[Suggestion] Verified Trader Status

Because of the recent spike of scammers on these forums, I was thinking about ways that people could prevent themselves from being scammed, and this is what I came up with.

I've noticed that the only way to ultimately prove your legitimacy was through being verified by Paypal. (Additionally, I would say that almost if not all 100+ TR have verified Paypal accounts.) In my scam-prevention method, the admins would need to implement a status section in the profile section that is shown in the left-hand section of each post and in each profile. The available statuses would be "Verified Trader" and "Unverified Trader." There would be no such thing as a "pending verification" status, because this scam-prevention method would find no need for it.

What I was thinking was that an admin of FiPG would set up a Paypal account specifically for the purpose of verifying the legitimacy of FiPG traders. Those who seek verification would send an amount of money to the admin's account, probably $1.00 or more if the admins seeked to profit a bit out of this venture, with their FiPG screenname, and when the admin got the chance, he/she would switch the FiPG trader's status to "Verified Trader."

Also, the e-mail address that was used to submit the verification fee would have to be the only one used to collect/send their payments, as to prevent people from completing verification for others. This e-mail address would have to be attached to the FiPG account and would be revealed everytime a trade is set up. There could be a separate column in the trade module for e-mail address, or the e-mail address could be shown in an already existing column, such as Notes/Contact.

If, however, an FiPG user wanted to switch their attached e-mail address to something else, he/she would have to complete verification again.

If there is anything I missed, please ask me and I'll try to answer your question.

Also, if this seems like a good idea to you, please feel more than free to give me Karma. wink

I think that's a fairly good idea, but the only thing it would cost me is a dollar and a few minutes of time...probably a big headache for the admins. It would, however, add one more layer of security to trading.

Not a bad idea...... Admin, what do you think???

Laurel

i think this is a bit too complicated...just think about all the noobs that come in, would they want to pay? no, they'll run to a4f or FLR...

just my opinion....

Although it may add a bit of confidence to newbs, and possibly an "extra layer of protection." Couldn't it open up FiPG to being more legally responsible for bad trades?

Just a thought???

I already put all of that in my trade module. And yes, I think there are too many newbs that are already skeptical, and asking for them to fork out more money would scare a lot away......Though from a lot of posts I read, some would like that!

Margot 8)

i doubt that will work, kudos for the creativity.

Random, but what is FLR?

[quote3441a2107d="unknown uchiha"]Random, but what is FLR?[/quote3441a2107d]
That would be FreeLunchRoom.com, another site similar to FiPG and A4F.

But you forget that the notorious scammers have high rate Paypal accounts and it does no good to know their Paypal email address because they can easily change it. The only thing that they can't change is the date they created their account so having a record of that makes it easier to figure out who's who.