[Nerdi]

I know it is an HF policy to not take action in regards to Deal Disputes. I am not suggesting a policy change, nor am I saying that Omni or any staff here should actively participate in Deal Disputes.

My Suggestion
A community driven effort to combat the scamming that seems to be increasing. Every day, multiple Deal Disputes pop up. Plenty of people do not use Trust Scan, check old reps, or search UID. This is a routine that every person should go through before deals. At this point, people should do this even for users with high amounts of posts, rep, or even previous deals between you and them.

I am not sure how a community driven effort could be constructed, but I think awareness needs to be raised on the best ways to prevent yourself from being scammed. This could be advocating middle men, or making sure users are more aware of the risks and ways to research a user before a deal with them.


Why this is here, and not the lounge
I believe that HF staff could help lead a community driven effort, or a more official way to relay information regarding online safety / scam prevention to new users, and even old users. There are a ton of Deal Disputes, and a large majority of them would have never occurred if the claimant (OP of thread) had just used some existing features on HF to measure their trust. I think information needs to be relayed in additional ways. For internet savvy and long time HF members, online safety is common sense and reading the HF rules, docs, guides, etc is something we do. For many users, it seems they have not accessed this information.

It's here in Suggestions and Ideas because I hope members and staff can come together in a way which does not require staff to intervene (in Deal Disputes), to combat scamming in the Marketplace.
If you want to help, using your signature space to help prevent scamming (linking to guides on HF, or saying what to do in your signature itself) is a great way.


Thank you for your time and consideration 🙂

[SIM-1725686]

I've been thinking of a solution myself for a while, I proposed it in this thread last night. I need more opinions, though.

TL;DR it's an escrow SaaS with seller reputation and feedback, as well as account thresholds to prevent users from receiving large sums of money until they have a proven track record. I feel it could work very well, just need to know if people are interested enough.

[Lela]

I've would agree with what you're talking about, Over the year's on HF we've had small groups purely dedicated to dealing with scammers users and they would take matters into there own hands and end up getting banned, A example of this was when i remembered my DAMN PASSWORD! to my old account i was invited to a group of people who would maliciously attack scammers who had Dealing Disputes WON against them, DDoSing, Doxing and other illegal activities. I rejected the offer but i kept talking to one of the members out side of Hf as a friend, A week after i was invited everyone got banned for Violating the ToS, I believe they had the right idea but just...Did it the wrong way, If we could find some way to have a group of people dedicated to preventing scams it would be amazing, I would even be willing to help as long as there is NO activities breaking the ToS of HF

[Nightmaree]

There's many tools that Omni has implemented to help us determine scammers etc. People will continue to be careless and even with threads and stuff people will still not listen. It's the harsh reality. If they feel the need to be careless with their money it's on them.

[Mr Whiskey]

Honestly if Omni would have ID verification, I would be happy. I would be perfectly comfortable verifying my identity with Staff and getting a little flag switched in Trust Scan saying I have verified my identity. Not sure what that would do for scamming overall though.

[10x]

Honestly if Omni would have ID verification, I would be happy. I would be perfectly comfortable verifying my identity with Staff and getting a little flag switched in Trust Scan saying I have verified my identity. Not sure what that would do for scamming overall though.

People could easily submit fake id, it's not hard to find an undetectable peice of fake id.

[Mr Whiskey]

People could easily submit fake id, it's not hard to find an undetectable peice of fake id.

Eh, like I said not sure how effective it would be either way.

[Omniscient]

Plenty of people do not use Trust Scan, check old reps, or search UID.

Exactly.

When members register they get this as part of a welcome PM message:

"If you're here to use our Marketplace it's extremely important that you understand that all deals are at your own risk and that members here should not be blindly trusted. HF will not get involved in deals or deal disputes."

And recently I wrote this up as a canned response to email contacts concerning deal disputes...

"HF Admins nor Staff get involved in deals or deal disputes. We have warnings, alerts, notifications, stickies, and Help Docs explaining our policy. It's up to users to perform due diligence before a deal to assess the risk. HF Marketplace should only be used once you're familiar with site policies and understand fully what you're getting into. If you've made a poor decision then that's unfortunate but we won't get involved. We only enforce site policies which are written in our Help Docs. We require an actual policy violation for us to consider taking action. We wish you the best and please be cautious in all deals online."

You are asking for some community driven effort. Every time it's attempted it just turns into reputation abuse and harassment. We have a lot of assholes here. And I'm not even talking about the scammers.

I believe that HF staff could help lead a community driven effort, or a more official way to relay information regarding online safety / scam prevention to new users, and even old users.

And I believe we do a lot already to raise awareness and yet as you said...plenty of people don't use the existing tools.

I honestly can't plaster messages and flashing warnings on every page. And sadly, I think even if I did it wouldn't make a difference.