Make it more prominent to confirm on-site to customers.

[Misfit]

Almost everyone on site has in their signature or bio to always, ALWAYS confirm on-site before dealing with them. I am unfortunately one of the sellers who didn't have it in their signature or bio to confirm on-site with me, and someone ended up getting scammed by an impersonator of me on discord.

This isn't the first time it's happened to me, in fact, it's happened too many times to me that I've lost count. It just hasn't happened to me in awhile, up until now. So i decided it should be a suggestion.

I'm not too sure how it would work exactly, but i think in certain posting areas, there needs to be an "alert" situation where it reminds a person to always confirm on-site with the seller. We shouldn't have to depend on our bios or signatures to promote that message because there are a bunch of people who sell things but don't use that. It could even be a new member selling an account, and another member will make a discord impersonating them, find someone whose interested in the product the new member was selling, and scam them that way - and i personally don't see new members coming on here and the first thing they're doing is adding "confirm on-site!" in their sig/bio.

So there should either be an alert in certain thread posting areas. or, something that can - and HAS to be posted in bold/prominent text on selling THREADS.

Something along the lines of this could save many people.

 

[Cal]

maybe something like this?

or something that is more intrusive but would also be more effective

like when there's update notices at the top, except on the profile.
Ideally, a combination of the two.

This warning could be applied to users who have access to the Private OGs section or people who meet some but not all of the requirements to apply for staff. The banner of "frequently impersonated" wouldn't apply to everyone in that section, but it would prevent cases like that in the future.

Other Implementation: Users could apply or remove the badge themselves once they meet a certain threshold and have Supreme.

Impersonations could also be helped by having the user's discord here:

 

[Jayson]

Thing is, people get impersonated after they’re messaged on a third party service. They don’t even have to interact with our services to get scammed - they just remember the name. I don’t see why someone would check a profile but not confirm on site already.

Perhaps it would be better if we set up a identity confirmation database.

 

[BOOP]

Thing is, people get impersonated after they’re messaged on a third party service. They don’t even have to interact with our services to get scammed - they just remember the name. I don’t see why someone would check a profile but not confirm on site already.

Perhaps it would be better if we set up a identity confirmation database.

A user, I forgot the name, setup a website to check if a user's profile contains weird characters that would be used when impersonating.

 

[Blood]

A user, I forgot the name, setup a website to check if a user's profile contains weird characters that would be used when impersonating.

Zyger's https://characterchecker.com/

 

[BOOP]

Zyger's https://characterchecker.com/

Yep, that's the one

 

[Misfit]

maybe something like this?

or something that is more intrusive but would also be more effective

like when there's update notices at the top, except on the profile.
Ideally, a combination of the two.

This warning could be applied to users who have access to the Private OGs section or people who meet some but not all of the requirements to apply for staff. The banner of "frequently impersonated" wouldn't apply to everyone in that section, but it would prevent cases like that in the future.

Other Implementation: Users could apply or remove the badge themselves once they meet a certain threshold and have Supreme.

Impersonations could also be helped by having the user's discord here:

this is good but i wouldn’t go with the “this user is frequently impersonated thing” take my example, a new member could sell something, then a fake me adds him on discord and says he must go first since he’s not trusted and “i” am. But your recreations are great, something like that for members would be good, or like i said just the whole section in general.[DOUBLEPOST=1553400900][/DOUBLEPOST]

A user, I forgot the name, setup a website to check if a user's profile contains weird characters that would be used when impersonating.

i know. but i don’t even know if the guy who scammed pretending to be me even used #3407 as his discrim like i do. It could just be Misfit and then a different discrim, some people are easily tricked and don’t check. they just see my name or any trusted persons name and assume it’s them.

 

[Choo]

maybe something like this?

or something that is more intrusive but would also be more effective

like when there's update notices at the top, except on the profile.
Ideally, a combination of the two.

This warning could be applied to users who have access to the Private OGs section or people who meet some but not all of the requirements to apply for staff. The banner of "frequently impersonated" wouldn't apply to everyone in that section, but it would prevent cases like that in the future.

Other Implementation: Users could apply or remove the badge themselves once they meet a certain threshold and have Supreme.

Impersonations could also be helped by having the user's discord here:

Omg look mom! I'm on Cal's profile!

Also an ego booster

 

[Ally]

Thing is, people get impersonated after they’re messaged on a third party service. They don’t even have to interact with our services to get scammed - they just remember the name. I don’t see why someone would check a profile but not confirm on site already.

Perhaps it would be better if we set up a identity confirmation database.

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I don't like what you said at the end. Setting up an identity confirmation database would do nothing but be a hassle to register and get people into it. And like you said yourself, people don't even have to interact with MCM to be scammed, what makes anyone think that they'd use a database?

 

[Justis]

It is my belief that the best thing we can do to prevent impersonations, is to make our instant messaging system more instant, and provide it free of charge to all of our users, thus removing the main appeal for using external services.

We might also create a small popup at the bottom righthand corner of the screen that must be manually dismissed, reminding users of the protection that they lose when they deal off-site. Perhaps linking to an official wiki outlining the dangers, the common scam tactics, and the protections of dealing on site.
We can re-issue and require this be manually dismissed every month, to instill it into the common knowledge of our community.

The issue with both of these are:
1) Supreme users lose one of the perks they paid for (Instant messaging system)
2) Manually dismissing a notice telling you something you already know, every month, repeatedly, is annoying.

 

[BOOP]

1) Supreme users lose one of the perks they paid for (Instant messaging system)

I don't think many supreme users would mind this, although I can't speak for everyone.

2) Manually dismissing a notice telling you something you already know, every month, repeatedly, is annoying.

I don't think it'd get that annoying, if it's only clicking a small X once a month

 

[BOOP]

I'd be annoying to me.

To click a small X once a month

 

[BOOP]

once a month

like seriously is it that bad to decrease the chance of being scammed for some users? Or maybe we should have a preference option

 

[Lotus]

like seriously is it that bad to decrease the chance of being scammed for some users? Or maybe we should have a preference option

Such as an opt-out button to the reminder in our settings? That could be a possible option.

 

[Misfit]

It is my belief that the best thing we can do to prevent impersonations, is to make our instant messaging system more instant, and provide it free of charge to all of our users, thus removing the main appeal for using external services.

We might also create a small popup at the bottom righthand corner of the screen that must be manually dismissed, reminding users of the protection that they lose when they deal off-site. Perhaps linking to an official wiki outlining the dangers, the common scam tactics, and the protections of dealing on site.
We can re-issue and require this be manually dismissed every month, to instill it into the common knowledge of our community.

The issue with both of these are:
1) Supreme users lose one of the perks they paid for (Instant messaging system)
2) Manually dismissing a notice telling you something you already know, every month, repeatedly, is annoying.

People will sadly still prefer discord or other 2nd party msging anyway.

If a thread is set to the prefix “selling” it should automatically put a box, an alert, or something along the lines of that to suggest confirming on site.

Or if it’s a whole section, take the mc account selling sections for example, those should just have the [insert confirm on-site dealio here] in that space permanently

 

[Mick]

We might also create a small popup at the bottom righthand corner of the screen that must be manually dismissed, reminding users of the protection that they lose when they deal off-site. Perhaps linking to an official wiki outlining the dangers, the common scam tactics, and the protections of dealing on site.
We can re-issue and require this be manually dismissed every month, to instill it into the common knowledge of our community.

I don't see a reason for us to make a box like this manually turn itself back on once a month.

Personally I think that a better idea would be for us to display a notice on all users profiles explaining what impersonators are, how they scam, and what can be done to ensure that you are not scammed by an impersonator. The box would be a dismissable alert since people really only need to hear it once.

I'd love more feedback on how we can better inform our newer users about the risks associated with dealing off-site, so I'll unlock this.

 

[Mick]

I don't see a reason for us to make a box like this manually turn itself back on once a month.

Personally I think that a better idea would be for us to display a notice on all users profiles explaining what impersonators are, how they scam, and what can be done to ensure that you are not scammed by an impersonator. The box would be a dismissable alert since people really only need to hear it once.

I'd love more feedback on how we can better inform our newer users about the risks associated with dealing off-site, so I'll unlock this.

I think that we'll go with this. We should write a wiki article explaining impersonators and link it in a dismissable notice when people look at members pages.

I'll move this to pending, thanks for the suggestion

 

[Mick]

To provide an update on this, we've since released the very handy 'Confirming Identities' wiki article which I think is really great: https://www.mc-market.org/wiki/confirming-identities/

We've also got plans to make a notice above all profiles that links to the wiki and explains the risks of impersonators and why it's important to use our on-site messaging systems over external platforms. The notice will be dismissable and once you dismiss it from one profile it'll be gone from every profile you ever look at. I think this is a good way to educate our users on the risks without being too annoying to our users who understand what an impersonator is already.

I'll move this to accepted once we've got the notice set up. Thank you for the suggestion