OpenSea Enacts New Stolen Item Policy To Curtail NFT Theft

OpenSea enacts a new stolen item policy in order to curtail the rampant NFT theft that has been plaguing the industry.

After purchasing a stolen NFT, a Twitter user claims that OpenSea assistance advised them to sell it somewhere else (on another marketplace).

Asset theft continues to be one of the biggest issues in the nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem, thus OpenSea is attempting to change its policy in order to include more protections against stolen items.

OpenSea Enacts New Stolen Item Policy

The company stated in a statement that its policies were developed in accordance with American law, which forbids willfully permitting the sale of stolen goods.

However, the market recognized that occasionally, customers who unintentionally bought stolen items were penalized despite their innocence. Due to this and feedback from the NFT community, the market has altered its approach to encourage the use of police reports.

Police reports were previously utilized on the platform to resolve heated arguments. As a result of the new upgrade, they will be utilized to confirm any complaints of stolen goods on the NFT platform.

If a police report is not received within seven days, the site will allow the reported item to be bought and sold again in order to avoid fraudulent complaints. In response, the company has made an effort to make it simpler to reactivate the buying and selling features in the event that the stolen products are discovered.

Additionally, the NFT platform made it apparent that it is looking at additional strategies for addressing the underlying reasons of NFT theft. According to the press release, the company is seeking to automate threat and theft detection.

User Reactions

The measure was praised by a Twitter user who called it a good first step and asked other platforms to follow suit while advising that the nuances of rules from other countries be taken into account as well. On the other hand, several residents of the community continue to express their discontent on Twitter. One user posted:

That’s funny because when my NFT was stolen, both Opensea and the NFT Company that created it, pretty much told me to go to hell. What a change in attitude. I guess it only matters when 1000s of people are complaining

— CompassionateNFTkidz (@COMPASSIONTENFT) August 11, 2022

After another user complained they had mistakenly purchased a stolen NFT, the support staff at OpenSea gave the customer the advice to sell the stolen NFT on another NFT marketplace.

The NFT platform enabled additional security measures to protect its users from NFT frauds in June. Auto-flagged suspicious NFT transactions are hidden by the feature. This is done to make sure that only valid transactions are displayed in the market.

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