Alphabay Market Release “ScamWatch” – New Anti-Scam Team

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

August 12, 2015

Alphabay market admins just introduced new feature that will hopefully help to reduce the amount of scams on the market, taken from their forum thread.

Source: http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion/forum/index.php?threads/new-anti-scam-team.17512/#post-143050

The Alphabay SCAMWATCH Team

1) Our newest feature which allows top community members to work alongside AlphaBay Staff to clean scammers in a fast manner to give you, the user, an unparallel positive marketplace experience.

The anti-scam team, ScamWatch, is a paid position and consists of @penissmith, @vaas and @onionhood. Each member is proven and recognized, each with individual focus – not only fraud but drugs, hacking, malware, general etc. Staff has long worked to prevent scammers, however, with the increase of user base, we needed a team to entirely focus on detecting and preventing scams of any sort.

Staff is part of ScamWatch programme and will follow same procedure with the difference of being able to moderate topics/delete listings/make products physical etc. ScamWatch members at current stage do NOT have any moderation permissions on the forum or dispute access in marketplace.

What do ScamWatch members do?
They patrol all the time AlphaBay marketplace and forums to detect/prevent scams or signal for potential ones. ScamWatch members will have the ability to freeze vendor account withdraws for 24hrs if suspected of scamming. Issues such as physical items marked as Digital (scam) will be enough for freeze and report to Administration.

Example ScamWatch procedure?
After an account is frozen, SW member/Staff responsible for it will create post in hidden forum section, explaining the situation (+details+evidence) and Administration will be able to apply ban within 24hrs or dismiss the case, e.g. due to lack of evidence.

Why freeze not ban?
We at AlphaBay believe each persons role should be balanced in order not to be abused. A temporary freeze of 24hrs is the best solution.

I am not a scammer, should I be worried?
SW will not be harassing you if you do not scam, all of this is done for the protection of buyers and vendors. Should any abuse from SW happen, please message Staff member about it and it will be promptly reported to Administration.

SW can be abused to freeze all accounts on marketplace?
We have put in place code to prevent automated abuse of this feature or stop it in its tracks.

2) All support from AlphaBay in the Forums is now in one section – AlphaBay Support. The section consists of Helpdesk, Bug Reports, Scams Reports. Scam Reports is now put on daily tasks for SW members and Staff to review and manage. We have added labels to each topic so it will be known its current status (scam report unresolved/resolved).

3) alpha02 account will be renamed to ‘Admin’. This account will ONLY accept private messages from Staff. The account will be used by staff members. If you have something important to say, feel free to encrypt PGP message and send it to Staff member to pass it on to ‘Administration’ account. For any issue, use the Helpdesk.

4) Staff will be responding/managing sections Helpdesk and Bug Reports. Any legitimate requests will be escalated to Administration and they will be instantly processed.

With the recent changes, we are proud to say AlphaBay and its community, will be the first marketplace ever to take specific, meaningful actions against scammers/phishers/all those who wish harm in one form or another to fellow darknet users.

PR spokesman for Alphabay market “Trappy_Pandora” added on Reddit:

Not all of our scamwatch teammembers are particularly nice people, or have much tolerance for perceived stupidity, or even enjoy dealing with the public at all, but they have a proven track record of honesty and fighting scammers and are unlikely to abuse their position or allow bias to cloud their judgement.

You the buyer probably won’t ever need to speak with them, because you can talk to me! I’d like to talk to you, even if its not about alphabay or drugs or the markets or even anything important. I just love talking! It might be my aggravating personality or all this cocaine but either way yeah.

Updated: 2015-08-12