Scamming Subforum Closed

711 said:

I thought the rule about posting PMs and such was clear enough before, but TanMan apparently wanted to use semantics, and said "well the rules say nothing about chat logs". To me and most people I know, it is common sense that one should not post any form of private communications on a public forum without explicit consent of the parties involved, and regardless of the source of the logs.

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This is nothing to do with the scamming discussion, but I just want to say I'm not so clear about the idea that private communications are sacrosanct. To say so is a poison-pen's charter.

If you agree with somebody that a subsequent communication sent from them will be kept secret, then it should be. If an unsolicited communication is sent to you, it is up to you whether you make it public or not. You are under no intrinsic legal or moral obligation to conceal it.

That's going to be a judgement call often. We rightly take most private conversation as being off the record. But to extrapolate rules of private conversation to the internet without considering the differences is as foolish in one extreme as it is in the other.

For reference, the following text is one I'm am using for PMs to explain to new users who unknowingly break the no-naming rule why it exists. I don't include every reason why the rule exists, just enough to show the basic motives behind the rule and why it is required:

The Rule not to allow the naming of alleged scammers on EF was brought about for a number of very good reasons (and thus is not likely to change) including:

(i) Its very easy for people to make false accusations against people they don't like.
(ii) Its very easy for evidence (for example, screenshots) in false accusations to be faked.
(iii) Consequently, its very hard for anyone at EF to find out whether an allegation is true or false.
(iv) Even if the allegation is true, there's very little anyone at EF can do about it.
(v) Users are instead encouraged to send the info to MindArk via a support case. They have logs that can be used to verify the truth of allegations. And they have the means to hand out punishment to those who were correctly accused.
(vi) There's only so many names people can remember. Once the list grows too long people will forget the names anyway.
(vii) Scammers will regularly get new accounts in any case. Consequently the list will, in majority, consist of a list of old avatars that scammers no longer use.
(viii) Adding a name to the list will alert a scammer he's been found out, thus possibly causing the scammer to get a new account.
(ix) It is better to alert people to scam practices and to show them how to be vigilant, how not to leave themselves vulnerable, rather than to tell them to look out for specific avatars.
(x) Before the Rule was in place it was too much work for the moderators who had to deal with all the ensuing complaints, as well as try to determine which allegations were probably true and which were likely false.

Saffy said:

If an unsolicited communication is sent to you, it is up to you whether you make it public or not. You are under no intrinsic legal or moral obligation to conceal it.

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Again the part of the rule regarding private communications is there at least partly because it is sometimes difficult to verify whether or not a private communication that is claimed to have occurred actually occurred, or occurred in the context that is claimed. Additionally the fallout when arguments about private communications spill out onto the public forum requires excessive amounts of work sorting out and cleaning up by the forum moderating staff. All the moderating staff have other roles at EF that benefit the EU community, and their time is better spent on such activities than sorting out arguments between squabbling teenagers (for instance).

If you receive a private communication that you deem to be particularly offensive or out of order you are welcome to share your concerns with a forum admin who can look into the matter; such concerns should not be posted publically.