1. You don't need Premium in order to trade, it wouldn't be nice to alienate a large part of the userbase.
2. Not everyone using OP is a TF2 player. Makes no sense to get Premium in TF2 if you only trade Dota 2 items or games.
3. Scammers can use hijacked accounts to continue spamming or buy old accounts cheap on the black market.

1. The prerequisite can be to have at least one tradeable item in your inventory (Haven't been on the f2p side of TF2 long enough to fully understand the trade system, correct me if I'm wrong).
2. I guess it'll come down to the programming skills in preventing f2p players that don't meet the criteria to trade on the TF2 side of outpost. OR, the prerequisite could be to have one tradeable item in TF2 or Dota 2. Although this would have minimal effect, it'll have SOME effect. Baby steps.
3.I Highly doubt that scammers will be willing to pay for accounts that will be banned after several posts with minimal success. As for hijacking, that's another rare issue.

One of the main reasons why this phishing problem has become so rampant on outpost is due to the EASE with which a phisher can make a brand new account and get right back on to phishing. If you guys could add on some pre-conditions, it could act as a huge deterrence.

More Edit: Yes, items can be traded from the phisher's main account to the new account. However, I highly doubt that they would want to risk losing their main account as the main account gets marked on the item's history.

1. From a scammer's point of view, I don't see how this would be an obstacle. Getting an item/game can be done without a problem.
2. This would only add a new layer of complexity with little to no affect, as mentioned above.
3. You'd be surprised. With a "big catch" they can make hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a matter of minutes. Paying $1 for a new chance to hijack someone rich is nothing to them. As for using hijacked accounts to spread phishing links, there have been several threads on the forum about this. Also if you check some of the accounts that are posting the links, they have months of trading history.

Phishing is a huge problem, I agree. However if you think about it, most of these suggestions wouldn't change much if anything at all.

I should have been clear that the phishers that this system is trying to target are scammers like these: http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/379027

Phishing through hijacking is a problem that a prerequisite system or any system Edit:"can't" prevent. There could be one, but it sounds highly unlikely or too complicated for use.

Anyways:
1. Read 'More Edit'
2.You'd be surprised by how much a prerequisite system can have an impact on deterring many scammers. I'm sure you've heard of Steamtrades.com. In my 6 month-experience I've never encountered a phisher on that website; I'm mostly encountered with impersonators (which is a different issue like hijacking) and those who beg me to go first in a key trade, but never a phisher.
3. As I should have said, this method of phishing is for those who have minimal to no funding in their scamming efforts; it's not that hard to create a phishing link and a brand new steam account.

Why not just make a system like, for example, a level system for users. Levels could be determined by length of membership, comments, hearts, trades, etc. And for every level you would be able to post more links within a time period, like 24 hours or so. New users have hardly any need to post links and older and more experienced users will have a greater need.

Originally posted by P4-R4:

Why not just make a system like, for example, a level system for users. Levels could be determined by length of membership, comments, hearts, trades, etc. And for every level you would be able to post more links within a time period, like 24 hours or so. New users have hardly any need to post links and older and more experienced users will have a greater need.

That would greatly inhibit trading for new users who are not scammers; we can't assume that they won't have much to trade. It's difficult enough trying to compete with well-established traders on outpost.

Originally posted by BloodMan:

Originally posted by P4-R4:

Why not just make a system like, for example, a level system for users. Levels could be determined by length of membership, comments, hearts, trades, etc. And for every level you would be able to post more links within a time period, like 24 hours or so. New users have hardly any need to post links and older and more experienced users will have a greater need.

That would greatly inhibit trading for new users who are not scammers; we can't assume that they won't have much to trade. It's difficult enough trying to compete with well-established traders on outpost.

What links would new users need to post?

Originally posted by P4-R4:

Originally posted by BloodMan:

That would greatly inhibit trading for new users who are not scammers; we can't assume that they won't have much to trade. It's difficult enough trying to compete with well-established traders on outpost.

What links would new users need to post?

"Would you accept this offer? *links to trade*"

Anyways, this method won't prevent scammers from phishing as they would be able to post some links until they level up, which they could do by spamming comments or whatever on a fake post. The point is to stop them entirely.

From a programming point of view, any solution that is not a complete solution is a waste of time and resources. Adding multiple filters or conditions just obfuscates the problem.

This topic is getting repetitive.

The only solution I see is blocking from display any links that are not whitelisted, thus not even the really clueless people - those that would still type letter by letter a wrong link in the address bar - would have their account hijacked.

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

From a programming point of view, any solution that is not a complete solution is a waste of time and resources. Adding multiple filters or conditions just obfuscates the problem.

This topic is getting repetitive.

The only solution I see is blocking from display any links that are not whitelisted, thus not even the really clueless people - those that would still type letter by letter a wrong link in the address bar - would have their account hijacked.

Good suggestion but blacklisting every website, even if innocent, seems like a huge consequence. Nevertheless, the site is for trading, not for sharing youtube videos. I guess we'll have to see what happens.

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

From a programming point of view, any solution that is not a complete solution is a waste of time and resources

I have to disagree if I take you literally. There never is a complete solution, especially when it comes to security. But in this specific case, I too see no point in the OPs suggestion.

You probably get the most benefit from educating people. I have not seen any TF2 phishing / hacking attempt so far that can't be detected as such with following a few simple rules.

How about some captcha when you are logging in for the very first time? It seems like they are using automated scripts/bots to spam their crap all over different trades.

they should make a plugin that whould perm hide the comment and ban the user who posted a phishing link. (the phish comment whould be needed to add to a whitelist) so yeah...

Any reason to Link to a website not white listed?
Youtube, outpost, steamrep, official wiki, meetthestats, etc
Why does anyone even need to link to another site?

Originally posted by KeyOfHearts:

Any reason to Link to a website not white listed?
Youtube, outpost, steamrep, official wiki, meetthestats, etc
Why does anyone even need to link to another site?

You never know. For instance, if I banned all sites, then what if someone wanted to post an image of their new unusuals on a site that wasn't well known and not whitelisted?