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Originally Posted by Steven IS
It's nice to see someone goes deeper into my thoughts I mentioned in that other topic. I have given it some thoughts myself and it is hard to create such standards, spread them and make people follow them as a golden rule to join a program..
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It was a good point. It deserves further attention.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sharonsopinion
There have been organizations in the past that tried to put a seal of approval on programs, most notably are Team Aaron and Sharon and Sensa Trust. There have been many. What happens is, if they uknowingly (or worse knowingly) approve programs of slick conartists, who later turn out to be proven scammers, then the seal of approval becomes irrelevant. That is why when I do recommend something in public, I try to include words like "use multiple resources before deciding", "due your own investigation", etc. I wouldn't like to rely on just one organization's recommendation anymore than I would want someone to rely on just my recommendation.
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A very good point, for all I know there may not actually be a viable solution. Con-artists will learn to target the "verification" and get past it. There is no easy way to avoid this happening, at least I cannot think of one. Be that as it may, I am hoping for a few people to at least come up with a new way of looking at the problem. I love problem solving.
There is a paradox here - a "seal of approval" is something that would mean a program would have to reach a certain standard, and thus be seen as a strong point in favour of the program, and yet it is the seal itself which then becomes the weak link - due to the fact that people will be attracted to a program meeting the "standard" and so serious scammers can target obtaining a seal. What it does do though is remove a lot of programs from the mix straight away.
But i'm sure there are other ways to approach such a problem, so I will continue to think about it...
EDIT: I suppose if you are even going to think about creating a better system to those that have gone before it, you need to do some research on why previous systems failed. I don't know much about previous verification systems that were employed, but I'm sure others do, and I would be interested in knowing some of the programs that were verified by such systems, but then turned out to be "scams". That means finding out what criteria they used, deducing where the weak links in the system were, and rating how easily the criteria used could be forged. Not sure if anyone else would be interested in helping to compile that kind of preliminary information, but it would be interesting. (take nothing for granted)