the 'all drugs are bad' mantra that society teaches its youth. (Which isn't to say I agree that there's a problem with weed, but that's besides the point).

In a similar fashion, most sites people go to to discuss phishing are more 'liberal' when it comes to other issues: the only two sites I can think of at the moment (gg and hackforums) also promote keyloggers/hacking, off-site-scamming, and everything else that goes with it. Moreover, the majority of people who do one are also engaged in the others, since all are morally normalized and accepted to the same extent.

In sum, people who become members of other sites to discuss phishing have not only implicitly accepted a form of scamming, but are generally also being exposed to egocentric cultures that approve of just about any form of scamming in general.

Deterrents do make it so that people will not want to get caught, but at least it enforces the notion that they're doing something wrong in the first place, and that it is something that requires being hidden.

Either way, I'm pretty sure everyone knew Atomic was into phishing before he sent out mass email phishers to the memberlist. You don't reduce exposure by being aware of something if you don't frown upon the action in the first place (ie, a nice guy and otherwise trusted member isn't going to be turned away from staff just because he talks about phishing elsewhere, if you've already decided that it's okay to do so). There's nothing you can do to stop people who have already decided they want to phish; you can only help prevent others from wanting to start.

The stance the forum has taken is the Sythe rules that matter (anything that we perm ban for here: including scamming) do apply everywhere (real life included: shoplifting being the popular example). That doesn't mean "you can be banned for anything" - obviously, we don't really care about parking violations.

 

should ban for offsite rule's simple fact being if they scam offsite they can and most probly will scam onsite given the chance if the price is right for them

the kids be addicted to scamming but other offsite stuff i dont know much about im a noooob but thats my take on scammers