Catfish - Please Read

[moonbynight]

As those of you who have been around a while know, Shys has a long history of troublemakers. Some of these are the men being creepy, or spammers, or that sort of obvious thing.

Others are more subtle. They have complex, often very engaging and likable personas, sticking around for months or even longer, building relationships with other members, before suddenly wreaking havoc. When they explode, it tends to cause a lot of hurt and mistrust. Members have even claimed real-life harm from this, with accounts being hacked and identities compromised. I suspect that this is just alt accounts of the same person, and not actual “hacking”, but couldn’t say for sure.

One particularly persistent one has been doing this at least since 2015 - long time members might recognize the names firthsal, sioran, almocado, and Hansard, amongst others.

While there are steps I can take to address this, if they're reasonably technically competent, it's basically a game of whack-a-mole. We can deal with them as they pop up, but we need to anticipate that they will show back up eventually.

Please be cautious with people you meet on here. Be careful what you share, publicly or privately. Be wary of people probing for personal information. Please feel free to let the mods know if someone seems off.

I do believe most of our members are just ordinary people wanting community and an outlet to discuss their sexuality, or I wouldn't have bothered starting this place. But some of the bad apples are persistent and dedicated, and everyone should be aware of this.

For those of you who have been previously banned from the old site (yes, I’m aware of you)... If you are here with a desire to participate authentically and want a fresh start, great. Please review the rules, ask if you have questions, follow them, and just behave like a normal, genuine person without limit pushing. If you're just here to pull your same old shit... please, get a life. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry. I’m not talking about you)

[VirgoGirl]

Yeah lol....good 'ol Almocado! Had me going for a bit but i learned a hard lesson there....won't be screwed like that again.

It's true though, they are going to most probably be coming crawling out from their caves again but we'll just have to be cautious with people.

[Bookworm]

I want to use the cat with both hands on its face in shock emoji here. I didn't realise Hansard was a troll. I'm sure s/he once sent me a very nice but random one off msg to just say good luck with things before disappearing.

Good reminder though!

[RedRosa]

Somewhat related, but have you have had to deal with a financial scamster here?

[moonbynight]

Somewhat related, but have you have had to deal with a financial scamster here?

Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean anything. I wasn't a mod on the old site, so only saw stuff that was public or that I was involved in myself.

Always something good to keep in mind, since it's super common on dating apps and social media.

[RedRosa]

Somewhat related, but have you have had to deal with a financial scamster here?

Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean anything. I wasn't a mod on the old site, so only saw stuff that was public or that I was involved in myself.

Always something good to keep in mind, since it's super common on dating apps and social media.

I asked because as a retired person I get routine warnings from Social Security, Medicare and my pension fund warning of financial scams. These warnings are along the lines of don't share your Social Security number, Medicare info, or routing number (for pension direct deposit.) The scams involve the use of forged logos that seem authentic.

[Ripley]

This is good to know. I do recognise some of the names here so I will keep an eye out. Thanks for the heads up

[moonbynight]

Somewhat related, but have you have had to deal with a financial scamster here?

Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean anything. I wasn't a mod on the old site, so only saw stuff that was public or that I was involved in myself.

Always something good to keep in mind, since it's super common on dating apps and social media.

I asked because as a retired person I get routine warnings from Social Security, Medicare and my pension fund warning of financial scams. These warnings are along the lines of don't share your Social Security number, Medicare info, or routing number (for pension direct deposit.) The scams involve the use of forged logos that seem authentic.

Sorry, I thought I responded to this when you first posted!

The more likely scam you'll see on sites like this, where you wouldn't expect to be interacting legitimately with financial or government institutions, is the sort of scamming you'd see on dating apps.

The first type will develop a relationship with you. They know what to say to make you feel good, loved, valued, and emotionally invested in the relationship. Then they start asking for money. Usually they'll ask for a small amount at first - $5 to buy their pet food until they can get paid, or something like that. Maybe they'll even pay it back, to build trust. Then they'll have an emergency, or desperately want to come visit you but not have the money for it, and start asking for larger amounts.

Second is the blackmailer - like the first, they'll develop a relationship with you, but use it to get compromising info, nudes, or similar from you. Then they threaten to send those to important people in your life unless you pay them. They may use any nudes you do send them to perpetuate the scam against others.

Third is the Sugar Momma/Daddy scam. They will offer to send *you* money in exchange for love/affection/loyalty/conversation. They may request your account info to send you the money, or send you extra and ask you to send it to other people (they'll ask you to help with "managing their finances" in exchange for pay or something like that) - and then the original money is withdrawn or invalid or something. A platonic version of this would be offering to pay you for some sort of minor work (tutoring, being their virtual personal assistant, writing something).

While we don't have a forum here for buying/selling, that's another common place for scammers, and if someone does offer to sell you something (or send it free for the cost of shipping), that could easily be a scam.

I'm sure there are others beyond this, but these are common ones.

[RedRosa]

Useful information. Thanks!

[moonbynight]

So, Almocado/plumpkin/etc. continues to do her same old stuff and participate under various alt accounts.

She runs her own forum - https://inquisitive.pinkhotelgroup.com/. She's posted this link on the forum once, in a duplicitous manner. She's also contacted people about this site via DM. I will allow the post, with added admin commentary, to remain so that people can be aware.

Here's how her site appears currently - it is very clearly modeled from this one and not just some random site:

Screenshot 2023-11-10 3.13.33 PM.png (128.97 KiB) Viewed 4334 times

If you feel that shybi.net is not free enough, please, feel free to join there at your own risk. No further links to this forum, or any other site that appears to be run by the same individual, will be allowed.

I cannot reasonably block this person without potentially impacting legitimate users - as I said in the original post, it's a game of whack-a-mole. At the same time, I don't feel that allowing these accounts to continue acting under the pretense of being legitimate users is safe or beneficial to the forum or its users.

Therefore, in interest of increased transparency, we'll be marking accounts that we strongly believe to be acting in bad faith, but who have not quite pushed things far enough for banning, as suspicious. They will be able to interact with the site mostly as normal, with a few limitations, but they will have red usernames with a "Suspicious User" tag. People can decide for themselves how they choose to interact with these accounts, or review their posts and identify patterns for themselves.

Important notes on this:

I am only marking someone as suspicious if there is a very strong technical and/or behavioral reason to believe that they are. This means that lack of a "Suspicious User" designation does not mean that someone is inherently safe or not-Almocado. Continue to exercise appropriate caution with everyone, as you would anywhere on the internet.

This could potentially be used to mark users who aren't Almocado-alts as suspicious as well. So a suspicious designation doesn't necessarily mean we think they are Almocado. Just behaving in a manner suspicious enough to be of note.

If you have any thoughts about what you'd like me to do about this individual, please, feel free to discuss. If the consensus is that you'd rather they'd just be banned outright when detected, I can do that. However, I think that increasing awareness will be more helpful in the long run than banning.