Very upset with ABS

[rory]

i see now its the response rather than the grilling you are unhappy with .

well if paul is a one man band as it were , you might have got him at a bad moment ,or perhaps he;s had similar explanations before that ended up false. i dont know and ive not seen his response.

again wish you luck with the outcome.

[andrew63]

You could list your equipment for sale on here in the classified section when you have enough posts.

andrew

[Moonshane]

I suppose part of the problem is that fraudsters and spammers are (I presume) getting more intelligent and persistent and Paul probably gets sick of fighting them off, all in the background for the benefit of the whole. He'll probably see this anyway and I am sure his response will be courteous and reasonable based on his past posts.

Maybe it's my own ignorance but although I take what I feel are the usual precautions of the layman online, I don't feel a need to mask anything or put anything other than truthful details on any application (I am not suggesting you did but your comments suggest you may have done?). If an application form demands data which I don't want to give, I just don't sign up.

[Stargazer_00]

Nothing Wrong with being risk averse these days. Hats off to him for rejecting it and not standing corrected. What's in it for him to have to give up time to be convinced.

If you have spotted vulnerabilities in the site like injection attacks and so on which allow information to be extracted by a hacker then that is a real concern. If the only concern is that the sign up policy is too stringent then I could care less. Better that than not at all.

[alan potts]

I have not had problem with the site at all, bought and sold a few things. I do and have problems with people not trusting me and I guess that is down to them. I don't have a paypal account and I am sure it is mainly the fact that I am living in Bulgaria.

I am sure you are straight and honest but I don't think you have made yourself easy to deal with so you should not be surprised with the question you get asked as these sre the sort of tactics crooks use to cover their tracks.

Alan

[George]

Paul does an incredible job at running AB&S with paid adverts barely covering his costs. He's a very friendly guy and puts up with a lot cack in his efforts to provide a service to the Astronomers of the UK. Hiding behind a VPN that issues a non UK registered IP is more than likely the reason you have had problems, 95% of the attempted fraud on AB&S has come from outside the UK so Paul put measures in place to combat it, you unfortunately using a non UK IP have triggered the safeguards that are in place and I guess a downside to using a VPN. If you register using a UK or trusted IP you shouldent have a problem using the site after you have registered.

Cudos for Paul for providing a safe place for Astronomers to trade safely and without getting ripped off by Ebay.

[Macavity]

I have not had problem with the site at all, bought and sold a few things. I do and have problems with people not trusting me and I guess that is down to them.

Pretty much how I feel. Never had a problem with ABS. If I could remind buyers that many of us don't *really* want to sell stuff - Often it is of financial necessity. The "third degree" interrogation, quibbling over postage, non-aknowledgment of receipt, after we "buster gonad"...

A little more trust? BUT Frankly, "bad apples" are a comparative rarity? SGL, UK ABS... Even Ebay?

Most deals are exemplary. I think it softens the blow, if one feels yer stuff is going to a "good home"!

[jonathan]

This thread seems to be dragging on a bit and going around in circles. I think the interesting question here is does the ABS website and the administrator(s) have any requirement to abide by data protection laws? If it is not a registered business (even as a non-profit) then it would surely only come down to some grey area of an assumed duty of care for any data people care to input into the website, the risk of allowing someone else to store your data is probably put entirely on the user, the same as if they chose to display the information on their own website.

I don't know what the data protection laws say on (what sounds like) a personal website and other people's data, I expect it is an unclarified grey area at the moment. Another thing to consider is that the website will no doubt be hosted in a datacentre (potentially anywhere in the world) with possibly multiple backups of the data existing probably in at least one other off-site location, the complete removal of your data from all of these places could take some time and is probably mostly out of the website administrator's hands (once he has done his bit and removed it from the website database).

I think it is always a case of user beware, even for large corporate websites such as PayPal (which I still refuse to put my full bank details into for my own security reasons). At the end of the day if you're not happy with the service you've received then you can always vote with your feet, I'm sure it will be no skin off ABS's nose since they're not making anything out of your transactions either way.

[Moonshane]

it's not that difficult to avoid the possibility of someone hacking your main bank account. just have a specifically assigned bank account with little/no money in which you use just for transactions like paypal, ebay etc.

[E621Keith]

Put it this way. A few months ago, Paul took the drastic step of blocking all Spanish IP address because there were a number of fraud ad from Spain. The few genuine Spanish users of ABS had to go through additional checks to verify them.

Compared to a Spanish IP address, your masked IP address is far more suspicious, so you can't blame him from blocking you.

[upahill]

I fully agree with everyone.

And I commend Paul for his work.

If there was a message like "We compare your IP address to ensure you are in the location you state" then I could have disabled the VPN, I dont have a problem with ABS knowing my location, I quite actively have it listed to the left on here, and confirmed with paul my full address after realising his concerns.

As for having a different IP address, its not that much different from me signing up whilst on holiday for example, or whilst sat in a Costa Coffee in Edinburgh.

It transpires that the reason for concern was that another user, with the same christian name, and apparently from Monmouth had recently scammed people - so I appreciate Pauls concerns when I signed up (and did everything within my power to alleviate them).

My primary concern was with the 'Fraud Warnings' section, which posts the email addresses and names of over 200 users, its naming and shaming without permission and without proof. Whilst some may genuinely be fraudsters, a lot of the people published were those in fact being 'targeted'. This tactic directly violates their own privacy policy.

Thats my only real issue, I dont need to defend my choices on internet privacy, and please please don't misinterpret my comments as an attack at Paul.

I cant clarify enough how much I value the efforts of those involved with providing valuable services to the community.

Lets get back to the skies.

[John]

On that update from the original poster (thanks for that upahill ) I feel that this thread has run it's useful course now so I'm locking it.