Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: tony76 on February 10, 2012, 10:51 pm

Title: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: tony76 on February 10, 2012, 10:51 pm
The thought just occurred to me. I require people with under 10 transactions to finalize early due to the problem with scamming.

I see some vendors are offering products for free, which would in turn boost a buyers stats when they didn't even purchase anything..

Buyers could potentially use these free items to boost up their stats and bypass the minimum transaction limits set by many vendors

Thoughts?
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: QTC on February 10, 2012, 10:54 pm
It's obvious that average transaction value should be a buyer stat that's disclosed to vendors.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: godofall2 on February 10, 2012, 11:01 pm
many people said the same also i post about this in a few of them but buyers stats are just a joke when it come to stop scamming. people can just buy whatever low cost stuff they want what is like $10-$40 to get over 10 transactions. then go to you place a big order they have a lot of transactions so you think there all right then just scam you. it looks like your shipping form Canada to usa and Canada. i know for usa to usa there in DCN but dont know a way to do that without making the cost of shipping like $40 (still dont know if it will work never tested way im thinking of) or making buyer have to sign for it.

for any vendor if you can use DCN (delivery confirmation number) use them it your best way to stop scamming.

been post here before but think the buyer stats should have total cost use on SR like $100,$500,$1000 and $2500+ or whatever like that. having that will at lest help a bit but still not stop scamming.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 10, 2012, 11:42 pm
whine whine whine my items are normally .1 cents each anyways free is just a nice gester

and even if not me several other vendors sell cheap dg's and if not dg's there are very very chap items on sr itself now complain all you want tony76 but it really just draws more attention to this fact the exact same thing could be said in reverse about vendors pumping there own feedback with a fake buyer account just offer 1 item lower the price to .001 buy it 300 times final them then change the price back to a high amount
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: novocaine on February 11, 2012, 12:14 am
so that's sorted then...

Buyer stats mean fuck all and neither does vendor stats...

No new customers for me and no new vendors to try... I will just stick with who I know.

Its a shame but that is the way SR is going to get I am afraid.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 11, 2012, 12:16 am
you can gauge buyers pretty easy just look at there join date check the forums ect ect buyer stats really don't mean to much
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: SRfan on February 11, 2012, 01:58 am
It's obvious that average transaction value should be a buyer stat that's disclosed to vendors.

+1!!!!!

Great idea.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: QTC on February 11, 2012, 02:01 am
I know you modified your post but that makes sense too. The average could also be a vendor stat that's disclosed to buyers, this would protect against selective scammers like missit who sell digital goods to keep their rating up.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: 2513415 on February 11, 2012, 02:46 am
I agree with Tony, he knows what he is talking about...
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 11, 2012, 03:05 am
lol no matter what one person does another will find something wrong with it lol i think its funny that a vendor that has only been here for a few weeks is crying about me and a user with 6 posts is backing him ...

tis epic lawlz
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: tony76 on February 11, 2012, 04:00 am
1.) I am not crying about you. I am talking about cheaply listed items in general. If i wanted to single you out, i would have named you in my thread.
2.) I don't know what my join date has to do with anything. I think experience and proper feedback speaks volumes. I may have been here for only a few weeks, but i have over 283 transactions under my belt (Every single order above $50 dollars) , with not 1 single bad feedback. The only 1 bad feedback i have is from a newbie who finalized early and left a 3 out of 5 as soon as he finalized because he didn't understand how early finalization worked. So i don't think my join date has anything to do with anything

3.) I am brainstorming out loud, and i think it is a good thing because it helps us grow as a community to find ways to improve security for the buyers and also for the vendors such as myself.

Please don't take this thread as me "calling you out" , but simply as a look at the system as a whole. Maybe we can improve the way feedback is displayed. For example, someone in this thread had the idea of listing how much a buyer has spent. That is a phenomenal idea, and exactly what i was looking for when i made this thread.

Also, that user "with only 6 posts" is actually a paying customer, and you can ask SR to verify it if you like.

Buyer stats don't mean anything, but neither do post counts. I have only been here 1 month for example and am listed as a full member just because a reached a certain amount of posts.

Anyways, just thinking out loud. I got love for ya warweed, please don't take offense to anything i said.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: SuperDimitri on February 11, 2012, 04:11 am
Tony, the door swings both ways, brother. By making those with under 10 transactions finalize early, it could have been easy for you to grab up 10K like JabberWockyLover did, and then bounce. thankfully, you didn't do that, but you see where I am coming from? For a while there, you only had the early finalize feedbacks, which for some reason we leave 5of5 on, and for about 2 weeks, it was quite sketchy on whether or not to order from you. you had a shit ton of feedbacks, but only for early finalize. So, it's a 2 lane highway. I sure could have EASILY bought 10 items from Warweed when I joined up. Maybe even 20 at his prices! Then I am instantly a good buyer?? Have you seen the Good Buyer thread? I think it's a great idea.  http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=9192.msg107586#msg107586
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: tony76 on February 11, 2012, 04:18 am
See? This is the kind of good constructive discussion i was hoping to achieve with this thread :)

Also.. What was jabberwockylover selling? I think i read a few threads where he scammed a bunch of people
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: SuperDimitri on February 11, 2012, 07:04 am
I'm only sure of the MDMA, but maybe also H.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Horizons on February 11, 2012, 10:59 am
I know you modified your post but that makes sense too. The average could also be a vendor stat that's disclosed to buyers, this would protect against selective scammers like missit who sell digital goods to keep their rating up.

Best suggestion in the whole thread.

However, I don't think there's an easy solution. Someone who has both a buyer and a vendor account can bypass this one, for example, by selling himself an expensive custom listing. He'll lose some money due to DPR's fee, but for a scammer-to-be that's just an initial investment. At the end of the day, no numeric stats replace getting down and dirty and researching your prospective business partners:
How long have they been registered?
Do they use the forums? What's the number and nature of their posts?
Can someone else vouch for them? Are the people who vouch for them likely to be sockpuppet accounts, or somehow in on the scam?
Establish communication with them: do they seem fishy, or trustworthy?

If a new member checks out on all this, he's probably trustworthy. But if someone sets off red flags in these criteria, I don't think it'll matter one bit that they have a large list of high-value transactions to their name. This goes for buyers and sellers both - so in the end, I think transaction statistics aren't a good way to establish anything... unless, of course, we're talking about the very low end of the spectrum, with multiple low-score feedbacks (seller) or high refund rates (buyer).
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 11, 2012, 03:20 pm
it doesn't matter what you do honestly there will always be some one else to find a way to fuck it up sorry bro but it's a lost cause
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: fruity on February 11, 2012, 03:50 pm
it doesn't matter what you do honestly there will always be some one else to find a way to fuck it up sorry bro but it's a lost cause

true, but thats no reason to make it easy for them.

i'd like to see the "item" link in the feedback go to the version of the listing when brought not current version (if its listed).
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Christy Nugs on February 11, 2012, 04:22 pm
It's obvious that average transaction value should be a buyer stat that's disclosed to vendors.

+++ >>>>>  QTC

YES !!! It is completely obvious - Instead of closing my doors completely to new customers
I would have been able choose wisely.
Another stat that could be shoved in there is the amount of time the buyer has been
on Silk Road.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Angelology on February 11, 2012, 04:43 pm
The thought just occurred to me. I require people with under 10 transactions to finalize early due to the problem with scamming.

I see some vendors are offering products for free, which would in turn boost a buyers stats when they didn't even purchase anything..

Buyers could potentially use these free items to boost up their stats and bypass the minimum transaction limits set by many vendors

Thoughts?
This has always been a problem. Or they just buy 30 books from WW for 3.00. Then they have 30 transactions. Thistory really means nothing when you consider the digital goods and book departments.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Christy Nugs on February 11, 2012, 04:50 pm
whine whine whine my items are normally .1 cents each anyways free is just a nice gester

and even if not me several other vendors sell cheap dg's and if not dg's there are very very chap items on sr itself now complain all you want tony76 but it really just draws more attention to this fact the exact same thing could be said in reverse about vendors pumping there own feedback with a fake buyer account just offer 1 item lower the price to .001 buy it 300 times final them then change the price back to a high amount

Nobody is saying anything about your services or bad wrapping you personally warweed... I have even thought of getting an item from u on my other account
cause I couldn't find it with google or torrent and i just don't have the time to mess around searching for it.....so there u offer a valuable service to those of
us with little time.

It is just a simple matter of math and how this system is set up.
After the G and Forbes articles I started getting PM's from lots of users that just freaked me out.
These people attempting to place orders with me all had 7 - 20 orders under their belt but completely lacked any kind
of SR knowledge or etiquette.
I must admit the first place I went to go validate my suspicions about what was going on were your feedback's.
What I saw there led me to decide not to allow any new customers. 3 - 5 - or more purchases in a row from obviously
the same customers. They didn't even bother to change their comments lol.
You offer a service that some could use to gain buyer stats. It's not your fault that the riffraff have showed up.
By the way - congrats on attaining seller rank # 2 - I am green with envy..:P

Peace out;
Christy
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: freedom4all on February 12, 2012, 01:54 am
Hey Im new....ok...as a new guy here are some thoughts (hope people actually listen)




so I dont know about the whole average transaction thing...I dont want Feds posing as sellers collecting solid intel/evidence on our purchasing habits that could be abused by LEAs...it can be manipulated by people that want to infiltrate this website and use it to take down heavy hitters...maybe im paranoid...that and the whole concept of SR is to keep our business low profile...putting a stat like that to a guy that is buying heavy duty on here can be a risky thing...I just think people shouldnt get any points for free items or bitcoin transfers...AND I hope one of the admins are reading this because what I have been thinking about is having the feedback from sellers be color coded for every page of feedback with 10 different colors (since there are 10 slots of feedback per page)....if the same buyer is leaving feedback on the sellers feedback page it should be coded the same color...and visa versa with the buyers feedback...just to be another thing to clue people in on potential abuse/alarms when looking at a persons feedback....other than that this system works fine...its the risks you take when your online....
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: onestopshop on February 12, 2012, 02:33 am
a lot of long replies and opinions on this, but why not follow the leader?

In this case Ebay lets you view feedback for both sellers and buyers as well as the items they've purchased in the last 90 days and the price of that item.

a nice idea but not necessary, on the hand if used on SR this is NECESSARY.

I've just started up recently as a vendor but all we need to do is replicate the system they have on Ebay and it would be EASY TO CODE!!!

At the moment, it's just transactions + refund rate. it should be changed so when you click on the buyers page it shows (in order):

* Buyer Name
* No. of Transactions
* Refund Rate
* Total spent on SR ($/BTC)

then a table with a few columns:

******************************************************
item category / item name / item price / vendor / date of transaction
******************************************************

and that's it! if the person has juked their feedback scores with dg's it can be seen, if they've gone for lots of introductory/free/sample offers this will also show up.

obviously to save on detective work, having the additional "total spent on SR" will save the detective work down to a few secons e.g if someone has 40 transactions but has only spent $40 on SR then you immediately know something is suspicious.

Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: ChillyP on February 12, 2012, 07:59 am
For buyer stats, it'd be easy to create an algorithm that calculates a score based on the value of transactions completed and the diversity of purchases as well. For instance, you could create one that generated high scores if someone had a number of high-value transaction from several different vendors. This would reduce the likelihood of someone with a vendor account making a buyers account, racking up a number of high-value transactions with themselves, and them scamming with their self-generated credibility. This solves the problem of keeping your transactions anonymous but also getting rep for having a diverse portfolio of purchases that would indicate you are a legit buyer. I really don't think it's a good idea to list anything explicit in buyer stats eg. "buyer has spent $10k on SR", it would make them a huge target if LE was selling here. 
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Angelology on February 12, 2012, 02:05 pm
you can gauge buyers pretty easy just look at there join date check the forums ect ect buyer stats really don't mean to much
Well it kind of is your fault for selling "books." Nobody actually uses %90 of the books bought from you. Now your digital goods, different story. Those are useful.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: dird on February 12, 2012, 08:15 pm
Wait, so can vendors see the feedback I've left? I know of purchase stats but I didn't know this.

It doesn't matter much, I've always been very honest in the feedback I've left. But I feel like they can deduce from that what I've purchased before

edit: oh wait never mind, just read onestopshops post
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: czxtvr on February 12, 2012, 08:58 pm
There's too much to deal with coming from both sides. It's getting to the point that you may as well find a street vendor....
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: anarcho47 on February 12, 2012, 11:09 pm
A vendor can only see specific feedback that has been left on their own products, not which user has left feedback on other vendor's stuff.

I always try to keep track of the registered userbase.  If a buyer comes to me with a bunch of transactions but a very recent user number, I will either insist they go finalize-early, or provide me one reputable illicit seller they have done business with that will vouch for them via a Personal Message.  You'd be surprised how many just fade away.  And since my scam-bells are ring-a-ling-ing at this point, good freaking riddance.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: dird on February 12, 2012, 11:23 pm
Yeah maybe a web of trust kind of scheme would be good. Like anarcho47 said but more automated and accessible than having to private message people. The website humaniplex (an escort site) uses something like this. A member has a public record of different users that they've done business with and the other party says if it went smoothly or not. You also can see what user did rank them, and see if they are a high ranked member or not.

I don't know though, I'm not a vendor. The system so far works fine for me. But I can see how vendors would be paranoid about being ripped off.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Christy Nugs on February 12, 2012, 11:30 pm
Wait, so can vendors see the feedback I've left? I know of purchase stats but I didn't know this.

It doesn't matter much, I've always been very honest in the feedback I've left. But I feel like they can deduce from that what I've purchased before

edit: oh wait never mind, just read onestopshops post

yea u can see the feedback at bottom of vendors profile page - u
just cant see the name of the purchaser.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: dird on February 12, 2012, 11:37 pm

yea u can see the feedback at bottom of vendors profile page - u
just cant see the name of the purchaser.

Oh no I meant when I make a purchase from a vendor, can they see the feedback I've left from purchases I've made from other vendors. That thought just kind of scared me because what if I somehow managed to purchase from a LEO, that could be used as evidence.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 13, 2012, 12:05 am
no
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: kakapo on February 13, 2012, 01:14 am
I'm going to buy up warweed's entire inventory and offer it for free on this forum soon :)
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: Horizons on February 13, 2012, 01:33 am
I'm going to buy up warweed's entire inventory and offer it for free on this forum soon :)

You mean just like warweed him/herself was doing these past few days? 8)
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: anarcho47 on February 13, 2012, 02:43 am
No he's probably just planning on "reselling" it for free so he can get vendor slot #3 lol.
Title: Re: Vendors listing free items and buyers using it to boost buyer stats to scam
Post by: warweed on February 20, 2012, 09:08 am
I'm going to buy up warweed's entire inventory and offer it for free on this forum soon :)
Yup and this is why i have a black list in my bot and also have black list triggers :) that cause you to be auto banned ;)