Basejumper.com - archive

Security & Scams

j_ung
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The Security & Scams Forum
Hi all,

In the past, BASEjumper.com hasn't been much of a target for scammers, and in all honesty it probably still isn't. But since I've now dealt with two of these assholes in the last few weeks -- both of whom were also active on DZ.com -- I thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and put similar infrastructure in place.

I encourage you to report ads and responses to ads that seem suspicious. Soon, you'll see "Report" links in responses to your ads and in classified ads themselves. Until then, if you see something suspicious, please forward it to me: j_ung(at)rockclimbing(dot)com. What constitutes suspicious? Click to read more about buyer scams, seller scams or just scams, in general.

Along with report buttons, I'll post scam warnings in this forum. When I do that, an announcement will automatically appear atop classified pages. If you use the BASEjumper.com classifieds, it's probably a good idea to check here regularly. (I often receive scam alerts from DZ users in regard to scammers I posted about weeks or even month prior.)

Third, new ads will soon have an option to exclude responses from users who have not been registered for long. The default will be three days.

Happy hunting,
J
j_ung
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Re: [j_ung] The Security & Scams Forum
One more thing: sangiro once posted something on Dropzone in regard to classified users' responsibility to protect themselves. Despite the existence of this forum, the following still holds true:

In reply to:
We spend an enormous amount of time going above and beyond what's expected of any public site to alert our users about possible scams. We've implemented functionality that makes it impossible for users who have registered less than 3 days ago to contact sellers. We post a warning if a seller has only recently registered and immediately placed an ad. We have set in place functionality that makes reporting scams easy and quick. We have a forum where, once we report a scam to it, the post will be echoed on the classifieds page as an alert. We include a link in the footer of EVERY email we send when somebody contacts you via the classifeds to alert you to our Security articles in the help section.

Most public sites will put up a page telling you to be careful, use common sense, and then distance themselves from any and all transactions. In the end it is YOUR responsibility to check the credibility of any buyer or seller... not ours. Just like when you buy a newspaper, see a classified ad and decide to contact the person, the responsibility to protect yourself from getting ripped off lies with you, not the paper!

I receive emails on a weekly basis from people asking me if I think there is a danger in contacting a user to "see what happens" even AFTER we've marked an ad as a scam!

We will continue to do our best and err on the side of caution to protect our users from scams and scammers.
j_ung
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Re: [j_ung] The Security & Scams Forum
All the above new Classified features are now live. I'll post a test announcement, so you can see what it looks like.