#Online Scams

[greater-than-the-sword]

How to recognize a scam targeting artists

None of these are universal, but all are red flags. One red flag does not necessarily mean it is a fake commission, but more than one is very sketchy.

1) They contact you in a way you didn't ask to be contacted. Message when you said email, email when you said message.

2) They tell you they want to buy your art and name upfront a large budget with seemingly no idea it is large; an attractive amount to give the impression they are rich with no indication they ever looked at your commission prices.

3) Nothing about their message proves they ever looked at your portfolio. They will say "I looked at your portfolio" but never name a single piece they liked or anything they like about your style. This could be a copy+paste message sent to any artist.

4) The commission they want is frustratingly vague. Usually a person who requests a commission has a specific idea about what they want; this person (or bot with a limited response repertoire) can't figure out how to respond when you ask them if they want a bust or a full figure, and what style they prefer. A portrait is a portrait, right? You get the sense they've never communicated with an artist before.

5) Wants to pay via an unusual method that avoids accountability. Tells you they have financial trouble and can't use a card or PayPal, but will wire you money or mail you a check or something.

Even if it is hard to tell at first, a few questions will suss these people and bots out! They are unable to engage with normal commission negotiations, so they're likely looking for people who are very new to the online sales game and desperate enough to ask zero questions. They will also manipulate you via pity. Don't waste your time on them! Block and report! I have gotten these via Instagram, Deviantart, and email (from Artstation.)

#scams #online scams #art scams #commission scams

[thethirdromana]

I don't know if this is just me being paranoid, but I feel like there's been a considerable uptick in data-mining posts on this webbed site recently?

This kind of thing:

I want to get to know my followers, put your profession in the tags

Tag where you were born [plus what word you use for something, or whatever it might be]

What's the first song you remember dancing to?

It feels like we're not a million miles away from the Facebook thing of "your Christmas Elf name is your mother's maiden name and the last three digits on the back of your credit card, share your Elf name for Christmas!"

#online scams #protect your personal information guys! #and if you're making this kind of post in complete innocence maybe... just don't? #sharing just one of these things is harmless but if you answer five or six of these things #then you've just made figuring out your answers to security questions very easy

[gwydionmisha]

#Online Scams #Labor Camp #Slavery #Scams #News

[wensdaiambrose]

Ok it's that time again for me to say that AI is used by scammers on social media.

Can you point out what is wrong with these ai images?

Cause your grandma on Facebook can't.

Notice the repeated text?

The similar themes?

The lack of hands in every "first cake" photo?

Yes, a lot of the likes and comments are from other spam or scam accounts, but not all of them.

Teach the people in your life how to spot AI art and how to spot scammer and spam accounts.

#scammer #scammers #online scams #scams #scam alert #ai art #ai generated #ai artwork #ai girl #ai image #ai food #fuck ai art #fuck ai everything #fuck ai writing #fuck ai #online #facebook #facebook scam

[tired-and-unjellied]

Two weeks ago I was admitted to Hala AlShawa Medical Center after the assailants raped me and also killed my beloved father in an attempt to save me. Unspeakable violation continues to haunt me only to find out that on my return from the hospital they had killed my mother too having no idea where my sibling is since he is nowhere to be found. Right now I am being accommodated by family friends who intend to drop me at the Rafah camp which I’m not okay with since I’m planning to flee to Egypt where my relatives are and at the camp once I get in for one to be released for safe evacuation you need to have $7000 which I can’t afford. Life's burdens weigh heavy on my young shoulders as I navigate the harsh realities of existence. Your support will make a significant difference in alleviating the my suffering.

That's a scam

It's a one-day old that somehow found and asked several small accounts, as if they had a list of tumblr urls

It's the same pfp as a known scammer, @maddiemartines aka @naomiglowy, so it was likely stolen off a legitimate GoFundMe or Twitter user

EDIT: turns out she is Maddie/Naomi; I had them blocked already, so Tumblr wouldn't show them to me, I guess? (I'm not adding them to the list below, for readability’s sake)

The same message has been used on Tumblr, again and again, by different accounts: salimaabdallah, superbavenuechaos, salimahsblog, even anonymous asks. (superbavenuechaos notably has the same banner picture) "my other account is not getting attention 😢" They are all banned.

The tags are misleading: #fundraiser#charity#gofundme#mutual aid#donations#donation -> it's a PayPal, not a GoFundMe, and PayPal is blocked in Palestine (I have no idea if Fundraiser is a specific website or not?)

I will throw some sources under the cut.

Tumblr search showing the text matches:

Post about Maddie Martins aka @naomiglowy, by @/kyra45, a scam buster (edit: new link for the new addition, given we now know OP is Maddie)

#🗨️ asks #scentedwinnerlady #salimaabdallah #superbavenuechaos #salimahsblog #scams #scamming #donation scams #donation scam #scam alert #online scams #tw sa #maddieemartinss #maddiemartiness #maddiemartins #naomiglowy #maddiemartines

[oll13v3r]

If you can, reblog if you answered!! I genuinely want to know how many other people are dealing with this.

I've been getting this a whole lot and it's really frustrating because I do try to spread the message about what's going on in Gaza, and I try to reblog aid stuff. But, there's literally no way in hell someone that needed that help would go to my blog to ask for it. I post about Gaza occasionally, i am a minor so I #cant get a job, and I have literally 27 followers on here. The scam still manages to make me feel bad though. Hhhawhhwebhbe can't we just go back to sex bots in my dms???? That's just annoying and not something that actively ruins my day. These are literally the only asks I have gotten on here.

#Gaza #Palestine #tumblr polls #online scams #donation scam #Frustrated right now #I'd like to be excited to see a notification in my ask box #and it was actually an ask for once! :[

[sophieinwonderland]

Okay! We have headmate selling process now! Let's go over this!

1. Get Consent of the Sold Headmate

Cool start. Consent is important. I do feel ethics can still be shaky with headmates who are made to be sold, but I don't feel it's quite equivalent to slavery as some suggest.

2. Get the information on Carrds/documents

This is interesting. It makes sense to market the headmate. Although the other variation of this I heard sold documents themselves. I assume that particular method was to trick the consumer into reading the material later, introjecting, and thinking it was a successful hop.

With this method though, if all the information is available upfront, you can just browse the headmate market looking for headmates to introject for free!

3. Advertise in places

Makes sense.

4. Negotiate price after finding the buyer

Well this is very disappointing. Here I was hoping the prices would be public so I could see what the going rates of headmates are. What's even the point of this if the prices are a mystery?

Seems to be utilizing the sunk cost fallacy a bit here too. Get someone invested before talking over prices so they'll be more likely to spend more than if you had given them the price straight-up due to all the time they already put in.

5. Consent again

Good practice. Make sure the headmate is still okay with this.

6. Pay first, get the headmate later.

Okay, backtrack...

Why is this necessary?

System hopping is a totally real practice, right?

And this is definitely not a scam?

And the headmate can leave a system any time they want, surely?

Then why not offer the headmate a visit on a trial period to prove that this actually works?

Headmate visits for a few days to a week week, spends time with buyer, and if they're compatible then you can complete the transaction.

Okay, but my advice for avoiding scams is to not buy an invisible, intangible product that's supposed to magically be transported to your head, with no possible way to verify if you received it or not, or seek legal recourse.

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #scams #scam #online scams

[indiesellersguild]

Jenny makes acrylic earrings featuring her own hand-drawn designs. Her story talks about theft of her work from dishonest resellers.

#Cool online act #Resellers #Resell scams #Etsy scams #Scams #online scams #workers rights #small business #resell stories #Jenny's story

[polyamorouspunk]

Going to put on my Tumblr Parent Pants™️ for a second and out myself by saying I play an ungodly amount of Candy Crush, and recently I’ve been seeing an ad that I wanted to talk about but kind of just passed it off until I saw this ad on tumblr as well recently, so I just want to say: You Are Not Making Thousands Of Dollars Off A Stupid Little Game App. And I’m sure MOST of you are saying “nO sHiT pUnK” but listen if you are, then this post is NOT for you. I’d like to think that my mom taught me a decent amount of life lessons including this one but I still know what it’s like to feel like you grew up as a “sheltered child” so I’m passing this message onto anyone whose parents DIDN’T teach them this lesson: If a game was REALLY giving out THOUSANDS of dollars for FREE, they would NOT be putting THIS MUCH EFFORT into ADVERTISING because you would ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT because that shit would have gone VIRAL. And if you’re thinking to yourself “oh, yeah, this post is definitely for me”: DON’T feel stupid. Look, we all fall for scams at least once in our life, whether it be a scam like this or just a phony relationship or whatever. Falling for a scam does NOT make you stupid. We live and we learn and we pass the knowledge on to those who come after us, hopefully with love. You’re not stupid.

#life advice #the punk gives good advice #money scams #phone scams #cyber scams #online scams #scams

[tomorrowusa]

Slavery still exists and mainland Southeast Asia is a hotspot for it. But instead of agricultural forced labor, the victims end up in boiler rooms where they are compelled to assist their new masters with online scams. In effect, the victims also become victimizers.

The article above is largely concerned with Myanmar. But Cambodia also has a significant problem with this.

Hundreds of Taiwanese trafficked to Cambodia and held captive by telecom scam gangs

English speakers from Taiwan and Vietnam are in high demand by the slavers. But I've heard of people from the Philippines and Hong Kong being lured into slavery as well.

When looking into overseas job offers, it's essential to investigate the legitimacy of the employer from totally independent sources. Don't be naïve. When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

#slavery #forced labor #online scams #scam gangs #human trafficking #myanmar #cambodia #taiwan #vietmam #overseas job offers

[xzbat-loverzx]

Hey there, thanks for caring about others but the sick cat post by mand1flux is a scam.

The pet scammer is very frequent on tumblr. They make a new blog, put a few posts on it to seem legit, spam asks to people requesting donations, and then remake when they inevitably get deleted. Remember to try to scroll down o the bottom of a person’s blog, and turn on post timestamps in settings. In this case the person’s blog was created Sept. 29 and their donation post was made within only a few hours of the earliest post on their blog. The PayPal they are using is also one used in recent known scam blogs and they are currently running the same scam on the blog Colorfu11-roses.

Also, never trust a fundraiser that requests PayPal payments through “Friends and Family”. There are other ways to receive donations on PayPal but they request this because payments sent through Friends and Family are not protected against fraud and can’t be refunded. Never send FaF payments to people you don’t know and trust, because you can’t get it back.

More info on scams like these can be found on Kyra45’s blog or if you just look up tumblr pet scams. If you delete the post, you could also report op for spam or phishing.

Thank you so much! I genuinely didn’t know about this, so I appreciate you for politely explaining!

#answered ask #ask #online scams

[snugglebunches]

I just want to warn people, if you think you’re chatting with me anywhere other than Instagram, Feabie, Reddit, here, Tumblr, or my OnlyFans, you probably aren’t talking to ME. Make sure you aren’t being scammed. I just found out about someone using my pics on Snapchat to scam people.

Y’all be careful out there. I knew it would happen, but not THIS soon. If you think you’re chatting with me but you aren’t sure, ask me to verify and I will.

#fat belly #fatbabe #fatty #cute #onlyf@nz #feabie #scammers #online scams #scams #pretending to me bitch you’ll regret it

[sodasplatoon]

Hello, I'm from Gaza City because of the war,my house was destroyed. We lost everything,my family and I did not have anything left. We left our homes in search of a safe place and we were displaced three  times to different places to survive, but unfortunately there's no safe place in Gaza. My mother is very sick and she's a kidney failure patient in need of treatment outside. She suffers from LS. Help me and my family to survive. Please, your small donation can make a huge difference. A friend outside Gaza has come in to help me run the donation program so that my mother can be evacuated

Honey, you have a total of 5 posts on your blog, all of which are reblogs that you probably did in a span of 5 minutes in a sad attempt to look legitimate. Don't think I can't recognize a scammer when I see one. How dare you take advantage of the suffering of thousands of human beings and the compassion of those on this site just so you can buy a PS5 or some shit. Get out of my inbox and go do some life adjustment.

#online scams #scam alert #scammers #psa #palestine #gaza #gaza strip #don't give ur money to this fool

[wensdaiambrose]

AI is being used by scammers.

This is a huge problem on Facebook.

#ai girl #ai image #ai artwork #ai generated #ai art #ai is theft #ai is not art #ai is stupid #ai issues #ai is a plague #fuck ai art #fuck ai everything #fuck ai bros #online scams #scammer #scams #scammers

[tired-and-unjellied]

I am sorry for sending you a message, temporarily posted to your page, but I am asking you to help please, consider sharing and extending your support to help me relocate to a safer place(Egypt). I need help immediately.Thank you from the bottom of my heart

My donation link is at my post,thank you.

That's a scam

Same pfp and message as another account, called maddiemartines, which was banned by the Staff

#🗨️ asks #naomiglowy #maddieemartinss #maddiemartiness #maddiemartins #maddiemartines #scams #scamming #donation scams #donation scam #scam alert #online scams #salimaabdallah #superbavenuechaos #salimahsblog #scentedwinnerlady #tw sa

[gabelish]

Hey if you get a text message like this, it’s a scam. Note the bizarre email it’s originating from, the fact that there’s a short time limit for your response, the link ending in .top

From the USPS website:

If USPS contacts you it will come from a 5-digit short code that we’re familiar with.

#internet scams #smishing #phishing #scams #online scams