#reduce reuse reblog | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

scamarchive · 2 years ago

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Red Flags: How to Identify a Tumblr Scam (Pet Edition)

Has someone sent you a message requesting that you boost their sick pet fundraiser? Have you seen someone reblog a post like that? It could be a scam.

Check out this list of red flags before you boost or donate!

🚩 Red flag #1: Someone you don't know has sent you an ask out of nowhere, requesting that you boost their fundraiser

Scammers like to cover as much ground as possible. To do this, they find completely random, unrelated people through the trending and popular posts. If you reblog a trending or popular post and receive an ask soon afterwards, that's probably how they came across your blog!

Example: you watch a new release movie like 'Puss in Boots', and you reblog some trending fanart. You receive an ask about a fundraiser a few days later.

Example 2: you like some fanart of characters from the recent 'The Last of Us' episode, which is trending on tumblr. You receive an ask about a fundraiser that night.

Example 3: you reblog some cottagecore photography or another post that contains a trending aesthetic. Hours later, you receive an ask about a fundraiser.

🚩 Red flag #2: They tell you to answer their ask privately

Scammers love spamming the same copy-pasted ask to hundreds of people! They also love to reuse asks from previous scams. To reduce how many people notice the similarities between their current asks and asks from previous scams, they'll tell you to answer privately, to stop more evidence from getting out there. Also consider: if someone really has a sick pet, they should want as much exposure as they can get! Telling someone not to publish their ask seems counterintuitive, unless they have an ulterior motive.. Which a scammer will definitely have.

Knowing these red flags, check out the six scam asks below. What do they have in common?

🚩 Red flag #3: Comments are turned off in the fundraising post, or there are removed comments

Scammers preemptively turn off comments in their posts so people can't call attention to the fact they're scams. People who have real fundraisers, on the other hand, are usually glad to talk to you in the comments! Sometimes, scammers let people make comments, but there may be a message that 'some comments have been deleted or removed'. These were usually warnings from people who realized it was a scam.

🚩 Red flag #4: Their ask box is closed

Scammers preemptively turn off their ask box because they can't provide proof that the pets and vet bills belong to them. They also want to avoid angry messages from people who realize they're a scammer.

🚩 Red flag #5: They ask you to send money through paypal's 'friends and family'

On paypal, you can send strangers funds using 'goods and services', or 'friends and family'. Scammers will often ask you to send through 'friends and family' because you have very little protection and you'll have a hard time getting your money back! Scammers like to spin it as being 'faster', and they'll try to appeal to your emotions to create a sense of urgency and guilt, convincing you to send money using that option.

🚩 Red flag #6: Their posts have no tags. Their posts are all reblogs of trending posts. They don't seem to be reblogging consistently from any specific blogs

Scammers make a fresh blog for every new scam. They want to set up their blogs as fast as possible, so they cut corners, meaning that aside from their fundraising post, all their posts will be reblogs, and they won't usually have tags. The reblogs will often be of trending, easy-to-find tumblr posts! In most cases, scammers reblog posts from as many different blogs as they can, unlike the typical tumblr user who usually reblogs from select people they follow, over and over.

🚩 Red flag #7: They only have ~40 posts on their blog

Scammers know that most people won't spend more than a moment scrolling through a blog to verify its age, so they'll only populate their blogs with just enough posts to convince someone who only scrolls for a short time. Usually, the posts are all made within a few hours at most. If a blog is run by a scammer, usually you can scroll through all the posts within five minutes.

Remember: scammers want you to think 'eh, good enough'! If you're scrolling through a blog and you start to think this, scroll for another minute or two!

If you're on desktop, you can quickly get to the end of someone's posts by tapping the 'end' or 'page down' keys.

🚩 Red flag #8: Most of their posts are reblogged directly from the original poster

Scammers will usually reblog posts directly from the person who originally posted them, unlike most tumblr users, who tend to see posts reblogged by their friends and reblog them from those friends instead.

🚩 Red flag #9: Most of their posts have very high note counts

This is another indication they were fabricating their blog activity. It's way easier to find super popular posts than smaller ones! This is not a rule, most scam blogs will have posts with ~40 notes mixed in with posts with ~40k notes.

🚩 Red flag #10: The timestamp of the oldest post is only a few days old

Most scam blogs don't last more than a week before tumblr deletes em. Once you've scrolled to the end of the blog, check the timestamp of the oldest post by clicking on the 'meatball' (three dots) icon in the corner of it. If that post is only a few days old, or if it's so new that you don't even see a date (only a time), the blog is probably run by a scammer!

🚩 Red flag #11: The blog is dash-only

Scammers disable their blog's main theme so people can't see their archive and instantly see how new all their posts are. They want you to have to scroll, then get tired of scrolling (or say 'good enough'), so you never reach the end of their very sparse posts and realize it's a fabricated blog.

🚩 Red flag #12: The reblog notes have warnings that say 'this is a scam'

When people reblog a scam post and realize it's a scam, they'll often edit the post to warn people who see it in the future. You can look for these warnings by checking the 'comments and replies' reblogs, and the 'comments only' reblogs! Scammers count on people to reblog instinctively and not check these notes.

🚩 Red flag #13: You check the 'other reblogs' tab and notice that many unrelated users reblogged the post directly from the original url

This indicates the person sent copy-pasted asks to many unrelated people (this ties into red flag #1 and #2!). An unknown blog shouldn't have this many direct reblogs for their post, especially if the post and blog itself is super new.

🚩 Red flag #14: You check out their url tag at tumblr.com/tagged/URLHERE and see posts warning that they're a scammer

Sometimes, upon searching for the person's url (you can do this by going to tumblr.com/tagged/URLHERE), you'll see a bunch of people who have outed the scammer. Keep in mind even if you don't see any warnings, it doesn't necessarily mean the person isn't a scammer! Sometimes a blog is just too new for anyone to have posted about it yet.

🚩 Red flag #15: The post uses strong emotional buzzwords and language

Scammers like to use a post template that involves many colourful emojis, and phrases like 'my poor (pet name)!', 'he deserves to live!', and 'help us save a (cat/dog/etc)!' to appeal to emotion and make people feel empowered to help. This is so someone will share the post as quickly as possible, and not spend as much time carefully vetting the blog. The language is designed to make people feel guilty if they don't share. Not all posts containing this language are scams, but scammers employ it a lot because it's super effective at getting results!

🚩 Red flag #16: They don't have established history with anyone on tumblr

If nobody knows who the person is, chances are it's a scam. There's no shame in asking around to see if people recognize the blog! Make sure if someone comes forward to confirm, that their blog is older and they're well known in the community. Scammers don't really go through the hassle of astroturfing real interactions with real people before making their scam posts.

🚩 Red flag #17: The currency on the vet bill doesn't match the currency of the country that appears when you hover over the paypal link

This is a big one! For example, imagine there's a post with a photo of a vet bill. You notice the costs are all in US dollars ($). Next you check out the paypal link at the bottom of the post by hovering over it with your cursor (or pressing and holding with your finger, if you're on mobile).

When you do this, in the bottom corner of your screen (or in a popup if you're on mobile), you see the url attached to that paypal link. This url reveals the paypal user's country using a short abbreviation! In the example below, you can see 'PH', which stands for 'Philippines':

Therefore, the post in this example is almost certainly a scam, because the currency in the Philippines is pesos (₱), not USD ($).

You can also look carefully at the vet bill to find the location of that vet. In this example, the vet is located in Richmond Virginia, US. That is a red flag too because again, the paypal recipient is located in the Philippines!

🚩 Red flag #18: They have both a venmo and a paypal link, but the names aren't the same

Scammers make sock puppet accounts for venmo and paypal, and they'll often reuse those accounts between scams! Because of this, their links won't have identical names. For instance, in the example scam above, their paypal said 'aatuck1', but their venmo said 'evan-naeher'. This is probably because they made a new paypal to match the name on the vet bill they stole, but they still had a working venmo they wanted to reuse.

Other handy things to remember:

Just because someone proves they aren't a bot, it doesn't mean they aren't a scammer!

Many scammers do manually send asks to people, do reply to people who ask questions (without giving any actual verification), and even block people who reveal them to be scammers. Many scammers have been confirmed to have 'waking hours' and 'sleeping hours'.

💡 When in doubt, ask the person to write some words of your choice on a sheet of paper, put it next to the animal, and send a picture of it to you. 💡

If the person actually owns the pet, this will be easy for them. If they can't produce a picture, it's a scammer. Remember: if someone gives an excuse for why they can't send a pic, stay skeptical! Excuses are not a substitute for proof.

When in doubt, answer their ask firmly and skeptically.

This is the 'tough love' version of the above approach!! If someone sends you an ask, say firmly that their blog 'looks suspicious', and that you aren't comfortable sharing or donating. Often, scammers will block you as soon as you say this, because they know they can't provide any verification (unlike people with real fundraisers, who will be happy to give it) and because you've given them the impression you're tough on scammers and not an easy sell, they won't even try to convince you! Now if they don't block you? Awesome- now's the time to ask them for the sheet of paper photo.

Scammers use stolen, but legitimate, photographs of pets and vet bills!

The bills are real, the pictures of pets are real. But they're stolen from real fundraisers that other people made on facebook, gofundme, etc. Because of this, you can't rely on a vet bill picture alone to tell if something is a scam! You need to look at the context of the entire post, and check for red flags in the person's blog, etc. That's where things fall apart!

You won't always find a source for pet pictures if you reverse-image search them!

Scammers often take pictures from facebook and other websites that are behind login walls, and these sources won't show up on google. If you reverse-search a picture and nothing shows up, remember to still check for other red flags!

Lastly: If you want to report a scam, you can select 'report something else' > 'unlawful uses or content' > 'phishing'.

Just remember these red flags, or save em for reference, and you'll be a scam detective in no time!

Reposted with permission from @coulsonlives.

#scam #scam alert #psa #mutual aid #fundraiser #reference

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diamond-dangeresque · 3 months ago

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Day 6 — Legendary

A/N: i wanted to promise i wouldn't hit y'all with Another Wall of Text but unfortunately i have Stephen King Syndrome and I Can't Stop Writing 😖😖😖

1325AE, Fractals of the Mists ~ Sunqua Peak Fractal

"Please, quill its elementals and restore peace! You must hurry!"

That's what the 'mountain spirit' told Chihiro, and so up the fragmented stormy mountain he climbs, pulling out a shortbow and firing at the airy wisps until their squalls bind to his legs; he leaps from stone to stone with their enchanted winds at his feet, getting closer to what looks like the top of a tall, winding staircase carved out of a mountainside.

He thinks back to the 'spirit'. She sure didn't seem like a nature spirit. Seemed pretty human, actually. But maybe it's just because he can 'see' through the charade she puts up. It'd fool most others, being fair. And he didn't want to say anything, either, both because it's not like him to spoil a kid's fun and because he's been chided before about "breaking script", whatever exactly that means.

The wind elemental scuttles in its small arena, awaiting its target. But then, as Chihiro gazes at it, the elemental turns; it gazes back at it, feet planted firmly. Warnings hiss through the gale ("Why are you even here? I don't need your help!") before it calmly leaps away, leaving behind something glittery in the rain-drenched grass. Chihiro leaps into the now-empty arena, disappointed that a fight was avoided.

"Was there an elemental you just fought?" Dessa crackles through the Observatory's intrafractal comms system, a loudspeaker over existence in this microrealm. "I can't tell; my visuals fried for a few seconds and the strong reading in that arena is gone."

"Nope," Chihiro yells back, hoping she hears him this time, "it fled." A few seconds. No response back. Damn it. He walks over to the object the fleeing elemental left behind: a small chunk of something like a sword's blade, filigree supporting a lack of blood-groove and a blade made of what was either bronze or brass segmented like drakescale. His fingers tingled at the touch, even through the draconic envoy gauntlets, and the hairs on the back of his head stood at end. This was a powerful thing the elemental left behind.

And he can feel Glint behind him, also observing. "An artifact," she hisses, satisfaction in her voice. "I did not think we would find such a boon here in the Mists. A good omen towards your path of the Hero."

"You call a broken blade a good omen?" Chihiro questions, left aghast at this Dragon's so-called wisdom.

"Where there is one," Glint answers, fading back into his subconscious, "there are others. Artifacts behave differently from normal objects and weaponry. Stay vigilant, Herald."

And to that end, she was right: as the climb became more treacherous on this fragmented Sunqua, the elementals—harsh gales giving way to roaring despondent waterfalls with waves that pushed back—in turn matched the desperation of the voice hanging in the winds on the mountain.

In the wading pools of a mountainous sanctuary surrounded by waterfalls, Chihiro effortlessly frees a trapped water elemental from under massive boulders. Its reward to him, other than desperate pleas carried on the hushed sounds of running water ("What is it that you want? ... Leave. I'll give you anything."), was another piece of the strange artifact. This time it was of the sword's forte and hilt, also of that same bronze-like material. The pommel, the endtips of the guard, all bear an open circle that crackles with further electricity, catching stray sparks in the air. Thoughts run through the back of Chihiro's mind, memories involuntarily dragged to the forefront. He pushes them back, though a few manage to stay unwelcome guests. (The fear of centaurs. The forever-bruised eyesocket. The dagger in his hip. The meeting of he and Shiro in the Replica Temple.)

Cool waters make way for heated air and flowing lava, tiny sluglike elementals rising from the molten stone to assault the Herald. Nothing Ventari's Tablet and summer-air shield can't keep away, but it eats at his energy and so he moves quickly to deal fast strikes at the lava slugs. Their body temperatures eat at his steel blade, the poor thing, and eventually he reaches another arena tossing away the ruined blade. But like with the wind elemental, this one glares. With no weapon, all he can do is defend. So he does, raising the Flameseeker Prophecies to his chest and head, kneeling as he's cocooned in a crystalline chrysalis. The catlike elemental roars at him, summoning meteorites that shriek as they land ("There's no point! ... I couldn't save her!"), then leaves once they land. By the time the Herald lowers his shield and leaves his defensive posture, another piece of the blade is in front of him. He gives it a bit before he picks it up, but still it crackles with the lightning of that raging storm outside once it sits in his hand. More memories surge through his mind, overtaking his vision. They flash too quickly for him to memorize any of them, but all carry a lingering pain that resonates through his veins. It was getting harder to keep the torrent of memories at bay.

Chihiro grips his head. The last time he had a boiling headache like this, he had drank too much Charr whiskey. "Oy, Glint."

"Herald." Glint reemerges from her position in his mind.

"Are you sure we should be collecting these things?"

"If they were truly dangerous, I would have long stopped you from claiming the first piece, let alone this third."

"Hey, explorer," Dessa sparks back onto speakers. And here Chihiro was okay getting used to her absence. "I lost signal again. Yokko's trying to parse the data that's still readable and defrag what did get scrambled—several exabytes of audio-visual feed alone—but every time you reach an elemental, the stream just gets worse and worse." Well that's not such a– "If this keeps up, I'm not entirely sure I can extract you safely given the failing signal. Or intact. Or, really, at all." Oh. Okay, that's pretty bad, actually. He'd like to not be spit back out to the Observatory in the way this blade looks right now, and getting stuck in the Mists is not an option at the moment. "Let me know if you want to pull out now or keep going. We'd prefer if you kept going, but we understand if you don't."

"Pay no mind to the Asuran krewe," Glint reassures her Herald, "you will be safely extracted despite their worries to the otherwise."

"And you know this ho–"

Glint growls. "Really now."

Silence. Chihiro swallows his pride. "Right. R-right. Sorry." Godsdamned oracles.

The exit to the cavern reveals itself, heated air rushing to escape. With some pained walking, Chihiro reaches a small garden walled off by mountainous rock. Monuments to the dead are strewn about the ground and in varying states of ruin. The 'mountain spirit' fidgets in place, legs moving about and head turning here and there as they talk to themselves about something or other.

"You doing okay?" Chihiro pipes up at the spirit.

The spirit hops in place, whipping around to look the Herald in his (blindfold?? A Ritualist? she asks herself), and gathers her composure to say, "You've done well, oh steamed one! Yet her pain overpowers her still."

"'Steamed one'? Okay, who or what is this thing, and–"

"Listen, this was fun and all," Chihiro interjects, stretching his arms and shoulders as he sways from side to side, "but it's time to stop playing. Come on, kid. Talk to me. What's really happening here?"

The spirit looks stunned. She steps back, head lowering. "I... I do not know what you speak of!"

"I can see right through you," he chimes, finishing his stretches and tapping the side of his head—the blindfold—with a finger, "even through this. You didn't fool me from word one."

"...O-oh." A beat. The spirit raises her head back up, though now in a more relaxed posture. "The woman beyond this point...I know her, and she's in terrible pain. Could you please calm her down?" She steps a bit closer, panic spiked in their last few words. "But don't hurt her."

Chihiro tilts his head a bit to the side. "Yeah, I could do that." The last request seemed off, but he keeps it in a mental back pocket. He's taken stranger assignments before.

The spirit looks to the sealed doorway. It swings open, and the storm around the mountain intensifies as it does. The spirit appears pushed back by the storm's winds, and she vanishes in the resulting gale. Stones rise from the void below to pave a bridge towards the final arena: large, carved of pristine granite, and sitting in the middle facing away from the outer stairs is a woman of middling age in light cloth garb, a straight-blade dagger on both of her hip sides.

"Energy readings are spiking! Be careful!" is what Dessa tries to tell Chihiro, but her speaker goes on the fritz and all the Herald catches are some consonants and a panicked tone that doesn't leave his mood much better. Oh well. Not like she was very helpful here to begin with.

"Why are you here?" the woman rasps, holding back a painful sob. The storm around the arena intensifies further still, now almost a typhoon centralized entirely on this platform, threatens to blow the Herald onto his back from the sheer intensity of the rain and winds. Yet, even with this, he could hear the woman clear as a bell. "I came to this mountain to be alone."

"Hear me out, please," Chihiro shouts, unsure if he's as audible through this storm to her as she was to him, "I'm just here on a favor—"

"I don't want to hurt you, but you need to leave." She stands up, turns around, looks dead on at the Herald and unfazed by his appearance. "I can't control what happens if you don't." Her face is strained, eyes red and cheeks flushed. Her hands rest on her dagger hilts.

Chihiro is too familiar with this sort of stance. So he lowers his shoulder and relaxes his posture a bit, best as he can without being knocked onto his ass, hands raised and palms open. "I got a message I'm delivering, and then I'm gone, okay? You can..." He takes a deep breath. "You can mourn in peace when I leave, okay?"

His words seem to work, and her grip on her daggers loosen a bit. The mountain rumbles and the waterfalls surge before everything calms down. Everything but the storm above both their heads, that is.

"Okay. Cool, cool. Thanks for hearing me out." He stands upright, clears his throat. "There's a spirit on this mountain, and she sounded real concerned for your well-being. Some kind of old deer-like guardian." The woman looks puzzled, but her lack of audible answer urges Chihiro to keep...explaining? Lying? Saying whatever he needs to in order to get this fuzzed-out elementalist calmed down. "Said stuff about the mountain and the elementals being in disarray, wanted you to cool it a bit with the storms and eruptions for long enough to let her talk to you." Chihiro has a vague idea of what this spirit is, but without the girl blabbing the truth he'll never know. Still, establishing some stuff ahead of time might get her to come out of hiding. More importantly, it might let him walk away from this living storm not looking like a piece of overcooked bacon. "She means it, too. She cares about you, a lot. Do you know her? Mmmmaybe you prayed to her once or twice?"

The woman finally answers her puzzlement: "The only spirit of this land is Zunraa, and he's never done anything you describe." Ahh fuck. "Now leave."

He was reeeeeally hoping this would have worked, too. "Kiiinda hard to with this storm—"

"I said LEAVE!!" The woman brandishes her daggers and the wind howls back to a harsh pace around her. "I'm warning you!!" The ground rumbles with new seismic activity, and the previously lightening rain becomes a downpour.

Damnit. Okay. A fight it is.

———

About 45 minutes later

Turns out this "Sorrowful Spellcaster" was also one hell of an Elementalist, throwing things like localized thunderstorms and fiery meteors at him. Kinda wished that deer-girl spirit warned him about this shit sooner. Though he was thankful to be able to deal with her relatively fine, it was the swirling watery vortex pulling him in, along with those crushing water tethers preventing him from moving too far away, that nearly did him in on this mission. Only thanks to retreating within the safety of his shield's chrysalis did he survive, and for long enough to break out and bash her face in with said shield; her concentration breaks and she crumbles to a kneeling stance on the floor, the magic dissipated. Her nose'll look kinda funky at the end of all this, but at least she won't be nursing any particularly grievous wounds.

He really hopes this spirit shows up and explains herself. Having his drowning be recreated when he fought this lady was beyond unpleasant.

"Just take what you've earned and go," she tells the Herald, grabbing something from an inro that hangs at the back of her waist sash and tossing it to his feet. She then moves her hands back to cradle her tender nosebridge. "You're not safe here. No one is." The tears begin to freeflow from her, thick with unspoken-of agony.

Chihiro kneels down and picks up the object: the last piece of this sword, its bronze-colored bladetip.

"That's strange," Dessa pipes up, perhaps her technology finally working at last, "you defeated the spellcaster at the center of this instability...but this fractal isn't stabilizing."

And just as Chihiro goes to ponder on what that actually means, he feels a sharp jolt strike his body; the pieces of the artifact fall out of his bag and hand, and they hit the floor with a claaaang!! sharper and louder than it had any right to be, even in the midst of this storm still raging over both his head and the spellcaster's. Breaking away from her own misery, she looks up; this is not her magic fueling this storm. This isn't the man's magic, either. Was it...

Was it all coming from that piece of bronze she found?

They snap to each other, sparks flying and broken lines reforming into unbroken bronze, screeching as they drag onto stone until the blade lies on the ground fully formed and intact. It was a beautiful blade, Chihiro has to admit. The woman, meanwhile, looks back down and stares at the blade in front of the man. What was that? The chain of events in front of her seemed so ludicrous as to almost snap her out of her depression. (Almost.)

"Take the blade," Glint urges.

"Hey, explorer? I think you want to leave that thing alone..."

"Ignore her. Take the blade." Chihiro obliges Glint's insistence, ignoring both Dessa's plea to stop and his own desire to step away from this thing. He grabs a hold of the blade's handle; lifting it to eye height, he discovers it to be incredibly lightweight for how long and weighty it otherwise appears to be, and the sparks that were held in each individual part now felt a circuit of electricity coursing through his body proper. It feels as if this blade was a missing piece that completed him as a circuit.

"This is..." Chihiro can barely describe the awe and wonder the blade in his hand imprints onto him. And just so: as he lifts the blade higher, not realizing it's what his body is doing involuntarily, a lightning bolt parts from the heavens to strike the blade and electrocute the Herald, the storm clearing as it does. What would have been a gruesome electrocution is instead a surge of energy charging every cell in his body as he feels his body begin to become unmoored from the realm around him. Is this Dessa performing that extraction like Glint promised she would do? Maybe so. That wasn't the core of his focus, no no no, that would be the solidified visions in his mind's eye. What were before fragmented memories and echoes, he now sees brief happenings and phenomena. He sees a past relived, bitter memories and sweet moments, even visions of things he couldn't possibly remember (a darkened doorway, bundled in a red cloth). He sees a present uncharted, new allies with unknown names across the horizon, and in the distance a city like Lion's Arch burning to the ground.

The future, to his surprise, was much more cryptic: a crystalline egg in a sanctuary made of gold.

The surge of energy clears of him and Chihiro falls to his knees, smoke and steam plumes leaving his overly warmed body. A sense of overwhelming clarity fillz his mind. Yes, he tells himself, this is what this blade was meant to do.

Bolt, he tells himself still. The blade's name is Bolt. A sword forged to serve a not-yet-existent Dragon. A blade made for a Herald of an Elder Dragon not yet here.

He understands, a little bit more, why Glint chose him as this world's "Hero".

#day 6 - Legendary #guild wars 2 #gw2commanderweek #guild wars 2 ocs #chihiro yadora #gw2 ocs #gw2 #dd.txt #reduce reuse reblog

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