Classifieds - Contact the Seller

[sangiro 26]

Heya all,

We've added a feature to the classifieds to help protect sellers and fight scams.
In short:

• You will have to be a registered user to have access to the contact information of a seller
  
• Interested buyers will initiate contact though an online form on Dropzone.com (only visible to registered users)


• Sellers will receive the contact information and message (there's an example below) and can choose to reply or not.


• You can forward any potential scam emails to a special "abuse" email that's included with with each message.

Why does this make sense?

• This keeps your email address hidden from potential buyers and you choose whether they get it or not by replying, or not.


• We have a lot more control over registered users on Dropzone.com and can act quickly against scams.


• This makes it a lot more cumbersome for a scammer to get in touch with you. Not only do they have to register an external email address somewhere, but they have to create a dropzone.com account (which can be closed quickly and all email from a domain blocked from future registration


• If a scammer registers a Dropzone.com username we immediately have access to the IP address he/she uses to browse the web. We don't have this with emails sent from free mail providers.


• Information provided though this form is logged for future reference.


• An added benefit is that it provides you with an additional layer of protection against email harvesting robots that grabs addresses from the web for spam lists.

Here's and example of the notification you will get when someone contacts you.

Quote

Contact information submitted by:
(support@dropzone.com) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 at 07:38:40
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

username: jsmith_dude001
url: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/detail_page.cgi?ID=13005&
firstname: John
lastname: Smith
Email: JohnSmith@myaddress.com
city: San Francisco
country: United States
message: I'm interested in buying the container you're advertising on Dropzone.com. Can you please contact me at your earliest convenience. I'm sitting on a roll of cash and would like to give it to you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCAM ALERT! - Help us protect our users.

If you suspect the person contacting you runs a scam, please forward this email to: (abuse email address here)

Click on the link below to read about some known scams:
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1205398

Safe swoops
Sangiro

[stclaire2003 0]

I am a bit frustrated. I registered with the SOLE intent of buying a canopy and Ive been waiting for the 3-days to lapse so I can see the selers info. Yesterday it said I was registered for 3 days but still wont give it to me and today it says Ive been registered for 3 days and still wont give it to me.

What the heck? Im not a scammer and Im not spamming anyone. Im sure the sellers would WANT my email and your more or less preventing a sale.

Michelle

[likestojump 3]

a simple solution is to send the seller a PM :)

[JJok 0]

Velocity////Dexterity

[Meso 38]

The time period that needs to elapse is 3 days, so on the forth day it is available.

No one is exempt from the security feature of waiting after registering, it's a measure that helps the seller far more than hinders them. Scammers are common place online and the steps to combat them are there for sellers safety. While they may want your e-mail, I'm sure they`d rather not have a dozen spammers e-mails too.