My Account got banned?

[Tony Nguyen]

admins have ability to track users via location etc. I know this because i was hit with a really scary seller last year who ended up getting banned. He tried to go back in and create a new account, they tracked it and banned him immediately.

They have tools in the background that can weed this stuff out to help secure the community. I expect they are going to use the same tools on me to validate hacker activity.

Yeah dude, the issue is the Hacked accounts have been going on for at least 6 months and there is no automated solution. They track location by IP, they can ban specific countries IPs. I'll be letting my gold lapse and switching over to knifeswap immediately.

 

[p64impp]

Hey sorry T Tony Nguyen one last question... you sent him payment, he asked for your address... sounds like "normal" exchange to me. What specifically did you see that tipped you off that it was a scammer?

This is important to the community and the mods.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

I'm a bystander, but I do have a question for TONY: did the Scammer require you to use F&F instead of G & S, which grants more protection against scams?

yup. Just to point it out, no knife transaction is permissible on pp. Therefore you have No protection regardless of g&s. Best case scenario, once pp finds out its a knife they ban both accounts.

 

[p64impp]

Thats why you notice in my terms i prefer not to use paypal...

of course every pay venue is not secure... but PayPal is the worst. Thats why I say i will use it if required, but prefer not to.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

Hey sorry T Tony Nguyen one last question... you sent him payment, he asked for your address... sounds like "normal" exchange to me. What specifically did you see that tipped you off that it was a scammer?

This is important to the community and the mods.

I am not really into the idea of helping the mods or admins. How many people have lost money due to inaction on their part? Why would I further support the people who haven't fixed this?

 

[Crag the Brewer]

admins have ability to track users via location etc. I know this because i was hit with a really scary seller last year who ended up getting banned. He tried to go back in and create a new account, they tracked it and banned him immediately.

They have tools in the background that can weed this stuff out to help secure the community. I expect they are going to use the same tools on me to validate hacker activity.

And to be fair, they banned my account pretty dam fast once some "odd" behavior was detected. My first post i saw that wasn't me was at 2:05 PM PST. My account was detected and banned within the hour...

This didn't help Tony who got screwed by "Your" account.....
My gold account ended here, and I want to update my status Somewhere too.

But there have been issues lately.


If no action takes place with your transaction, I'll donate a buck or so to you T Tony Nguyen

 

[p64impp]

... if you were scammed, why the hell would you NOT want to provide detail on how? It only helps your case.... and mine, and everyone else getting scammed.

Baffles me bro, NGL

 

[Tony Nguyen]

... if you were scammed, why the hell would you NOT want to provide detail on how? It only helps your case.... and mine, and everyone else getting scammed.

Baffles me bro, NGL

Why would I help those who do not help themselves?

Let's see if I can elucidate.

The admins and mods have had many months to fix this issue. They have not done much. By shifting the responsibility to me, rather than the failures of the staff, you are playing into the hands of the staff.

They want users to think this is their fault so that they don't have to do anything about it. The security measures mentioned such as IP bans, Comparative IP Login checks, and the requirement of timestamped photos would all help.

I don't want to help because I think the staff is doing an absolutely terrible job if this is still happeneing.

 

[p64impp]

whenever i get my account restored to me, i'll provide the PM logs to admins to help them tighten up on this stuff, minus the PII of course.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

whenever i get my account restored to me, i'll provide the PM logs to admins to help them tighten up on this stuff, minus the PII of course.

I am between 99.9-100.0% sure they can already see them and have decided to do nothing.

 

[p64impp]

not sure they can after my incident a year ago. they kept asking me for screenshots of my communication with the crazy seller...

 

[John Phillips]

yup. Just to point it out, no knife transaction is permissible on pp. Therefore you have No protection regardless of g&s. Best case scenario, once pp finds out its a knife they ban both accounts.

PayPal refunded my G&S payment when a seller decided not to ship the knife I bought from him. He claimed he couldn’t refund the money for some reason and told me to open a case. I submitted all information and private messages to PayPal and they ruled in my favor, refunding the total amount to me.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

PayPal refunded my G&S payment when a seller decided not to ship the knife I bought from him. He claimed he couldn’t refund the money for some reason and told me to open a case. I submitted all information and private messages to PayPal and they ruled in my favor, refunding the total amount to me.

While this is nice to hear, I have personally known many people whose accounts were banned once knives were mentioned. I am glad it worked for you though.

 

[p64impp]

PayPal refunded my G&S payment when a seller decided not to ship the knife I bought from him. He claimed he couldn’t refund the money for some reason and told me to open a case. I submitted all information and private messages to PayPal and they ruled in my favor, refunding the total amount to me.

ehh that's a different story.... the seller was agreeable, but either playing ignorant or truly didnt know how. When you open a case it escalates to the recipient first to accept. If they decline after x days, it goes to paypal to make a judgement call. That is an entirely different story. It's not impossible though. I bought some counterfeit USB drives off ebay once, after a 2 month battle, they finally refunded me via paypal. Problem with BF transactions though is PP is going to want details once it hits their desk. I agree with T Tony Nguyen there... Paypal is a no nonsense company that WILL ban you for life. You don't really want to mess w/that. (which is why i don't like to use paypal)

REF: many years dealing on eBay

 

[Spark]

Look, we've posted stickies, we've made announcements, we've told people over and over and over again to secure their accounts. We have 2 factor account security available as well. We've implemented password checking against databases to check if passwords have been breached.

All of that does absolutely no good if you recycle your password on multiple sites and one of them is compromised.

All of that does no good if you choose to send payment via PP Friends & Family despite being explicitly warned not to.

We as a community have a couple choices; 1, I can force everyone to reset their passwords on a regular basis which is a pain in the ass for everyone involved, or 2, you can use best practices and secure your account + make sure that deal that sounds too good to be true isn't.

If you are sending someone hundreds of dollars sight unseen, it's also a pretty good idea to have them verify they have the item in their possession. You can, I don't know, ask for a picture of the item with a note with today's date & their username. Or a picture of their driver's license with sensitive info redacted.

 

[benchwarmer380]

Why would I help those who do not help themselves?

Let's see if I can elucidate.

The admins and mods have had many months to fix this issue. They have not done much. By shifting the responsibility to me, rather than the failures of the staff, you are playing into the hands of the staff.

They want users to think this is their fault so that they don't have to do anything about it. The security measures mentioned such as IP bans, Comparative IP Login checks, and the requirement of timestamped photos would all help.

I don't want to help because I think the staff is doing an absolutely terrible job if this is still happeneing.

It kind of is the user's fault to some degree. (Not saying yours.) The hacker issue seemed to have stemmed from other sites that got hacked where users used the same usernames and passwords as other places so their accounts at the other places got compromised. Like Bladeforums. There is nothing direct that the mods or admins can do about that. What they did do was put up a banner notifying of the problem, which highly encouraged changing passwords and using 2-step authentication.

IP bans from troubled members occur. Doing so for a whole country seems a little extreme.

I don't know how a comparative IP login check works. If it's automated, that seems a little troublesome as the way I understand it, phones can tap into different IPs. Some people have complained about being IP banned on their phone and turning it off and on hooks it up to another that works.

If it is a manual thing that the admin/mods must do, well, that would require a ridiculous amount of time and effort to check every user that posts a for sale thread or buys something.

Timestamped photos is not a bad idea. But how hard is it to fake a timestamp?

I am between 99.9-100.0% sure they can already see them and have decided to do nothing.

Nope. The mods have repeatedly stated that they are not able to view private messages.

Not sure I'd want them to anyways as it's not really any of their business.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

It kind of is the user's fault to some degree. (Not saying yours.) The hacker issue seemed to have stemmed from other sites that got hacked where users used the same usernames and passwords as other places so their accounts at the other places got compromised. Like Bladeforums. There is nothing direct that the mods or admins can do about that. What they did do was put up a banner notifying of the problem, which highly encouraged changing passwords and using 2-step authentication.

IP bans from troubled members occur. Doing so for a whole country seems a little extreme.

I don't know how a comparative IP login check works. If it's automated, that seems a little troublesome as the way I understand it, phones can tap into different IPs. Some people have complained about being IP banned on their phone and turning it off and on hooks it up to another that works.

If it is a manual thing that the admin/mods must do, well, that would require a ridiculous amount of time and effort to check every user that posts a for sale thread or buys something.

Timestamped photos is not a bad idea. But how hard is it to fake a timestamp?






Nope. The mods have repeatedly stated that they are not able to view private messages.

Not sure I'd want them to anyways as it's not really any of their business.

IP bans on a country basis are standard policy in many organizations. Off the top of my head, one of my orgs banned Russia, China, and all sub saharan Africa due to attempted hacking. It is a business decision i.e. do the number of subscribers from those countries provide significant revenue as opposed to the risks of allowing those IPs.

Re mods not being able to See PMs, if mods can't, the admin certainly can.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

Look, we've posted stickies, we've made announcements, we've told people over and over and over again to secure their accounts. We have 2 factor account security available as well. We've implemented password checking against databases to check if passwords have been breached.

All of that does absolutely no good if you recycle your password on multiple sites and one of them is compromised.

All of that does no good if you choose to send payment via PP Friends & Family despite being explicitly warned not to.

We as a community have a couple choices; 1, I can force everyone to reset their passwords on a regular basis which is a pain in the ass for everyone involved, or 2, you can use best practices and secure your account + make sure that deal that sounds too good to be true isn't.

If you are sending someone hundreds of dollars sight unseen, it's also a pretty good idea to have them verify they have the item in their possession. You can, I don't know, ask for a picture of the item with a note with today's date & their username. Or a picture of their driver's license with sensitive info redacted.

Passing the buck to the users is poor security regardless. Your response has further solidified my decision.

The purpose of the feedback system is that a person with good feedback can be trusted. If I can't trust the feedback system here, the forum offers nothing that can't be found on reddit. By not better securing the forum, you are eroding the trust people once had in feedback.

Again, I expect no changes and have made my decision.

 

[ferider]

Here is an idea: add a star or some other icon to the user's name or avatar iff they use two-step verification.

 

[benchwarmer380]

Passing the buck to the users is poor security regardless. Your response has further solidified my decision.

The purpose of the feedback system is that a person with good feedback can be trusted. If I can't trust the feedback system here, the forum offers nothing that can't be found on reddit. By not better securing the forum, you are eroding the trust people once had in feedback.

Again, I expect no changes and have made my decision.

In the other thread, Spark states the the hacker logged right on in on the first try with the correct password.

How is he to prevent a hacker from using the correct password?


There have been members here with excellent feedback totalling double or possibly triple yours that have gone scammer.

No security system is 100% secure. Sorry, but that's reality.