Messaging system (not a shoutbox[?])

Every market site has scammers. It's just the lack of intelligence on this site that leads to scams. I BLAME THE STICKYS FOR BEING INACCURATE

 

No one reads the stickies, and that's not our fault. Like you said, users are idiots, but a lot of the scams they fall for is their fault alone. It shouldn't be our job to babysit every single user, and hold their hands while they make trades.

If we care about stopping scamming, however, then we need to take a proactive stand and start to implement forum features that makes it impossible for scams to even occur in the first place.

 

Bump for exposure

 

I like the idea, though I'm not sure why such a popular site doesnt already have something like this in place. That comechat site Verts mentioned looked alright but does it go by username or can you chose w/e name you want?

I scimmed though some of the posts and magic mentioned proxys, isnt there a way to make accounts hiding their ip address, ring some kind of alarm?
For example someone logs on using a proxy, this sends some kind of report to SL. Not sure if that is possible, but was just an idea.

 

Just get one of them stupid Xit chats, or similar to that because you can have a private conversation in there,

 

Linking an IRC with a website database ain't that hard. There even are public modules out there that only allow you to register an IRC account if the given IRC nick & Password match the one from the website, if not, you just ain't getting in.

IRC is never used for trades, since Mods don't allow it :d.
They however could trade trough query and just ask a PM onsite to confirm,.. alot is possible
Each user has its own personal logs (on usage of a 3rd party client), however, general logging also is possible .

 

Cometchat is what sythe needs. It connects with the vbulletin database to grab all the usernames. You can only use your own username which is great for scam preventing. You can also save logs although I have never tried this.
I am on another trading site that uses this and it is a great tool..certainly for its price.

 

Still though, it's exceptionally easy to impersonate staff or market giants with the IRC, and not many users know how to connect since it wouldn't be readily available and really easy to use on the site, like the cometchat would be

@Danai, agreed, I can't believe we don't already have something like it... but I guess like it was said before, with a site our size it's probably very cumbersome. But if Grave is willing to help us out, I think it'd be a major step forward.

@iVenom, ew no. Horrendously insecure program, very buggy, very ugly, plus it's considered a "shoutbox" which we will never have.

@Travis, I don't know about that you'd have to ask probably Matthew since he seems to do a lot of the custom plugin stuff to the site.. or richard himself I guess too

 

It'll also be quite heavy on admins and moderators. It would probably be best to add 3 or 4 new chat moderators too. IIRC, on Cometchat, moderators can see messages by everyone somewhere...

 

Nah, You can only register a nick with the right useraccount and password from www.sythe.org

If you don't have a registered nick, you won't be able to enter the trade channel.

Just these 2 small thingys make it almost impossible to impersonate anyone else.

You could try register a mod's nick, but you would fail, because you don't have his sythe password. You could try to enter the trade channel with a mod's unregistered nick, but you won't be allowed in.

 

This. Some people are too damn stupid/naive and that allows the moronic scammers to stick around and profit.

 

You digress for the purpose of this thread though. It's commonly understood that you users are just too dumb to be safe. It's therefore my opinion that we need to make it harder for people to take advantage of you who can't figure it out on your own.

 

This thread is still dragging?

Everything said in the original post can be done in msn. Just sounds like an inattentive way to do things you would normally do.

 

Yeah you've posted your opinion already, but thanks for reiterating. It gives me a chance to restate *again* that the point of the suggestion is to curb scams by MSN impostors, and as that makes up a fair share of the composition of sythe's scammer methods, it's a necessary step to preventing users from taking advantage of stupid and careless traders.

This thread will KEEP going until its approved or denied

 

Sounds like a really neat feature... sure, most of this COULD be done on MSN. But then again you must remember that people are EXTREMELY lazy and may not have taken the screenshots when it mattered.

I understand we don't and really shouldn't hold peoples hand through this. But then again the people that don't get there hand held are the people that get scammed and then give Sythe.org a bad repuatation because they got scammed due to ignorance...

I support because this idea has so much win.

 

I always already aware I did, but didn't mention that.

How often do you get impostors on sythe? Not many, and being said that the large group of scammers are the actual person itself. Which I've stated already.

Fair share? It's not even more than 15%. Because you feel the need to save others from their own fault, that still want stop people from scamming. Heck, this will possibly gives scammers more of an opportunity to scam. I see and get so many pm's stating users do no own a messenger and because of this they're usually sided out, and most do have a messenger, just not the correct one.

IMAGINE! Imagine, those users having ease of access to any user they would like to do business with. Correct? Now say 90% of these people are scammers, which is accurate. So that means, more scam reports, and users being scammed.

There are so many clueless people coming on this site thinking it will be easy to buy an account or whatever they're looking for because of the amount of threads and the variety of accounts being sold. It's pretty much like heaven, but the downside to that is users looking for one goal and that goal is to scam. But you have to understand the site will always have scammers, even attempting to subdue them wouldn't even work.

I can still see people using messenger regardless of this being brought in, because that still may be an option for some users.

This all seems cool and all, but it's a waste of time and money, and more money since time is money.

Your only defensive is ease of access and stopping impostors. That's still not a big enough factor to make this big of a change.

Every market site will have scammers, will have impostors. You just have to try and make sure the user knows what he/her is doing before they go into any trade.

BEWARE OF CAPS LOCK.

WHICH IS WHY NEW USERS SHOULD BE REDIRECTED TO CERTAIN STICKIES WHEN FIRST ENTERING DIFFERENT MARKETS.

^.-

 

All you've said was already stated in this thread, so thank you for reiterating *again*, but as I'm on my phone, I don't feel like dredging up everything that's already been said on the topic.

I'll make this quick though
1) users don't read stickies no matter how many times we tell them to.
2) even if 15% is anywhere near accurate, that's 15% of scams we can stop. It's counterintuitive to say "oh that's such a small number of scammers lets just not do anything and let that 15% get away with it". If we can do something to fix it, then by god we'd better try. ONE scam on sythe via an impostor sometimes includes the transfer and thieving of 1 billion RSGP. 15% of a single scam is still a lot of GP by a lot of people's standards.
3) ease of access =\= more scams, just like you said, this suggestion is exactly like MSN, so of its like MSN then there wouldn't be a higher volume of scammers because the ease of use should be similar. The amount of scams prevented would easily overtake the supposed more scams that you've predicted.

 

Bump for exposure

 

I like this idea and hope it's implemented. I do have one question though. Are the marketing giants willing to use this feature given that the host receives chatlogs of their entire conversation?

 

It would have to be discussed if and after the idea is approved. There are hundreds of plugins for the cometchat, if there isn't already a privacy feature built in, I'm sure we can find one relatively easy. Do think this ALL needs to be ironed out before the official release of the IM system, I think it needs to have a certain grandeur and pomp circumstance as it would mark a very revolutionary turn in how the market works here on sythe. As such, everything would need to be perfect, every angle scrutinized for flaws, and every detriment to security to be fixed before it's released.

It's going to be a big project, but I wholly believe it'd be worth it, and once it's completed by everyone's standards, I think it'll be a great and necessary tool.


As a side note, there should be a desktop application available as well for pop-out conversations. I know there's a plug-in for one, I saw it on the cometchat webpage. It would be easier to use for market giants who may have MANY conversation windows open simultaneously