Hello there.
This message is here to warn people about a scam technique I just got myself into. Most advanced users would not loose much or anything but others can get screwed hard. Fortunately, even if I'm a noob I've informed myself and took precautions, I've only lost a really minor amount of btc and some product.
What really grinds my gears is the time I've invested to get my first sells and that it's been for nothing.
Before going into more details, I'll ask one quick question:
How can the website/forum in question still block access by saying "you have been banned" if I changed identity on tor ?
I also use tails and rebooted without more success so I really don't get this and it makes me nervous because I thought it would not be possible to identify me.
So I registered some time ago on a local forum to sell some stuff I've got, which is difficult to get in my country and people don't trust much what comes from some other countries. I wanted to make myself a little money so I could buy other things, whatever.
I found a well known member of the forum (friend with the mods etc ) that wanted to try the product so I thought to myself "hey this is great, he's going to leave some positive feedback about me and I'll start selling !"
So I sent him a freebie with a tracked parcel.
At this point I received several demands of freebies via private message but I said no (phew !).
I also found the post of a guy (a newcommer like me) that was looking for what I was selling. After a lot of discussion with said person (he was a newb too and knew even less about dnm and security than me, so I took some time to help him, hoping it would make him a good customer) he bought me a small pack, was satisfied, sent the money, left a good feedback and told me he'd get more soon. Very happy about my first sale I proceeded to order the transfer of the btc to my wallet (said btc never made it to my wallet, no suspense there !).
The well kown member of the forum that received a nicely made package with a freebie inside went on and opened a topic about how I'm trying to scam him with some phishing link via private message (I don't even know how to do that ffs).
This all thing unravelled in a few minutes. After around 45 min my btc weren't on my wallet, so I went to the forum to check if I did something wrong. I saw the topic about me trying to scam someone and got banned.
They didn't gain much, and probably thought they couldn't get much more since I was only selling small quantities so they ended things there.
I guess the moral of the story is ALWAYS get your btc out (obvious I know).
And also, less obvious (for me at least), beware of a community that looks really alive with lots of members and all, everything you see can be fake and just a facade.
Have a nice day or evening.
I don't see how this is DNM-relevant. May could be because I don't fully understand it or because it's missing parts of information.
Was the forum on clearnet or TOR? If it was on TOR, they could've just banned localhost - so noone can access it anymore. If it was on clearnet they could have banned all TOR exit-nodes.
However, I will approve it since it's still a kind of warning, but I guess you might have to explain some parts a bit better. ;)