Silk Road forums
Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: sawtooth on December 26, 2011, 07:48 pm
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Okay so many of the forum posts I have read speak of LE on the site. Pretending to be buyers. I am new, would actually like to become a seller. But something is really bugging me about this site........
I have placed 4 orders. Both excellent, pack very well. shipped very fast. 2 different sellers. On repeat orders sellers used same return address's and packaging. SO If LE were on this site, ordered from these particular sellers, twice They would have the MO of the sellers. Couldn't they then contact the PO in that city and give them a description of the return address labels size, and details of postage and packaging. If i was watching for packages on a belt I would spot them. :(
I want to order again and sell actually but kind of leary. :-\ I can see how buyers can get caught but any sellers on Silk Road ever get caught??
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Okay so many of the forum posts I have read speak of LE on the site. Pretending to be buyers. I am new, would actually like to become a seller. But something is really bugging me about this site........
I have placed 4 orders. Both excellent, pack very well. shipped very fast. 2 different sellers. On repeat orders sellers used same return address's and packaging. SO If LE were on this site, ordered from these particular sellers, twice They would have the MO of the sellers. Couldn't they then contact the PO in that city and give them a description of the return address labels size, and details of postage and packaging. If i was watching for packages on a belt I would spot them. :(
I want to order again and sell actually but kind of leary. :-\ I can see how buyers can get caught but any sellers on Silk Road ever get caught??
honestly bro, i think the buyers are at more risk for getting caught. but then again, LE is more likely to go after the sellers. but if you smart about it, you should be fine. dont leave finger prints on anything or any DNA at all. im not experienced enough on selling to give really good advice on this though. maybe a reputable seller could chime in on this one. im sure there are other precautions. the main issue is the return address of course. obviously dont use yours or even any address anywhere near where you live. at the same time you dont wanna use an address thats REALLY far away.
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actually, if you use a return address with a fake name, or fake address, or both, it's more suspicious, theres a good article on here on the DEA profiling mail from USPS, and that's a pretty easy way to get yourself fucked by the feds. find the article, it's pretty good reading
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actually, if you use a return address with a fake name, or fake address, or both, it's more suspicious, theres a good article on here on the DEA profiling mail from USPS, and that's a pretty easy way to get yourself fucked by the feds. find the article, it's pretty good reading
i agree with nattaboy.
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Use a real address that isn't yours, but is within a few miles of the mailbox or post office you drop your package off at. You can find one on google maps.
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Okay so many of the forum posts I have read speak of LE on the site. Pretending to be buyers. I am new, would actually like to become a seller. But something is really bugging me about this site........
I have placed 4 orders. Both excellent, pack very well. shipped very fast. 2 different sellers. On repeat orders sellers used same return address's and packaging. SO If LE were on this site, ordered from these particular sellers, twice They would have the MO of the sellers. Couldn't they then contact the PO in that city and give them a description of the return address labels size, and details of postage and packaging. If i was watching for packages on a belt I would spot them. :(
I want to order again and sell actually but kind of leary. :-\ I can see how buyers can get caught but any sellers on Silk Road ever get caught??
honestly bro, i think the buyers are at more risk for getting caught. but then again, LE is more likely to go after the sellers. but if you smart about it, you should be fine. dont leave finger prints on anything or any DNA at all. im not experienced enough on selling to give really good advice on this though. maybe a reputable seller could chime in on this one. im sure there are other precautions. the main issue is the return address of course. obviously dont use yours or even any address anywhere near where you live. at the same time you dont wanna use an address thats REALLY far away.
I agree, buyers are at far more at risk on SR than sellers who remain pretty anonymous and untraceable. It would be easy for LE to setup as a seller and nab a load of unsuspecting buyers and do them for "intent to possess". That's a real worry and I'm wondering what SR is doing to tackle that threat or minimise it. Of course, I know experienced members on here say stick to trusted and well established vendors..but this isn't a static marketplace is it? New vendors are joining all the time and expanding the range of merchandise..some countries have very few vendors so new vendors are welcomed, but they still present a risk to buyers.
As for the PO Box address as a return address... I can't speak for US but I'm guessing its the same as UK...as far as LE goes, you may as well put your home address there, because one phone call and they will have it anyway from the Postal service sorting office.. if I were a vendor in this line of business operating on SR I definitely would not bother with return address and tracking bollox. I would just take the % of loss from scammers or lost orders rather than risk prison. If you're a big league vendor and those losses are significant, then maybe look at renting some safe business premises or a flat or something to keep your business operation separate from home address eh. Else alternatively do what some vendors do and split the risk with buyers... set your terms like 25%-50% refund for new buyers and 100% for established.. limit how many claims maybe. If you set your terms out clearly and buyers agree to them, that's that. They can't complain afterwards if they're out of pocket if an order gets lost. But then the vendor faces being called a selective scammer if people go to forum on lost orders..every business will lose about 5% or more of orders on international mail.. I know from experience myself in business. It's just a fact of life..some is down to dishonest people, maybe not the buyer, but someone in the delivery chain in dodgy countries.. have a massively high rate of losses for Italy for some reason in my business..maybe its the Mafia!
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Vendors are at a much higher risk of LE scrutiny. Granted if someone ordered 10 keys of cocaine and it gets caught in customs well, that buyer is definitely going to get unwanted attention.
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Vendors are OBVIOUSLY at WAY more risk. There's probably 20-30 buyers for every vendor. Get a buyer off of SR, who cares? Get a vendor off, and you've disrupted 20-30 buyers.
Think about how much the average buyer BUYS. Then think about how much the average seller SELLS.
It's not even close. Vendors are the targets...
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Use a fake but legit looking and valid return address that are located in the same ZIP code You are leaving your packages. Use local phone book to get the addresses, Google Maps or anything else. If You are using your own address or PO Box as a return address, You deserve Darwin award. Outgoing mail profiling are not a problem, unless some package are busted. Keep count of all orders shipped, the Escrow service will help in this. If one package are confiscated, change the shipping method.
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This is MadameBradley's method of finding a real return address with a matching name, address, and even phone number.
1. Determine the location of where you mail is sorted and processed. Do this by sending an envelope filled with a few blank sheets of paper to your own address. (Don't be silly and use your own return address - choose one that is far away but still within city limits.) Once you receive your letter in the mail look at the postmark to see where it was processed.
1A. If you live in a big city then your envelope will be processed in or very close to your city. You can use any location in your city, just not yours. Ex if you live in Detroit, you can use any Detroit address.
1B. If you live in a small town then it's likely that all mail will be picked up and transferred to the closest mail processing facility which is very likely in another city. It is very important that you choose a return address in the city that the mail is sorted and the postmark affixed. Ex You like in Baldwin City which has a population of 4,515 and is ~50 miles from the much larger Kansas City, Missouri. If your test letter is returned with a post mark from Kansas City then you know that anything you put in a blue box will be first transported to Kansas City and then sorted and processed for the first time. Therefore you must choose a return address from Kansas City or a nearby city whose mail is also sent to KC for sorting. I strongly advise you to choose a return address from Kansas City and keep using new ones because you want to avoid helping investigators narrow down their area of focus to your residence. If you were to label all your envelopes with return address in Baldwin City then you're practically asking for LE to put bracelets on you.
2. Now that you have determined which city or cities you will be getting your return addresses from go to google maps. Type in the city and take a look around. Find a decent area (ie avoid the "ghetto") with upscale residential or commercial buildings and zoom in all the way. In the first step I used an example in the USA, but this also works for Canadian vendors. I suspect other countries have similar services but I'm not familiar with any of them.
2A. USA example -I chose a location between a couple parks and has larger blocks than downtown, and when I zoomed in I was given this information: "2508 North 57 Drive, Kansas City, Kansas, United States Address is approximate "
Take that address and put it into the search bar like this: "2508 North 57 Drive Kansas City, MO, United States" and hit search. Now you have a ZIP code as well: 66104
2B. Canadian example - Let's take Vancouver, a really kickass place to live that I've only ever had the pleasure of visiting. Avoid the ghetto (the lower east side... I think). Let's go up to North Van which is a great place. I zoom in and it reads: "3420 Saint Georges Avenue, British Columbia, Canada Address is approximate." Search now for "3420 Saint Georges Avenue, British Columbia" and you will get a Postal Code. This is all you need.
3. Now we do a reverse search to use this information to find names and addresses.
3A. Go to www.411.com/search/FindNeighbors. Enter 2000 North 57 Drive in the Address field, and 66104 in the Zip Code field. Click find and voila, 74 complete addresses.
4A. Go to http://www.canada411.ca/search/address.html. Enter the Postal Code V7N 1V6 and click find. Bam, 3 addresses. (If you're wondering about the disparity of results from the US and Canada it is because postal codes encompass less addresses than Zip Codes. 3 is an unusually low number, but you get the idea.
Step 5 - Relax because you know a process to get as many legit return addresses as you'd like. Just don't get lazy and use the same one multiple times. Best practice is to use a return address once and to never reuse it.
**** If there are better websites for doing reverse searches or if this method works for other countries, please post the information so that I can add it later to the wiki. Thanks! ****
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Step 5 - Relax because you know a process to get as many legit return addresses as you'd like. Just don't get lazy and use the same one multiple times. Best practice is to use a return address once and to never reuse it.
What's wrong with keeping a pool of, say, ten addresses and randomly selecting from that pool for every shipment? Then, like SierraRS said, if a shipment doesn't arrive you abandon that RA and fill in another one.
It seems like a lot less of a hassle than using a different RA each time, without any actual loss of security. But maybe I'm missing some reason why this is a bad idea.
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Hmm... how would you correlate which RA was used for a buyer? I can't think of any other way than to keep track of the transaction # or the customer's username. If you have a better system then by all means share it but keep in mind that us vendors need to err on the side of not keeping any information after a purchase has been made and put in transit.
You post did get me thinking that you could save time by using the same RA for all packages sent for three days (or so) in a row. If one package is intercepted then I highly doubt post office investigators will be able to put the RA into some sort of system that will catch other packages with the same RA before the rest of the packages have been delivered.
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Hmm... how would you correlate which RA was used for a buyer?
Pardon my extreme ignorance, but why would I want to? (I'm not a seller - obviously, or I"d probably know this - but I'm just curious)
You post did get me thinking that you could save time by using the same RA for all packages sent for three days (or so) in a row. If one package is intercepted then I highly doubt post office investigators will be able to put the RA into some sort of system that will catch other packages with the same RA before the rest of the packages have been delivered.
That's great. With a small enough number of days the packages are very unlikely to be caught by RA association. However, wouldn't it stand out that one after another several addresses are having short bursts of mail activity and then stopping (or going back to normal)? I guess that depends on how organized the postal service really is and how much effort LE puts into these things for them to even notice.
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No LE is going to get a promotion for arresting even 100 small time buyers of SR. It is possible that LE would do reverse buys but IF they did it would be for amounts that are classified as trafficking amounts. Think about it the ONLY LE that even has the authority to open an investigation of the type you describe would be a federal LE agency. The feds are very picky, if they open a case they want to convict for sure without a doubt. What that means is that feds usually target 2 kinds of people by obligation, those who are easy to bust and those who are dealing in large amounts. If you wish to avoid LE while on SR then only deal with amounts that are under trafficking amounts AND make sure that you are not the easiest person to bust using SR. I know how these people work they want the easy cases and sometimes they will let a bigger more important person go in exchange for a less important easy conviction. Make sure you are not the person that will be easy to convict.
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Whilst I agree vendors are probably more desirable targets to LE, rather than going after individual buyers, I think you guys are missing the point. LE are probably looking at ways right now of infiltrating and shutting down SR, or at least dealing it a major blow. I imagine that is now their main objective, rather than going after individual vendors.
How will they achieve that? By going after buyers of course! which at present looks to be not a difficult task. LE sets up a honeypot shop as a vendor, then makes a few dozen high profile arrests which news hits "LE raids drug buyers on SR" the marketplace runs for cover and buyers are wary of marketplace.