OpenSea introduces new stolen item policy to combat NFT theft

As property theft remains one of the biggest headaches in the NFT (nonfungible token) space, NFT marketplace OpenSea is making efforts to tailor its policy to incorporate additional measures against stolen items.

In an announcement, the firm highlighted that its guidelines were created with US laws in mind, where knowingly allowing the sale of stolen items is prohibited. However, the marketplace admitted that in some cases buyers who unknowingly bought stolen items were punished even though they were not at fault. Due to this and the NFT community’s feedback, the marketplace has adjusted its policy to expand the use of police reports.

Previously, police reports were used within the platform in escalated disputes. With the new update, they will be used to verify all stolen item reports within the NFT platform. Without a police report within seven days, the platform will enable the purchase and sale of the reported item again to avoid false reports. Following this, the company has also made an effort to facilitate the process of reactivating the buying and selling functions when the stolen items have been recovered.

The NFT platform also highlighted that it is working to find other solutions to tackle the problem of NFT theft at its roots. According to the announcement, the company is working to automate threat and theft detection.

A Twitter user praised the move, described it as a good first step and encouraged other platforms to follow suit, while suggesting to consider the nuances of laws from other countries as well. On the other hand, some community members are still unhappy and are taking to Twitter to report their issues. One user wrote:

It’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 of attitude. I guess it only matters when 1000’s of people complain

— CompassionateNFTkidz (@COMPASSIONTENFT) 11 August 2022

Meanwhile, another user claimed that they had unknowingly purchased a stolen NFT, and the support staff at OpenSea advised the user to sell it on another NFT marketplace.

Related: Hacker gets a taste of his own medicine while society recovers stolen NFTs

In June, the NFT platform activated additional security features to protect users from NFT fraud. The feature hides NFT transfers that are automatically flagged as suspicious. The aim of this is to ensure that only legitimate transactions are visible on the market.