Silk Road forums
Market => Rumor mill => Topic started by: Advanced Logic on December 13, 2011, 05:29 am
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Not long ago a new LSD vendor, Gummy-Stars, entered the market. Gummy was offering a very unique candy that was laced with a nice hit of LSD. His product generated immediate attention after Gummy offered free samples.
Too my knowledge no1 has received any product from Gummy-Stars but his product attracted tons of attention from greedy over eager buyers. Within 4 days Gummy had started cranking in major money.
Gummy devised a ploy that used the buyers own greed against them; He offered free product 4 early finalization's.
Page after page of eager buyers finalized early and Gummy probably got 20+ early finalization's this way.
Within a day or so of Gummy being active on the LSD listings multiple veteran members identified him as a scammer.
Research was done by more than one board member and the conclusion was made that Gummy was in fact a scammer.
A report was submitted 2 SR immediately by a respected member of this community.
Said report recommended that Gummy's account immediately have seller privileges revoked and that his BitCoins be frozen until his customers who had already paid for their merchandise reported receiving it and that it was quality.
In response SR ordered Gummy 2 modify his listings and in total Gummys listings were down less than 1 hour.
SR is extremely busy but even after respected board members did an independent inquiry and provided significant evidence that suggested Gummy was a scammer, Gummy was allowed to continue to conduct businesses.
In order 2 prevent scams and hinder scammers the only solution is a more aggressive approach to scammers and vendors/buyers behaving in manors characteristic of scammers.
I urge everyone who has time and wants less scamming on Silk Road to send a private PM to Silk Road.
The basic gist of the PM should say that you want tighter control on scams, a more aggressive approach to preventing scams, and faster action against scammers.
The only way we can stop the scammers is if we let Silk Road know that all of our money is getting stolen and we need him 2 be more aggressive.
Is it 2 much 2 ask that when a scammer be reported he is immediately shut down?
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I wholeheartedly agree with this, But at the same time it has to happen in a way that doesn't make every new vendor feel like a scammer. Trying to start up here recently has been a pain in the ass because of this. The community just needs to be smarter and learn from these things instead of repeating the same mistakes.
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It just goes to show that the same human behavior that created SR in the first place can be used to circumvent it's structure. Amazing
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Great post. But after it boils down to it, buyers need to stop finalizing early for new sellers, especially the tempting LSD ones.
In my opinion, aside from high value and international orders--early finalization should stop in its entirety. An established vendor can easily stop sending out items. It has happened before.
Something has to take its place. 50/50 maybe?
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Scammers need to be prevented as best they can, but let's not forget...
Scams oftentimes rely on the buyer's own GREED.
Why someone would finalize early with a new seller to get free product is beyond what I can understand...
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In other words, educate the buyers as much as you punish the scammers.
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The simple answer is DON"T FINALIZE EARLY.
BUT, this is NOT working for so many sellers, because sellers are getting scammed as well. So people look around and see that everone is asking to finalize early so it doesn't look suspicious.
Something has to be in place. At the moment the only real option is to scour the forums, and try to make sense of what you read there. It doesnt work.
I'm throwing some ideas out there........
Buyer Protection
1 seller MUST send limited number of free or low cost samples BEFORE their seller account can receive coins. This shows at least he can source some kind of product and can allow his quality to be judged. Of course he might just have a wee bit to lead into his scam, but it would put off a lot of potential scammers.
2 Seller starts with a LIMITED account. Can only receive a limited amount of coins - maybe even starting with only the same amount as the seller account cost.
This means that a scammer must have at least enough product to recoup his seller fee. He can still scam after that though, but it would put a lot of people off.
3 Hard rule - seller with limited account can NOT have finalize early.
4 Seller with limited account has maximum transaction value. Cannot sell over say $50 value in a single transaction.
Once the seller has a handful of happy customers, his limits could be raised or removed.
5 Change the rating system so finalizing early does not bump the sellers rating
Seller Protection
1 New buyers could get the same kind of limited account until they had completed a number of transactions. Perhaps they can also only buy from sellers with a full account - ie known trustworthy vendors.
2 There could be a bad buyer central register so sellers can see at a glance if another seller has marked the buyer as potentially shady.
3 Buyers could have to leave a deposit which stays with SR until they have proved to be trustworthy
These rules would be a slight pain in the ass for everyone, but hey, that's the way it goes. Start looking like an straight dealer and the limits will be lifted and you are free to trade however you like.
None of this would eradicate scammers, but would go a long way to making it not worth the hassle and the risk. The short term opportunists would not be able to operate. The major risk would be a long term trusted seller (or buyer) doing a runner.
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First let me state that I am truly sorry to anyone who has been scammed by a lying, cheating, heartless piece of shit scammer.
But, and I hope I can articulate this properly but you need to understand what kind of place this is. From what I understand this is something that is about as close to an absolute free market there is. Prices are dictated by supply and demand and competition amongst sellers. Also there is very little in the way of restrictions on what you may or may not sell.
In this way it is almost an experiment to see if we, as members of this "community " are able to take care of ourselves and each other. We take care of each other by doing what the mods did and create the wiki, which contains a ton of information to anyone getting started.
Long time members of the forum post frequently about the proper steps needed to insulate yourselves from scams and other issues. People report on suspicious activity and profiles of behavior that may indicate when a scam is taking place.
One thing I look out for is when there has been a seller account for a long time with no activity and all of a sudden it becomes active. There was a scammer here a while back that said he made a bunch of ghost accounts before SR started to charge for seller accounts.
I believe it is up to we, as members of Silk Road to learn from the vast amounts of knowledge that is contained in these forums to conduct our due diligence and keep ourselves safe from both the law and those other POS that want to steal.
SR has given us one thing and that is escrow. If you were to stay in escrow so so many of these issues could be avoided. That, I believe is as far as he/they need to go in respect to this particular problem. It is only when people step out of this process, when they have given up their essential protection that these issues arise so strongly.
What gets my goat in these cases is when it has been said a million and one times, STAY IN ESCROW, and people don't, and the first thing that is done is to try to turn to some authority figure to bail them out. That is not SR's job! SR's job, I believe needs to continue to be to keep this site alive and secure so we can continue our mini revolution we have going here. Not get involved anytime someone goes outside the system and gets screwed.
So, King Joey, tl;dr. Do your homework, stay in escrow, listen to the forums and do not go begging for help when you fail to follow procedure.
We need to learn to take care of ourselves and to stop relying on someone else to take care of our problems for us. Once we start imposing all different types of rules and restrictions you get a beauracracy. Does anybody want that here? I don't.
Sorry for the ramble, I have been wanting to get that off my chest for some time. And this is all from a buyers perspective not a sellers btw.
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Thing is, the "experiment to see if we can take care of each other" is failing.
People are getting ripped off left right and center. Both buyers and sellers.
Any libertarian or anarchist community I have ever seen has some kind of rules. They get decided by the community themselves, this is the difference. It's a long long way from a bureaucracy, that's for sure.
I have been involved in self regulated, non heirarchical, libertarian or anarchist communities most of my life. I have seen this argument take place over and over again. The experiment is not a new one.
If you join any community, it takes time to build trust. If you are a new person in a RL community of this type, no-one is gonna leave you alone with the cash box. That's not bureaucracy, that's just common sense.
Right now on SR, complete strangers are being handed THE REPUTATION as well as the cash. And then walking out the door first chance they get.
As a case in point, take a look at what happened to the drugs market in Freetown Christiania. Some straightforward rules were AGREED for the safety and protection of the community.
If you go there now, I doubt very much anyone would find their "bureaucracy" distasteful at all.
But any libertarian or anti authoritarian community has its rules, from the hard right of US militia men to the hard left of the Zapatistas or Berlin squat scene.
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Anyway, lol...
All that is academic - unless I'm mistaken, this is not a libertarian paradise, it's a privately owned profit making enterprise, which already has a bunch of rules and procedures you must abide by to make the system work.
I just think the rules could be modified, to protect people.
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Hired help. Silk Road could hire people (shifts like a real job) to stand by to investigate suspected scammers, have the power to deactivate accounts and to turn on new seller accounts once they receive legit feed back that there product has been received.
This isn't rocket science. I am on Silk Road, lurking everyday. Yeah I don't have a life and I am a vendor, this is my work anyway... I would diffidently volunteer for the job. :)
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well, people are subjective. It means these people have to make lots of judgement calls, I don't think this type of "policing" would work too well, plus it would be a lot of hours....
But it's just a bit of software, so coding in some kind of anti scam measures would just need to be done once. If the system is hard to scam then nobody really needs to monitor it so much.
Any other ideas?
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well, people are subjective. It means these people have to make lots of judgement calls, I don't think this type of "policing" would work too well, plus it would be a lot of hours....
But it's just a bit of software, so coding in some kind of anti scam measures would just need to be done once. If the system is hard to scam then nobody really needs to monitor it so much.
Any other ideas?
I beg the differ. If it was coded right it would be perfect. If these selected people could make notes on individual accounts (there job is to collect information and make notice on accounts) You don't even need to make judgement calls, when a seller has 10+ reports and they are pouring in, there job is to do a further investigation which would have guidelines, pending the extremity's. Then making notes on a main page of there activity's they think the rest of the team should notified of.
This would work better then any idea i seen yet.
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Hey KingJoey (Advanced Logic), did you read that part in the thread where I posted about Gummy-Stars sending me a tracking number for his package? Suppose to be here today.
...Nice to see KingJoey still hasn't given up on Scammer Patrol.
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I wonder i fhe ever sold that MAC-10 he was punting?
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AdvancedLogic I agree with you 100% percent the problem with this scenario is that early finalization....which Silk Road posted on the accounts orders page are final.
The biggest issue is the vendors that circumvent the finalization guidelines.
They make it seem to make up their own rules on there vending practices and this has opened an unregulated early finalization grey area where the scamming in general has become most prominent.
Gummystars should be banned as a vendor as it has been a fiasco since day one, unless we can get some senior members to report the orders have been sucessful .
By not follow the guidelines he broke a vendor rule that goes unregulated and this grey area is where Silk Road needs to concentrate on.
I know yadda yadda yadda about vendors that send orders to certain countries is the scapegoat clause used and has become an artificial and untrue guideline that new members to the site don't realize. This is the problem.
AdvancedLogic I'd very much like for you and I to open lines of communication via PM's and discuss this issue much more privately and solutions to this issue.
In the mean time this thread is an excellent point to start to with education on scammers and I must ask all members to read though the SCAM FAQ thread in the rumor mill.
Early finalizing for new vendor and vendors in general is not the proper way to use the Silk Road site and until there is consequences to vendors violating guidelines in this manner the scams will go on, I have no doubt.
Please PM Silk Road on the Marketplace site(http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/index.php/silkroad/user/1) to report new vendors requesting early finalization. As this is the number one red flag for scammers.
:D
nomad bloodbath
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+1
This trend of early finalsation/going out of escrow needs to be stopped, it is the number one problem with SR at the moment.
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Maybe we should just let everybody do what they want. I mean all the advice and everything is everywhere, if people want to ignore it let them take that chance. It's a drug trade, make as many rules as you want, people will still get scammed because the drug user population has a higher concentration of scum bags than the rest of the population. All the information to avoid being scammed is here, you can use it and have good experiences or ignore it and screw yourself over.
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True, but the problem is sellers demanding that people go out of escrow. This contravenes the sellers guide and should be stomped on. There are rules for a reason. I know the argument that you can take your business elsewhere but it is often not an option due to availability of sellers for a particular substance in a particular area etc etc.
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im glad i did not go for these.. after the red star microdot scare i will never again buy any form of novelty lsd from a new vendor on sr
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How about people start giving an automatic 3/5 rating for any vendor who wants you to finalize early and then put it up to 4 maybe 5 when or if the product arrives? I realize that won't eliminate the scammers but maybe people will become more assertive when purchasing.
I think all the tools are already here on SR, people just have to start using them and using them properly.
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I understand that this is a highly unregulated market and that people will do as they please but in order 2 maintain the integrity of the website as a whole fraud prevention is essential. Every major E commerce site has specific employees devoted just 2 fraud prevention.
Fraud and scammers pose a huge threat 2 this website. Through fraud and deception consumer confidence lowers along with vendors confidence in the system.
In the past we have seen excellent vendors walk away from SR just because of scammers. We still see good vendors that just choose 2 leave because of scammers. The real threat is that faith in the system will be lost and vendors will retreat.
Not 2 mention all the customers that got scammed on their first buy and decided 2 never return 2 SR again.
Some humans are just more prone 2 be scammed than others. But when they get scammed on a website the damage isnt contained 2 just that person the website as a whole loses integrity.
Its essential that SR evolves in2 a commerce website with individuals whose soul purpose is 2 prevent fraud and recover victims money.
It would benefit the entire community if SR had a clever team of fraud prevention specialists that used their own skills and experience 2 make the choice about scammers b4 a novice SR user must decided for themselves.
If we had just a few devoted individuals with specifically designed anti fraud tools and the authority needed 2 take action against scammers then we would see the amount of successful scams decline and we would see the overall number of victims decline.
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umm its stickied in the rumours section dude i wrote it, it just doesnt change the fact that
1. DONT GO OUT OF ESCROW
2. IF ITS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS
i dont care if sarah palin says it, or rick perry, or fucking hitler, it is still the goddamn truth ;)
Yea, I hate to sound like a dick, but it is not SR's responsibility to protect people who go outside of escrow. It's on the site, in the guide, the wiki, and plastered all over the forums. People who go outside of escrow do so at their own risk.
As a buyer I have gone outside of escrow a few times for international/trusted dealers. I haven't had any problems yet, but if I did, I'd report my experience in the forums and leave it at that.
Know the risks, accept/learn from the consequences, move on.
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I guess I may have been lacking empathy yesterday for those who have been scammed. That probably stems from the fact that I myself have not been scammed but have been here almost six months i think.
Part of the reason for that is I have done exactly what I originally posted. Before I bought anything I learned how to use PGP, how to acquire bitcoins, how to properly format an address and how to stay in escrow. I also know from life experience that I picked up when I was 8 was If it looks too good to be true it probably is.
I have gone out of escrow twice. Both times with sellers that have been here a long time and with amounts that I could afford to lose if something were to go awry and luckily it didn't. Had it gone bad I know I gave up my rights to a refund and depending on the situation either resolve it with the seller or come here kicking and screaming.
edballs, after seeing some of your ideas I think the buyer deposit is a good idea to cut down on buyer scams, sort of like a secured credit card.
Sellers sending free or low cost samples is good too. It is a very common procedure in legit business and one that definitely has a place on SR. This may cut down on the lazy scammers but the more determined ones would still get through like you mentioned.
One thing buyers could do since we can edit feedback is leave a 3/5 or something similar until product is received then go back and change upon receipt. Unfortunately a lot of us have a tendency to be forgetful and this may slip some peoples minds causing a potentially good vendor to have a score disproportionate to their actual performance. One possibility is locking the feedback after accessing it twice to keep people from going back again and again.
As far as sellers go. US to US use delivery confirmation as often as possible and post on your page your maximum recompense if the package does not show. If the package shows delivered and cust still says not received. Tough titty.
I really have no other ideas as I think from a buyer side escrow protection, not being over eager and browsing the forums is enough to keep you out of trouble.
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An anonymous place filled with drug dealers, traffickers, and addicts? No, I can't see any way that might be a haven for scammers.
In our current paradigm scamming is an inevitable side-effect of the benefits granted by anonymity. So long as the risk of retribution is low, and the eagerness of buyers to get their hands on tempting products persists, so will scamming.
There isn't really a way to stop scamming buyers without changing the feedback system; a change that would make it even harder to revise feedback when a seller sketches out on you.
It's not the best solution, but all we can do is try to keep each other in the loop here and leave those unwilling to research a vendor to be scammed if they can't help themselves enough to find a review thread.
It's kind of like auto-accidents: You can't eliminate them entirely without halting the use of them (not a viable solution), but you can lessen your risk of getting into one with basic precautions. However, even with the best precautions and defensive driving you can still be blindsided by a drunk driver at no fault of your own.
Anyone uncomfortable with some degree of risk is probably in way over their head ordering illicit substances from the darknet in the first place.
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Why not make it required that new sellers can not finalize early? I know this will not stop all scams but it would probably help.
And if a seller is paranoid, but a new seller, they can just refuse new users, until they do like 20 sells or something allowing them to accept finalizing early. Everyone wins except new buyers, but it isn't like they don't have choices.
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That could work out pretty well, something needs to be done about this early finalising business.
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If you're finalizing early for a NEW SELLER you're doing it wrong. That's begging to be scammed.
Get enough transactions with highly trusted vendors. Then only use highly trusted vendors, and don't ever finalize early.
How easy was that? I just saved you from nearly ever being scammed. You're welcome.
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That's a pretty good idea. But as a rule, people shouldn't be finalizing early commonly anyway--even with trusted sellers. It undermines the whole escrow service.
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Exactly, escrow exists for a reason. Even trusted sellers can have shit happen IRL and run off with the money, it's happened before and it will happen again. Some demand that you finalise early for orders over a set amount or just as a matter of course, that should not be allowed or encouraged. Some of us can't always choose which vendor to use either due to shipping constraints etc and so may have to use a non-preferred seller.
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Exactly, escrow exists for a reason. Even trusted sellers can have shit happen IRL and run off with the money, it's happened before and it will happen again. Some demand that you finalise early for orders over a set amount or just as a matter of course, that should not be allowed or encouraged. Some of us can't always choose which vendor to use either due to shipping constraints etc and so may have to use a non-preferred seller.
You can't choose which vendor to use? LOL
I beg to differ. If you don't like the vendors terms, THEN DON'T BUY.
You know how we can stop vendors from requiring everyone to finalize early? Have NO ONE BUY FROM THEM.
You can choose to support or not support any vendor on SR and thus their practices with your bitcoins. That easy.
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I know exactly what you are saying, it is very true that the only way to stop sellers asking for early release is to stop supporting them and that is exactly what I will be doing from now on. I am just thinking that it should be disallowed altogether to require early finalising.
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There's a lot of good info in this thread, but I feel a bit obligated to let everyone know that Gummy-Stars is not a scammer. He's a novice vendor, but I think he's learned his lesson and he's on his way to hittin' the big leagues.
http://xfq5l5p4g3eyrct7.onion/view.php?image=99e10657787708998e2c90f47bac0d32.jpg
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Hey tell us what effects you get after you eat it.