[Razοr]

Hey guys, today I had an idea how we could prevent getting chargebacks with PayPal.

Most sellers use AutoBuy systems to sell their products on HF, sadly this also leaves us vulnerable to chargebacks as we can not identify the HackForums user that bought the products.

Now my idea would be an API that allows us to setup identify the user that buys our products.
It could work like this:

1) Within our UserCP we can setup an encryption key.
2) We can use a bb-code tag like [userinformation] that will contain the user-information encrypted with the key the seller has set in his UserCP.
It would contain the UID, current Username, positive/negative reputation count, upgrade status (yes/no), post count.
3) We could then add the [userinformation] tag to our links to the autoubuy system i.e. http://product.com/buyproduct.php?ui=[userinformation]
4) On our website we can then decrypt this information and store the UID in the database with the bought license, or even deny auto-buy to a user with a high negative reputation or low post count etc.

I guess this could help HF sellers a lot as we could easily open scam-reports on those who charged back. The information would be encrypted and no personal information would be included, so this would not really damage our privacy.

So what do you guys think?

🤝 Razor

Small edit: I know API isn't really the right description for this, but I didn't find any other good word to describe it, sucks to not be a native english speaker :P

[Aurora]

I personally think this is a great idea. Not sure if Omni wants to get involved with this though.

[bswap]

And whats stopping someone from abusing this by spoofing another users info and then going on a scamming spree?

[Razοr]

I personally think this is a great idea. Not sure if Omni wants to get involved with this though.

In my opinion there is no reason to deny this, it would help the members who try to sell their products here a lot, it isn't too hard to code (it's only a very few lines of PHP + an additional column in the user table) and he could also only offer this feature to upgraded members, so there would be yet another benefit of upgrading.

[grady]

Not a bad idea, but what if Nyx wanted to go Autobuy some porn?
What would happen then?

[Razοr]

And whats stopping someone from abusing this by spoofing another users info and then going on a scamming spree?

The encryption. Every seller has his own encryption key, so the information can not be modified without knowing the key. For additional security the keys could be automatically generated (so sellers have to use a secure one, because they don't have a choice).

[GoofyGoober]

Sounds like a fantastic idea to me, I think this might actually work.

[Razοr]

Not a bad idea, but what if Nyx wanted to go Autobuy some porn?
What would happen then?

Well I guess he will fap after a few minutes then, idk.

[Gerion]

This sounds like an awesome idea.
Hopefully it is accepted

[grady]

Well I guess he will fap after a few minutes then, idk.

Regardless, it's a really good idea.
There will be a few exceptions, but nothing that'd be annoying to deal with.
There's not that many cases of legitimate users far into the red zone. (stating the obvious.)

Although, as you said, it's something that I doubt Omni would be getting into in the near future.

I'd personally like to think that Omni takes on one big project, and then afterwards, spends like the next month fixing and keeping up with little issues on the forum.

It'd be a nice next project though, although the implementation of it outside the actual forum would be shaky at best.

I think it'd be something like OMC, it looks like a good idea, but it just doesn't catch on that well.

[Razοr]

Regardless, it's a really good idea.
There will be a few exceptions, but nothing that'd be annoying to deal with.
There's not that many cases of legitimate users far into the red zone. (stating the obvious.)

Although, as you said, it's something that I doubt Omni would be getting into in the near future.

I'd personally like to think that Omni takes on one big project, and then afterwards, spends like the next month fixing and keeping up with little issues on the forum.

It'd be a nice next project though, although the implementation of it outside the actual forum would be shaky at best.

I think it'd be something like OMC, it looks like a good idea, but it just doesn't catch on that well.

Implementation shouldn't be too hard, it could be integrated in p much everything pretty easily. Let's say the [userinformation] string would contain a json string it would work like that in php:

PHP Code


<?php 
$mykey = "abc";
$userinfo = $_GET['ui'];
$decrypted = userinfodecrypt($userinfo, $mykey);
$decoded = json_decode($decrypted, true);
$userid = $decoded['uid'];
$username = $decoded['username'];
... 


If NetSeal would adopt this then too pretty much 90% of HFs products would have this nice additional security against chargebacks.

[Programming]

I could do this, problem is; Omniscient wouldn't want bots going and scraping user information.

[Razοr]

I could do this, problem is; Omniscient wouldn't want bots going and scraping user information.

As long as people do not click the link in the sales thread no information will be submitted, this doesn't work with requests from HF, so bots can't do shit :)

[Infinity.]

I personally support this idea, I really hope this gets accepted.

[Michael]

I like the idea.
However Omniscient clearly states that:
As always any deals on HF are at your own risk.

So I guess Omniscient won't implement something like this.