Classifieds Vigilance

Hi All,

First Happy Holidays!

A quick note to emphasize vigilance in the classifieds area. There was a member called @jimmydave who has been banned. This member was soliciting users and a scammer from overseas. Please be very careful and do your due diligence in the classifieds area. If you feel you are being contacted by a scammer or are in doubt in anyway, let me know (PM me). I do my best researching every new member manually to keep the bad members out. We are still getting 5 or 6 + new members a day, which I find hard to believe. I changed the registration system so users receive an email and must click the link to be approved before I get notified of a new user (this helped a lot). Anyway they are mostly real enthusiasts like us. I usually disallow at least 1 spammer daily. Every now and then one gets through, especially if they are using a VPN, which makes it harder for me to check. On the signup page, I request location and I check the location matches IP.

- Check their use of the English language. Usually they make mistakes in this area.
- If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
- Ask them techy questions as they don't know as much as us about these things.

Anyway, please be careful who you are dealing with,

Jerry

Always.

I'm seeing (only a few) bots with forum join dates being pre-dated.
NOT lurkers, here to read, but users that are easily identifiable as bots.

As an example, one of the guys in our local Norton club got scammed 10K by a fake seller (NOT on this board) allegedly only 200 miles away.
He should have GONE there.

I'm extremely embarrassed to say that I got scammed due to a classified I posted - I need a MK3 frame.

I've been in IT for 50 years, have never had a virus, and was never scammed before even though I get MANY attempts a day since my email is well known and published on my web site.

jimmydave = scammer
matthew toomer (matthewtoomerr@gmail.com) = scammer
PayPal Account @KGBJB otherwise known as Kay Graham-Blake (kaygb61@gmail.com) = scammer, now blocked on PayPal

I suspect that these are three individuals working together but could be one person using VPN.

Now matthew toomer is trying to get me to pay again using another PayPal account since the one he used is blocked now (don't know what it is and am not asking).

Since I've had a business account with PayPal for over 24 years and provided complete info, the charges were reversed. They didn't have to because I broke an important rule and paid via Friends and Family - don't do that unless it is a friend or family member you actually know and you're trying to help - a proper business expects to pay the minor PayPal fee!

There is no buyer protection when you use Friends and Family and PayPal doesn't provide your address so to be even more stupid, I gave the scammers my shipping address.

If you've been caught by them or they are working you, PM me or Jerry. Jerry has done what he can and PayPal has too, but the money was too little for this to be a one-off, I'm sure they are trying others.

Since they are using our PM system for scamming purposes, the PM system will only be available to VIP members in the near future. Sorry about that, but got to do it to protect you all.

I know I'm a broken record - please consider becoming a VIP member. More than me have been burned by this scammer and it is taking a lot of Jerry's time; and, mine trying to help them through PayPal to hopefully get their money back. The latest one used a different PayPal account since the account I sent to is blocked.

I made the offer before. If you can't afford VIP membership, send me a PM with your username, email address, country, and phone number and I'll pay for one year of VIP. Last time I limited to the first 5, no limit this time unless it becomes too much for me to handle. You will be well vetted before getting the VIP membership, first by me and then by Jerry's normal practice.

Please keep in mind that this site is mostly out of the goodness of Jerry's heart - he certainly is NOT making a living from it! Servers, colocation fees, and the forum software cost a lot of money and the care and feeding of the site takes a LOT of time.

It takes about 6 yearly VIP Fees just to get rid of the forum software branding and there are a lot of other fees as well. If Jerry paid the minimum, it would be almost unusable on phones and annoying to use on computers!

Two members of my bike club have been scammed through eBay purchases
One was an offer off of eBay for a gold star
But the other one was through eBay for a commando the seller strung him out for delivery for months then disappeared
Neither of them got their money back for whatever reason and this approximately 10 years
But neither of them are silly people

There will be 2 security enhancements on the way:

- During the normal registration process for new users, the "Location" field is required. I cross reference this to their general IP area, before manually approving each user (amongst other things I do). When a user registers using their connected Google or Facebook accounts, the system does not require location, and this makes it tougher. Also, users are registered right away without my manual approval. I like using connected accounts to make it easier for registration. There is no work around for this within ACP. So, unfortunately that means I will have to custom code this. It will really help keep the scum out! It's going to take a while to get this done.

- Per earlier comment I will be changing the PM system to only be available to VIP members. This will help as scammers are too tight to sign up for VIP. they are using our PM system.

Stay tuned!
Jerry

Direct Messages or PMs are now disabled for registered users. Per above message. You will have to be a VIP member to use that.

Not that anyone notices or cares what I am doing lol- This is done
Hopefully less scam bastard artists now!!

- During the normal registration process for new users, the "Location" field is required. I cross reference this to their general IP area, before manually approving each user (amongst other things I do). When a user registers using their connected Google or Facebook accounts, the system does not require location, and this makes it tougher. Also, users are registered right away without my manual approval. I like using connected accounts to make it easier for registration. There is no work around for this within ACP. So, unfortunately that means I will have to custom code this. It will really help keep the scum out! It's going to take a while to get this done.

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