No offense taken and you make a fair point which i have considered. The last 10 years have taught me that there is more information out there than ever before but 90% of it is just rubbish and that more is not always good. Less information but good information appears to be better eg Many countries now use thumb prints and eye scans as a way of immigration control and confirming identity. Which is funny because in the old days they also used thumb prints to confirm your identity just as in the old days.
No one is being asked to give up their privacy they are simply being asked to be honest about their identity.
Really dont you get tired of meeting people who call themselves Enlightenedone one week then the following week they've changed and started calling themselves something different like super ***** scammer?
I actually meant something else when talking about the last ten years but since you take the JV scam as an example, I will follow along.
I read the shitlist thread about the enlightened scammer and as usual it boils down to 3 things:
Greed, this is where you offer fast profits. The target gets blinded by what could be.
Naivety, this is spat upon but it actually tells you a lot about the good character the naive person has. To a scammer it is heaven though. Naivety just means you couldn't think of anything so evil, or have not seen it before. It has nothing to do with intelligence. In fact, smart people make for good targets for a number of reasons.
Trust, this is where you surround yourself with people saying you are okay for instance. If ten people say you will not get burned touching the hot furnace it builds trust.
There is a fourth too:
Emotion. This works a bit different and it finds its roots in the other three. e.g. You like the guy but he faces a problem only you can help with. Will you be responsible for his children/kitty starving to death?
These are just the basics. I posted sort of a guide somewhere else and promptly the blue section got flooded so if you don't mind, I will stop here. BUT, those are the things you want to watch for. Your gut plays a factor here as it will usually warn you but gets defeated by "reasoning".
(For the record: I did report those posts when I saw how it was used but it is still up so perhaps I am wrong in wanting it removed. Hence this reply. If it gets deleted I will not be offended.)
Normally, when you deal with honest folks, they will provide you the information they would want to have. You don't need to ask for an ID when dealing with investors for instance: they will offer it themselves.
To an honest person it looks suspicious to themselves to not provide it, a scammer just solves problems on his way to your piggybank...
I will grant the named scammer he is not a beginner but he is not advanced either.
At this level, you can still question them and feel the reaction. Aggression in whatever form is a good sign something is up. Not with the advanced levels though, they will take down 90% of people eventually with advanced techniques. But, those people are rare.
I will note that I did not read his actual scam thread, I could be wrong about the aggression part.
The reason I am saying he is not advanced is because he could actually get away with it without getting banned.
Scamming is a business model and it is profitable too. In fact, there is a guide to scam posted by one of the Moderators, he calls it a blackhat technique. To me it is potatoes versus potatoes.
The thing smart people will understand is that it is even more profitable to just be honest.
While you can rob someone for two dollars, you can make thousands if they think they got a good deal and keep on coming back. Not to mention the PR you get from those people. Think pirate bay here.
Now to get back to the privacy thing. You posted this:
"What if you could only do business if you were prepared to lodge your passport details, proof of address contact details and a reference Would you do it?"
This is giving up privacy and it will NOT stop you from being scammed.
Online, you can fake anything. Give me your Twitter name and I will produce a screenshot of you saying whatever I want. For the record: I don't have a Twitter account myself, I just stumbled on the tool a while back.
Offline we just had a test done by Brenno de Winter where he printed his own ID, then used it to get access to the national security service, think NSA though we call it BVD. He got into other places too btw but this one was most scary to me. Please keep in mind the ID was official looking but had definite tell tale signs of fraud. People noticing those signs just assumed it was a new sort of ID...
On a side note, our NSA just put out a warning about Brenno de Winter, they did not address the method itself. While the warning on him was in effect a mate of him tried and succeeded. Gives something to think about eh?
People get scammed daily. We even have a show about it in The Netherlands.
What needs to be done is education. Teach people how not to get scammed. When doing so you won't need to force people by law to disclose personal information as people will be so wary when you don't release that information voluntary you can't conduct any business.
Of course, scammers will adapt and I know of a few ways to do so but it gets harder and harder this way. A scammer doesn't start out on the level of that enlightened guy, they get an education by trial and error. This is not his first scam nor will it be his last. In a few years he will be doing seriously advanced tricks. By slamming him down on the first attempt, done by educating people, he will see the error of his ways or assume it is impossible to get any profits from scam tactics.
I would love to show people but I already saw what a little bit of knowledge can do in the wrong hands. This is a problem I do not know how to solve at this time.
So, erm, to make it into a law to release private information while it is already quite hard to anonymously receive funds seems to build a fake trust factor to me. You would actually make it easier to get scammed.
Also, thumb prints can be faked in a multitude of ways. The iris scan depends on the equipment used to perform the check.
At current, the best way I can think of is a hand/palm scan, it checks for the construction of the hand down to the level of blood vessels. Then again, hands can be detached by the truly motivated, heat loss occurring by that can be compensated.
Disclaimer: I do not scam. Never have and never will. I do however have broad interests, used to have some very indecent friends and while I do not judge on people taking an alternative view on life I draw the line by doing things that keep me up at night. Scamming usually takes advantage of hard working people, having lost everything I had a few times makes me relate to people like that. Also, there seriously is more profit in conducting honest business. Not only moneywise btw.
EDIT: I just had a nice read through the scam thread and I underestimated him. By the looks of it he still has one account active. He will be back to play some more, this was not the first time he scammed members.... Could be wrong of course but things just don't add up. If he operates like expected, there will be several accounts owned by him, he uses sleepers. Haven't found those, yet. At least one will pop up with the next scam, within 2 months me thinks.
I would say this is a professional.
