New Account policy ideas

[Donald C]

Hey all,

I've been seeing a lot of scammers creating new accounts, dropping a lot of scam posts directing others to interact with them through media outside of Fauna and then dropping the account. I was wondering if it was feasible to prevent brand new accounts from posting for a period of time after account creation (maybe somewhere in the range of 1-6 hours). I think it might help cut down on the number of these recurring scam/bot accounts and postings.

I've attached an image of the most recent one of these examples.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

I can't speak for how things go here, but on other websites I know that one spammer tactic is to set up accounts and park them unused for very long periods of time. Sometimes there's an IP switch to another country (not necessarily VPNs), so there are at least some spammers that are setting up accounts in order to hand them off to other people/computers at some later date. Having a wait period would likely mostly just irk legitimate newcomers, and if anything just get the spammers to change tactics a little. Not trying to be critical of your suggestion, just pointing out a relevant fact about spammers.

Scammers here often seem to sit on their accounts for a while -- lately, they're watching for 'ISO' posts.

Unfortunately, possible the most effective and palatable* weapon against scammers is going to be not feeding these vermin. That's going to take education of potential buyers:

• to demand publicly posted photos, or if they're privately communicated then a photo with a sheet of paper with today's date on it alongside the animal;
• to demand that any sellers have their account details in order (city, state; a full name that stands a chance of being their real name);
• to not post email and phone# publicly, and to not contact anyone who does so (especially now that the site has an easy to use PM system);
• to use only 'Goods and Services' type payments unless the seller is known with 100% certainty to be legit (there are a couple sellers here who only take checks, money orders and the like, and the ones I'm thinking of have been here for years and have a verifiable existence outside the site, and additionally have enough posts here to establish that they're likely actually decent people);
• to know when a deal is too good to be true;
• to be educated about the animal they are ISO so they know whether the "seller" actually has such an animal (so, know what questions to ask that aren't suspicious but at the same time function to ferret out ignoramuses);

* There's another classified site that has solved this problem by requiring photos of the seller, animals, and a DL photo in order to sell on the site. If users here don't get serious about giving their money to thieves, that's probably the way any safe sales are going to have to go. I'm personally comfortable with these requirements, but many sellers likely will chafe at this intrusion on their freedom or whatever.

 

[Donald C]

I've seen, and been flagging for the admin team, a large number of recurring new accounts with none of the required personal information, who have been posting fraudulent ads in Chinese for false job postings, phishing for personal information, or like the one captured in my attached image trying to get people to send them money over non-recoverable payment platforms. This is the sort of scam that I was referring to.

They pop in (usually on accounts that are minutes old), posted a dozen scam ads, and then dipped out, leaving the account derelict. For those types of scammers, who are just trying the bulk drop of scam posts, having a wait period would probably be enough to screw up their flow enough that they might choose to go elsewhere. I will note that my idea was a shorter period (hours), which would be less likely to inconvenience legitimate new users.

 

[bcr229]

If it gets bad enough we could have WebSlave or a moderator approve all new accounts manually.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

I will note that my idea was a shorter period (hours), which would be less likely to inconvenience legitimate new users.

Here's two such accounts that wouldn't have been caught in that net, though (~15 hours and 4 hours old that have not posted yet).

On a website that I moderate for, the trick that works is something like what bcr229 mentioned -- I go through and look at all the new accounts every day or two and dig deeper into the fishy looking ones. It takes a fair amount of time, and is sometimes more cognitive load than I appreciate. (For example, that first screenshot up there is someone who is pushing some sort of pirated online game; this took me at least ten minutes to figure out, which would add up quickly if there are a few of these each day. This is easier with access to the IP and email address, but still.)

 

[WebSlave]

In the old platform, I used to browse through all new registrations looking for things anomalous to base looking into further. But since the new platform, no, sorry, haven't been doing that. And not really sure I want to. Seriously, there are much better things to be doing with my time lately. Even if it means just sitting back in my chair here in the den and taking a nap.

 

[spawn]

Do people not need to post city/state to post in classifieds anymore? And it looks like the name field is gone?

 

[Socratic Monologue]

And it looks like the name field is gone?

You have to click on the username to see the name of the person (bot, spammer, scammer, etc) behind it. Makes things less transparent, for sure.

There doesn't seem to be any way to search by username as in the past, which is very unfortunate.

 

[bcr229]

There doesn't seem to be any way to search by username as in the past, which is very unfortunate.

You don't see the "Find Member" option on the left on the Members page?

 

[Socratic Monologue]

Sorry, I meant there doesn’t seem to be any way to search by actual name. I misspoke up there.

 

[WebSlave]

Going to be a real hard sell to get me to pay for custom mods on this site any longer.