Messages from new members replying to wanted ads - PLEASE READ

[patracy]

There has been an influx of scammers to the site. I've set the board to manual approval at this point to look at every account and accept/deny. If you post a WTB ad and someone with no posts and registered in the same day or recently sends you a message. Odds are, it's a scam. If they tell you to reach out to another person via phone or email, this too sounds an alarm of being a scam.

If someone is legitimately new and sincere, they should have no problem sending you a picture of said item with a piece of paper with your name/screenname/whatever written on it in frame of the picture.

 

[dunedigger]

I have a running want ad for a boarding ladder on the site. I've been looking for over a year now with no luck. I had a personal message contacting me from this site with info on who had one. I fell for it hook line and sinker. I wanted one real bad and had my hands full and paid using my phone. I'm always on the lookout for scams but didn't take the time to verify activity on the site from the contact I had and assumed it was legit. Yes I'm and idiot and now I further don't trust anyone. My bank refunded my money, still trying to get my paypal account back working. My advise is a picture doesn't mean anything, I can look one up on google in seconds. The guy used the name Charlie Laney. Over the course of the scam Henry Weston, Terry Lookingbill and Destiny Keebaugh (Lookingbill)

 

[patracy]

What was the username?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[dunedigger]

I can't figure it out. When I went back to see the conversation it was just gone. It left me with only emails. Luckily everything got straitened out today, but sure left me feeling like a sucker.

 

[tobyS]

Yea

I can't figure it out. When I went back to see the conversation it was just gone. It left me with only emails. Luckily everything got straitened out today, but sure left me feeling like a sucker.

Yea, with SS management just deleting the offending account, it takes away our ability to go back and get their communications that went through SS.....and in my case, SS didn't give me a heads up although looking at the PM would shown who they had contacted.

 

[simp5782]

Latest one I saw and reported.

 

[ZiggyO]

Hmm, I got one from our friend "charlie" as well--- but it was a reply to an older want ad I had up a while ago for a deuce airpack....... the pm disappeared shortly thereafter..........

Z

 

[patracy]

Yea

Yea, with SS management just deleting the offending account, it takes away our ability to go back and get their communications that went through SS.....and in my case, SS didn't give me a heads up although looking at the PM would shown who they had contacted.

Oh hey Toby, glad you decided to stick around. When we "delete" a account (ban in this case), we (staff) can still see the accounts. They're not actually deleted. The response to this issue is purely reactive, I've implemented as much proactive actions as I can. (I have the board set now where I manually review/approve/deny new registrations) The process does delete messages to users. That's kind of the point. When one user reports someone as a scammer, they ALWAYS ask you to email a different email address. These scammers routinely send messages to dozens of members at a time. So it's best to just delete the entire list of messages to ALL users than leave the chance for some other user to read the message and go off site to contact them. This is also why I set the site email notices to make you read them here instead of in email. Once those emails are out, there's no way to prevent someone from clicking on a email hyperlink in their email client and replying to them.

All that said, the email notice of the message would also contain the username in question.

 

[patracy]

I've managed to keep a good number of these scammers away with the manual approval system for new accounts. But I had one slip in Sunday. If you had a message from Kyle789, he is a scammer. I've censored his email address so hopefully anyone who hasn't read his replies will not have a valid email address for him.