Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: eJ3k1 on June 23, 2012, 02:11 pm

Title: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID Code
Post by: eJ3k1 on June 23, 2012, 02:11 pm
Hello Silk Road,

I've been browsing through the road and the armory for a while, and I think I came up with a feature to make it more secure. I came up with this to prevent scammers on the armory from making fake listings (like: FE me 800 BTC and I'll ship you an AK47). However, this could work pretty well on Silk Road too.

Here's how it works:

Every time a seller account is created, it is assigned a randomly generated unique Seller Photo ID (SPID). This is a small 4-character code containing lower case letters, upper case letters and numbers, something like this:

Quote
yK7f

This code gets randomly generated for each vendor account, and is displayed on the seller's page. Then, when a seller offers a product, we kindly request that he put op a picture of the product, together with a piece of paper with his SPID written on it (and optionally his seller name/market name, etc).

This way, a scammer cannot upload pictures found on the internet, or take pictures from other sellers, and claim that it is his merchandise. So when we see a picture of a product with the SPID, and it matches the SPID displayed on the seller's page, you can be pretty sure that the seller took the picture (and therefore actually has the offered item in his possession).

Like anything, this is not infallible. However it will make many scams a lot harder to pull off.

Let me know what you think.
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID
Post by: sselevol on June 23, 2012, 03:51 pm
Most good vendors usually have the product next to their name written on a piece of paper or something, I think that's fair enough and is easy to tell if it's been edited in any way.

When I saw this thread title I thought you were going to ask vendors to upload pictures of themselves.  :o
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID
Post by: slybootz on June 23, 2012, 05:05 pm
When I saw this thread title I thought you were going to ask vendors to upload pictures of themselves.  :o

I also assumed that was the topic of this thread, so clicked on it planning on trolling.

This idea is a good idea, however most reputable vendors do a similar practice of uploading a photo of their gear with either their name handwritten and/or the date next to it. 
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID
Post by: eJ3k1 on June 23, 2012, 05:11 pm
Most good vendors usually have the product next to their name written on a piece of paper or something, I think that's fair enough and is easy to tell if it's been edited in any way.
That happens (in more places than just Silk Road), and it's the same concept.

One advantage of this system is that the seller cannot choose his SPID code, it is randomly assigned. Your username is not, you are free to choose it.

So theoretically, it is possible to look for pictures that contain such a piece of paper on other websites, and then make a silk road account under the same username. Then you will appear to be a good vendor. That would be impossible to do with an SPID code.

When I saw this thread title I thought you were going to ask vendors to upload pictures of themselves.  :o
lol.

I added the word "code" to the thread title, hopefully it's more clear now :p
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID Code
Post by: sabteria14 on June 24, 2012, 02:06 am
photoshop is easy as shit...
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID Code
Post by: eJ3k1 on June 24, 2012, 04:47 pm
photoshop is easy as shit...
Yes sir, photoshopping to get a nice looking picture is easy. Using photoshop to create an indistinguishable forgery, that's a whole different story.

Again, I'm not saying it's 100% fool-proof, but it will make a scammer's job a lot harder.
Title: Re: anti-scamming feature request: Seller Photo ID Code
Post by: sabteria14 on June 24, 2012, 05:20 pm
splicing a piece of paper into another simple photo of contraband is something that I could have done perfectly and indistinguishably when I was 12(no hyperbole, I did far more complicated things on photoshop at that age). Have you taken courses in photoshop or read books on it? It really is that easy to do well. and you should have put this in feature request