General feedback on scammers, extra categories and revenue

[ruskitseller]

Dear all,

 

The modern age is upon us, and sadly airsoft is not immune from the scammers that inhabit it. I wonder if it could be worth implementing some type of screening upon sign up to at least stop bots and stem the flow.  New sign up information could require:

• A captcha for registration (I have a feeling that some of the scam accounts on here were actually bots)
• Country of origin (some plug ins will automatically detect this) and possibly ban IP addresses from outside of the UK although VPN's may have an issue here
• Answering a basic question upon join up such as "What was the first airsoft site you played at?" or "What does UKARA stand for?" - its really just a bit more work that the scammer will have to do, or perhaps the alternative wold work better, but use up more admin recourses in that that;
• All sign ups must be approved by an admin
• Making new sign ups have to comment somewhere on the forum or make an introduction post (whatever they write will probably give an indication of if it is a scammer or not) and have passed 2 days before being able to view and respond to the classifieds. Some of the US airsoft forums do this
• Require email verification upon sign up (not sure if the site does this already - I can't remember signing up for the site myself!)
• Cyber crime is on the rise - consider implementing a security position internally on the staff team, one of the roles being to report scammer email addresses appropriately. The NCSC encourage people to report scamming email addresses here https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams/report-scam-email
• Alternatively to that - it could be worth implementing an internal process where scamming email addresses are submitted to community led scam databases such as this https://www.scamdb.net/index.html - this tool could also be used by said internal sec to vet sign ups
• Perhaps add a caveat on sign up that says scammers will be reported to the authorities, it may put some off...but at the very least it shows that the forum takes it seriously which is reassuring for users
   

I also had some other ideas for website revenue generation and streamlining the classifieds. At the end of the day, revenue and income should not be dirty words and it merely supports the forum and its growth. Of course all paid for ideas would be optional and top of what already exists:

• Introduce an optional charge of £2 for forum users to put up another 5 ads after they have reached the maximum of 10
• Add a premium section on top of "What's New", "Random Adverts" and "Expiring soon" and then have a "Premium Listing" option when putting the advert on the website where users can pay £2 - this then keeps those paid for ads along the premium bar for 7 days
• Consider adding a wanted section per category e.g one for Gas, one for electric and one for spring. This allows those wishing to sell an easier way to filter according to what they have and thus better target the "wanted" market
• Consider adding an "SMG" category to "Gas" and "Electric". This will take away the confusion of choice in terms of users posting it in "Rifles" or "Other". I imagine an SMG category would be popular
• Consider expanding the AFUK patches for sale - introduce other designs e.g anniversaries 
• Consider allowing patches to be paid for via paypal - its the most popular and widely used platform in the UK with a monthly traffic of over 50 million. 81% of online vendors in the UK accept it. I was going to buy a patch but don't use skrillex and its a faff to find my credit card lol, well one of them! Paypal however - easy. TL;DR- I predict an uptake in patch sales if you allowed paypal.
• Charge £2 for a forum name change - I would pay that haha! For a month after the name change - a sort of caveat name plate could be seen below the name that says "formally known as ...." This could then disappear after a month so that people do not use it for SERE lol!
   

Other general ideas:

• Consider adding in a team recruitment section in "Other Airsoft Stuff" - this will attract more teams and thus users

 

Many thanks for reading!

Cheers

Edited October 30 by ruskitseller

[DanBow]

3 hours ago, ruskitseller said:

• Consider expanding the AFUK patches for sale - introduce other designs e.g anniversaries 
• Consider allowing patches to be paid for via paypal - its the most popular and widely used platform in the UK with a monthly traffic of over 50 million. 81% of online vendors in the UK accept it. I was going to buy a patch but don't use skrillex and its a faff to find my credit card lol, well one of them! Paypal however - easy. TL;DR- I predict an uptake in patch sales if you allowed paypal.

 

There are enough patches for sale but once you've paid for one, it doesn't arrive and the mods ignore every attempt to contact them about it. Adding more will make no difference.

[Skara]

4 hours ago, ruskitseller said:

• Country of origin (some plug ins will automatically detect this) and possibly ban IP addresses from outside of the UK although VPN's may have an issue here

This would make me (and others) unable to enjoy the forums as foreigners

 

4 hours ago, ruskitseller said:

• Making new sign ups have to comment somewhere on the forum or make an introduction post (whatever they write will probably give an indication of if it is a scammer or not) and have passed 2 days before being able to view and respond to the classifieds. Some of the US airsoft forums do this

This NEEDS to have a "message check" feature that makes sure the post is NOT identical to all the posts made to this day, I've seen a fair few scam/spam accounts create random threads with random messages copy-pasted from somewhere.

For a time we saw quite a few people called John who had this 1911 that was misbehaving, while at the same time leaving a poorly hidden link to a Far East slot machine website.

 

In general though, if you are getting scammed you kinda deserve it.

Practices like asking for money via bank transfer or paypal friends & family should be immediate and very recognisable signs of someone who's not really interested in your item..

Also those who ask general questions like "is the item working?" or "does it fit me?" should tell loads about whoever you're engaging with.

Edited October 30 by Skara

[ruskitseller]

1 hour ago, Skara said:

This NEEDS to have a "message check" feature that makes sure the post is NOT identical to all the posts made to this day, I've seen a fair few scam/spam accounts create random threads with random messages copy-pasted from somewhere.

For a time we saw quite a few people called John who had this 1911 that was misbehaving, while at the same time leaving a poorly hidden link to a Far East slot machine website.

 

In general though, if you are getting scammed you kinda deserve it.

Practices like asking for money via bank transfer or paypal friends & family should be immediate and very recognisable signs of someone who's not really interested in your item..

Also those who ask general questions like "is the item working?" or "does it fit me?" should tell loads about whoever you're engaging with.

Yeah some kind of spam checker for duplicate messages would help.

 

Hmmm I don't agree that people (and I do not mean this pejoratively) who are less intelligent or savvy deserve to be victims of theft personally. But It is a tricky one though, because we cannot stop someone from sending money using f&f via paypal or bank transfer. Also, some scammers are fairly convincing and constantly changing how they engage in scams.

 

Cheers! 

Edited October 30 by ruskitseller