How have you been scammed?

After seeing threads like these - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=214991

What kind of scams are going on in these forum marketplaces? What should I watch for?

 

Watch out for fake PR, overstated site revenue, people selling stuff they don't have rights to, nofollow tag on links, etc

 

Thanks, so people can pretty much post whatever they want and it may or may not be true? Any way for them to prove their stats are true other than posting revenue and traffic screenshots?

 

Trade with people that has high itrader and verified paypal acc.

 

When I ran a hosting company (roughly one year ago) I built it up so it was netting about $1500 per month. So with solid recurring payments like that it is safe to say the value would be between $10,000-$15,000. Anyways, somebody hacked my server, used info on it to hack my domain accounts, hijacked the company, impersonated me, and sold it pretending to be me. They wanted a quick sale and got $7500 for it, but in reality I lost $15,000 because I was trying to sell at the time. I had several suspects, one of which was my actual hosting company, as they shut down their website the day after my server was hacked. Very suspicious.

Anyways, I'm over it, but if anyone can beat getting their business hijacked and sold by possibly their own hosting company, have at it!

 

Wow, thats a rough one...it would be hard to beat that story...

 

most common is people taking your money and not giving product/domain/service, etc .... usually scamming in small monetary amounts

 

Im still a new member to DP but have been active in buying services here.

I find alot of things here that are just hard to locate elsewhere and the prices are much cheaper than they would be on online auction sites like eby. That common well known meeting place for otherwise things that may be hard or time consuming to organise.

Itrader offers a good guide and bit of confidence in buying BUT at the end of the day there is still a risk. Paying upfront for something that may never been done by the seller

I find like at eby - 95% of people are honest, decent people trying make their way by earning a few extra bucks. How can you design sites or protect users against those few % that want to take unfair advantage of others. They wreck it for the rest and give a bad name to a particluar service or industry. Just like the exploitation in the real world really - scum looking to make a few bucks and rip off anyone they can.

Look at the spam problem or the chargeback scam and what damage they are doing for the overall web experience

In saying all that - i am starting to think i may have been ripped off a small amount here at DP by a seller. Paid via paypal for two separate serivces few weeks go and have not heard back - others have paid him as well and not got the work done. His profile says he has not logged in since either. This profile from memory also had somethin like 50 itrader deals and few hundred posts too. What can i do about it?