Scammers

[Madhouse]

Just throwing this out in a devil’s advocate kind of way:

 

If you enforced a post count and a scammer abides, would we then be giving them some kind of false legitimacy? A questionable PM from a new user is a slam dunk, you might think a bit longer if they’ve got 50 posts.

 

All buyer beware at the end of the day though.

[Jez_Armstrong]

As much as you can try and lock down a forum and add as many hoops as possible for a scammer to jump through, someone who knows they can get free money from people will become an athlete at jumping through hoops. 

 

The best defence is you becoming suspicious of absolutely everyone you don't know personally. 

 

If someone came up to you in the street and said they would give you a watch in 3 days of you gave them £200, would you hand over the cash, no of course you don't, but some people do, that's why this guy is sending everyone a Pm because 1/10 people will bite but wouldn't you feel a bit more comfortable knowing that money has a string attached to it and if things went sour you can pull it back?

 

That's what PayPal goods and services is.... 

 

I don't know how many times I've seen posts from people saying they sent some random person money through friends and family or via bank transfer because the seller wanted to save on fees, those fees are there to protect you... Not them 

 

I don't wish to toot my own horn or jinx it but in the 20 years I've been playing and the 700+ guns and countless bits of equipment I've bought no one has ever scammed me but maybe that's because my due diligence is so high, before I send anyone money I read their full profile, I scan all their posts, I see what guns they've sold in the past, I read all their feedback, I see how long they have been in the site, I try and find their Facebook profile..... I want every single bit of information I can find before I hand my hard earned money over to a stranger and if that person is new to the site but genuinely might have that product, I'll ask them to take a photo of the item with them holding a can of spam.... A literal can of spam, you want my money, go buy a can of spam, is that over the top? Maybe but it's my fucking money 

 

(this came up from a car forum over 15 years ago, guy claimed he had some super sick car and no one believed him and someone threw out this stupid idea to hold up a can of spam next to his car and he did, forum blew up, spam photo became a thing to prove said item was yours) 

 

Scammers will always come and go, you'll never get rid of them but please do everything you can to cover your arse by using G&S

[Rogerborg]

3 hours ago, Madhouse said:

If you enforced a post count and a scammer abides, would we then be giving them some kind of false legitimacy?

 

A fully-fledged bastard of a good point.

 

[Tackle]

The way I see it, a country or regional ban would potentially lock out a large percentage of scammers, & it's not that drastic when you consider the number of viable posts we get from the likes of china/india/Russia etc etc, pretty much zero.

Then add add a post count before classifieds access is granted, again that would deter many, but even if some are persistent & attempt to spam posts or waffle about airsoft, it's likely we'd soon weed them out by their lack of knowledge & possible poor grammar  ?.

That then just leaves the relatively small number of uk based scammers who play, or at least used to,  think Steven Glennie etc, who may have the knowledge, but probably not the persistence to try to accomplish the post count access, but it's a lot of work to get there knowing your first dodgy deal would probably get you banned & back to square one, which will hopefully be made more difficult by members keeping their wits about them when it comes to paying for stuff, ALWAYS GOODS & SERVICES VIA PAYPAL, & if its swaps, insist that whoever has the lower feedback needs to send their item first. 

[Enid_Puceflange]

It’s about to get worse!

 

Discord has banned the sales of anything gun shaped!

Our classifieds are going to get busier!! 

Edited August 18 by Enid_Puceflange

[Jez_Armstrong]

3 hours ago, Enid_Puceflange said:

It’s about to get worse!

 

Discord has banned the sales of anything gun shaped!

Our classifieds are going to get busier!! 

Any clarification on this? 

 

I run an airsoft discord 

[Enid_Puceflange]

1 hour ago, Jez_Armstrong said:

Any clarification on this? 

 

I run an airsoft discord 

All of the servers I am a member of have ceased the sales channels
 

https://discord.com/safety/dangerous-regulated-goods-policy-explainer
 

[Jez_Armstrong]

Best bin my section off then

[Cannonfodder]

With VPNs being so common would country or region specific bans actually do anything?

[Tackle]

13 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

With VPNs being so common would country or region specific bans actually do anything?

Possibly not, maybe the less technically minded jizzbuckets will be kept out ?, but then the post count limit would hopefully befuddle those using vpn's,  to be fair whoever thought that an airsoft forum would be a good place to offer the services of a witchdoctor & his potions, but doesn'tstop them trying.

Multi layered is the way to go, just like irl, make your place look more secure & less attractive than your neighbours,  so the scrotes go elsewhere........send em to zin, they need the business lol 😆 

 

[Cannonfodder]

Tbh I hadn't even considered the voodoo witch doctor stuff as to me that's more of an annoyance as it's pretty obvious they're bullshit and they usually just spam all sections rather than sticking to the classifieds. Admin do a pretty good of removing them quickly too but if they're unable to spam the forum anyway then that can only be a good thing.

 

I agree that any approach needs to be multi layered and there's no 1 magic solution. As I've posted before the best deterrent to scammers is for all users to use common sense, stay vigilant and, possibly most importantly, call it out when they smell bullshit.

[MrTea]

12 hours ago, Enid_Puceflange said:

It’s about to get worse!

 

Discord has banned the sales of anything gun shaped!

Our classifieds are going to get busier!! 

Annoyed that this has happened. I'm in a few Discords and all but one of the smaller ones have suspended their sales channels. They were a great place to hang out and casually chat with people or ask for advice. I suspect without the sales channels being active they'll die off pretty quickly.

[GenuineGerman]

Isn’t scamming the second oldest ocuppation? 
 

Sadly money brings out the worst in people. I’ve been lucky I think but I always try to communicate with people offline as well, if they have a mobile number great but not always fool proof. 
 

I think the ratings system works well and if people actually contribute on the forum is a green flag. 
 

But as always buyer beware, do your due diligence and if it’s too good to be true it likely is. 

[rj1986]

Forums to facebook to discord back to forums.

Edited August 19 by rj1986

[Tackle]

9 hours ago, rj1986 said:

Forums to facebook to discord back to forums.

Yeah, all them two-faced bastards that crawled off to fb cos it was "better", their worse than the people's popular front of judea......

[NiallT]

He's at it again...

 

Hasn't even changed the email

Edited September 1 by NiallT

[Lastronin]

Another scammer for the list admin 👍

[proffrink]

  Not going to add any sort of post requirement before accessing the classifieds and probably never will. Whilst this does leave users slightly more vulnerable to scammers the classifieds are the primary access point for new members (some of who eventually become frequent contributors to the remainder of the forum). I'll also add that the relative success of AFUK's classifieds is that it allows buyers to contact sellers far more easily than some similar platforms (which then translates into items selling more quickly). If a change was made to accessing the classifieds it would probably work for an extended period of time but there would be a drop-off in new listings on the classifieds in the medium to long term which would precipitate as less content overall on the forums. Facebook and Discord are not only popular because everybody is already on there (in many cases multiple times a day) but because you don't even have to think about doing any amount of legwork before contacting a potential buyer or seller. Closing the gap between forums and big services like this starts at having as little extra work for new users as is feasible.

 

The above is also why care has to be taken before adding new sign up requirements in order to help prevent spamming (I'm sure everyone is familiar with just how much of this we get). There is currently a cap on how much 'content' you can post/create before you reach a certain account age - this is intended to be one of a number of small things that frustrate people spamming and scamming at scale but it is a bit of an arms race with no solution that doesn't come at the cost of significantly lower new registrations.

  

On 15/08/2024 at 00:05, Herrgh said:

 

We definitely need some sort of filter to stop immediate access to the classifieds. This could work.

 

Alternatively go the SomethingAwful route and charge money for Account Registration. A mere £2.50, for example, would go a long way towards heading off scamming types, and defray some of AFUK's operating costs. But that comes with the disadvantages of putting off genuine casual potential users and needing to set up some way to handle money/personal info. So I like @Enid_Puceflange's idea.

Did consider a 'bond' at one point of a similarly small amount which would be refunded after a specific period of time but this comes with loads of real life liabilities. Also as above any non-refundable small contribution for buyers and sellers would probably be catastrophic for fresh sign ups I'm afraid.

  

On 16/08/2024 at 16:41, Tackle said:

Very true, & regarding "buyer beware", I wonder how many buyers that get scammed, primarily on here as it's probably the busiest UK forum, are the types who just sign up for the classifieds access, without reading other threads, in particular the horror stories & warnings regarding scams & sending money ?.

One might argue that those are the people that bring it on themselves, & are technically the "enablers" that the scammers rely upon ?.

I am likely going to add a new notification to make this more prominent to new members. As it stands there are two notifications that you receive as a new member and it's likely that adding a third won't help. There is of course the floating permanent notification at the top of the classifieds with a warning and some very basic guidelines. Any concise recommendations to add to this list of tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

On 18/08/2024 at 13:12, Enid_Puceflange said:

All of the servers I am a member of have ceased the sales channels
 

https://discord.com/safety/dangerous-regulated-goods-policy-explainer
 

I've asked for clarification on this but for now the forum does not notify of new classifieds on Discord as we're probably not allowed to even link to new listings under these new guidelines.

 

On 18/08/2024 at 16:40, Cannonfodder said:

With VPNs being so common would country or region specific bans actually do anything?

Although it's not exactly foolproof prevention of anybody who does a little bit of research on this (thankfully most scammers seem to be pretty thick) we do screen IPs (for anti-spam purposes more than anything) in order to catch VPNs etc. (to the degree that it is feasible to do so).

  

On 17/08/2024 at 08:47, Jez_Armstrong said:

 

That's what PayPal goods and services is.... 

 

 

I don't know how many times I've seen posts from people saying they sent some random person money through friends and family or via bank transfer because the seller wanted to save on fees, those fees are there to protect you... Not them

Agree wholeheartedly. This is the first recommendation in the list recommendations given at the top of the classifieds for a reason. Anybody looking to save a couple of quid on a transaction of hundreds of pounds with somebody they don't know is asking for trouble.

[JuggyUK]

Also got one, thought I would send an email and see if I can gather more information. Haven't received a reply yet though.

 

 

[Jez_Armstrong]

We really need to sign this dickhead Scott up for alot of spam emails.... 

[Enid_Puceflange]

7 hours ago, Jez_Armstrong said:

We really need to sign this dickhead Scott up for alot of spam emails.... 

 

Or an address to send him a postal order, but instead send him a party popper filled with shite

[Cannonfodder]

There's some guy on YouTube who leaves fake packages on his doorstep for people to steal.  The boxes are spring loaded to fire glitter and fart spray when opened. We need to send this guy something similar 

Edited September 5 by Cannonfodder

[Jez_Armstrong]

20 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

There's some guy on YouTube who leaves fake packages on his doorstep for people to steal.  The boxes are spring loaded to fire glitter and fart spray when opened. We need to send this guy something similar 

Can it fire COVID at him? 

[Cannonfodder]

Probably. I think the bloke on YouTube sticks with glitter and fart spray to keep things legal 

[JuggyUK]

1 hour ago, Cannonfodder said:

There's some guy on YouTube who leaves fake packages on his doorstep for people to steal.  The boxes are spring loaded to fire glitter and fart spray when opened. We need to send this guy something similar 

Mark Rober, he's a bloody legend.