Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ a scam?
by
farmer_boy
on 23/11/2010, 17:48:44 UTC
What error did you get, farmer_boy?  The only errors I see in the server's logs are "rate limit" errors.

The Faucet tries hard to prevent people from cheating and using it more than once; unfortunately, that means if somebody who "looks like you" uses the Faucet before you, you might be prevented from getting your coins.   If that happens, try again a day later.

I've been thinking about implementing a two-tiered Faucet:  one that gives out a smaller number of coins and just requires you solve the CAPTCHA (and has all the current anti-cheating measures in place; there are one or two people still people cheating, but they're only able to get a few bit-pennies an hour, and they're going through an amazing amount of trouble to do it).

And another that gives out a larger number of coins if you login with a valid Google account.   Getting tens or hundreds of Google accounts is harder than solving CAPTCHAS.

But if I did do that... I'd get accused of implementing the Faucet as a sneaky way of stealing Google account email addresses.

Sigh.

"Our web server code has a bug in it-- thanks for helping us find it, and sorry to inconvenience you! We'll fix it as soon as we can." was the error message.

 I got my first 0.05 bitcoins. So, apparently it did work. I suggest you only show an error message when there is actually an error from the point of view of the user.

How many statustypes are there? I think it started at 0/unconfirmed and now it is at 4/unconfirmed. From a UI point of view just showing the probabilities would be simpler, I think.