#scam post

[liminalweirdo]

SCAM POST ALERT!!

this user is a known scammer.

User only started posting in July

User reaching out directly to people who aren't mutuals for aid

Red flags:

They don’t follow you

There’s only a few posts on their tumblr

The oldest post is only a few days or weeks old

The notes of the pinned post reveal warnings that it’s a scam (or if the user has replies turned off)

Or the post says it has 4 replies, but you can only see 2 of them (meaning the scammer may have blocked people to hide warnings)

Their tumblr is only available in blog view on desktop (meaning you have to be logged in to see it, but people sometimes do this for privacy)

The images are stolen (you can sometimes figure this out by using google images to reverse search the pictures)

They might have copy-pasted word-for-word somebody’s real request for help, either from tumblr, facebook, or gofundme

Searching their username on tumblr reveals other asks identical to the one you received or you find posts warning about a scam

You send them a message asking for further proof or clarification, and instead of replying, they block you

Proof you could ask for could be a picture of their dog, since it’s often a dog, with a piece of paper where they’ve written the username of the person they’ve sent an ask to 

If tumblr’s search function doesn’t reveal anything about the user (check their paypal name and their tumblr user name), google might. (The quotation marks means google will give results that include those exact words.)

Examples of google searches:

“TheScammersUsername” “scam” “tumblr”

“TheScammersEmail” “scam” “tumblr”

[penwrythe]

Scam Posts PSA

Recently over the past few weeks, I occasionally get asks for donations or sharing donation posts. While I'm happy to help, I begin to feel odd about some of these asks, especially if other users claim that they are scams in the notes.

The most recent one is this from @/superbpatrolprincess:

There were people in the search who tried investigating this user and other possible scammers who send these kinds of asks. The user @kyra45 had tried contacting them about the validity of their claims, along with the fact that the ask was suspiciously similar to another ask made by @/aniasiasstuff.

By a suggestion from another user, I tried contacting the user about their donation post. But they blocked me shortly after. The pinned donation post on their blog was posted on July 10th. I failed to get a screenshot of that before they blocked me, but the earliest post in the search for superbpatrolprincess was made on the same day that post was made where the scammer contacted another user through asks.

Update, I used my alt to find their blog, here's their post:

Due to this, I'm not going to share any future donation/mutual aid posts if the user sends me an ask and if their account was made very recently.

Also, let me know if there are other donation posts that have similar odd activity, please. I usually share these as I don't have much to give, but I also don't want to put any of my followers or other visiting Tumblr users in danger.

[rowanfalls]

Wow this is the pushiest one of these scam asks ive ever recieved. "Im afraid I have to insist" my god. The nerve haha

Reminder, if you get an ask looking for money its a scam. Flag and block them and go about your day

[tamisdava2]

This is a longshot, would you be willing to help me get my insulin? I'm down to my last pen and its pretty much close to being empty.Nt asking for much only need $370 rn to save my blood sugar. please help me with a small donation or share, reblog any help can save my life.Please help & Blessings ❤

My dear followers, this is a scammer. This blog is only 3 days old, if you'll put the text of this ask in search you'll find this and other blogs that use literally the same or similar texts. And kyra45 has a proof that this user used different, but similar URLs to scam other tumblr users with literally the same text. verr0-og I am reporting you, I hope you'll stop acting like a parasite and scamming people :)

I am asking my followers to be careful with blogs that ask for donations.

[allhailweegee]

Hi! First of all I would like to apologize as I might really need your help, I know that you might find this ask weird and inappropriate at the same time but I do have huge favor to ask if you would be so kind to please check my pinned post, because its for my cat who needs an immediate life saving surgery and If you feel it in your heart to help me with this, please do boost or share it and I would be eternally grateful. 😭 Please if you can, send me a msg to reply so I could also say thank you if possible! Or maybe answer the ask privately if i that’s fine! Have an amazing day!

Weird that you'd reblog a post talking about making custom themes (with instructions on how to do so), and then not make a custom theme, because you're a scammer who doesn't want to be searchable outside of tumblr.

Anyways I'm really tired of the tumblr scam blogs, oh my God. Fuck offffffff.

[aaand-mitsuba-is-dead-again]

Hi! Just a heads up, the post about the cat medical bill from user 'paegfive-to-six' is a scam. (There's a post about this scammer and how to identify their scams here, if you wanna learn. Someone is keeping track of the scammer's active blogs here) The scammer sends asks to totally random people, and tells them not to publish those asks so they can hide the format/wording they use. You can report the scam post through 'report something else', 'unlawful uses or content', then 'phishing!' Depending on what you're ok with, you can delete the scam post, or you can edit it to have 'this is a scam' in big letters in your reblog and tags, so people who see the original post will see your warning in the notes. I'm sending this message to as many people as I can to warn them and share some tips :) Have a nice day!

Hello, Thanks for letting me now!

I have already looked for the post but I can't seem to find it so I'm sorry. I'll reblog some post with scam accounts for spreading the word though.

[headless-horsepossum]

I've gotten a few of these two and if your brain works the same way as mine (i.e. getting stuck in 'but what if there's a real person/animal who needs help and I'm just ignoring them!!') then one thing that really helped me to have pointed out is: why would they ask you to keep it private? They were willing to send it to a blog who, in most cases, they don't even follow, and certainly one they've never interacted with before. Why wouldn't they want more eyes and thus possible donations? It would be Pretty Weird, right?

As soon as you realize it's a scam, the reasoning is pretty obvious: publishing the wording makes it more likely someone will recognize it and warn you.

here's some advice for people new to tumblr i haven't seen around our parts yet... a very, very common current scam on this site to get some money out of folks is as follows:

You receive a message like the below, asking for a signal boost for a donation post pinned on their page; this is almost always for a pet.

You check their page and it all looks legit. They have an icon/pfp, a bunch of reblogs rather than an empty blog, the pinned post has candid cat/dog/etc photos that look convincing, and there's a link to a normal looking gofundme in a lot of cases, with similarly realistic photos. They didn't even ask you to publish the ask specifically, they just want you to consider reblogging.

…but if you scroll down far enough, it turns out there's only like a week worth of random reblogs, no real other posts and no interaction with anyone else on the site. Which isn't in and of itself an issue- everyone joins Tumblr at SOME point- but maybe a red flag?

Inevitably, when you reverse image search the pet photos, they were nabbed off instagram or facebook or twitter or something. It's a scam.

I was getting 2-3 of these a week at one point, and all of them were convincing, probably because I doubt any of them were bots. this is a really common scam but not nearly as easily spotted as obviously automated phishing attempts; don't publish or donate to these. they're hoping your sense of sympathy, generosity and even guilt will override your suspicion at a rando asking you for money. delete 'em.

i just bring this up because i'm seeing a couple people in tf fandom getting these asks and going 'hey, signal boost!!!'' and while it's a very kind impulse... yeah, it's overwhelmingly scams, folks. sorry.

[cozylittleartblog]

cant tell you how bad it feels to constantly tell other artists to come to tumblr, because its the last good website that isn't fucked up by spoonfeeding algorithms and AI bullshit and isn't based around meaningless likes

just to watch that all fall apart in the last year or so and especially the last two weeks

there's nowhere good to go anymore for artists.

edit - a lot of people are saying the tags are important so actually, you'll look at my tags.

#please dont delete your accounts because of the AI crap. your art deserves more than being lost like that #if you have a good PC please glaze or nightshade it. if you dont or it doesnt work with your style (like mine) please start watermarking #use a plain-ish font. make it your username. if people can't google what your watermark says and find ur account its not a good watermark #it needs to be central in the image - NOT on the canvas edges - and put it in multiple places if you are compelled #please dont stop posting your art because of this shit. we just have to hope regulations will come slamming down on these shitheads#in the next year or two and you want to have accounts to come back to. the world Needs real art #if we all leave that just makes more room for these scam artists to fill in with their soulless recycled garbage #improvise adapt overcome. it sucks but it is what it is for the moment. safeguard yourself as best you can without making #years of art from thousands of artists lost media. the digital world and art is too temporary to hastily click a Delete button out of spite

[brightpinkpeppercorn]

My family is still staying in half of the church that wasn’t affected by the bombing because there is nowhere else to stay other than tents. They are limited to one small meal a day and one shower a week. They are sleeping on the floors, but no one can sleep since there is bombing everywhere around them. Even when there is no bombing, they can still hear the loud buzzing sound of the military planes above them, which would keep anyone who hears it awake. Along with everything, My grandma has diabetes and osteoporosis, so she can’t walk. She has to take her insulin medication along with many others; however, she has run out of many of her medications.” You can reach me for more information.

This is a scam post and pretty disgusting to use Palestinians undergoing extreme suffering AND during Ramadan to send posts like this

[themirokai]

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

[liminalweirdo]

If you got this kind of ask:

“This is a longshot, would you be willing to help me get my insulin? I'm down to my last pen and its pretty much close to being empty.Nt asking for much only need $370 rn to save my bloodsugar. please help me with a small donation or share any help can save my life. Please help & Blessings ❤️ Thanks.”

There is a notorious scammer who fakes being diabetic and has been using this ask since December or so. They are using someone’s twitter/x post and have been doing it so much now that anyone searching their ask would see they’ve been through at least 20+ accounts now with the original one called vero-og (which has long been terminated but they keep it in their blog title).

This scammer will send you hate mail for calling them out, block anyone who replies to their accounts calling them a scam, and currently refuses to refund any money they get sent. They are not who they claim to be, they aren’t diabetic, please don’t give them money if you got the ask.

[tungledotedu]

uh why the fuck would you say this

this post has 3000 notes and they get worse.

el-shab-hussein has already explained why he no longer shares how he vets individual fundraisers. scammers will use the information to be less obvious, making it more difficult to spot them.

and senatortedcruz's post has no actual proof of a widespread scam. that is a serious accusation to make, yet people are reblogging it and accepting it as true with no evidence. i won't deny that there are individual grifters on tumblr, but there are accounts like @/neechees, kyra45 and anonthescambuster that will help you avoid them. hussein even has a #scam alert tag for this purpose.

it's racist to spread misinformation about a supposed large-scale deception posing as fundraisers, not to mention dangerous because this makes it less likely for gazans to get what they need to survive and escape relentless airstrikes. we've already seen the consequences of this bias. some of these people are all too happy to be cops and harass or report gazans thinking they're bots or 'spamming' inboxes.

almost nobody on that post is encouraging others to donate to organisations or other vetted lists like those by operation olive branch, which has a faq sheet that explains how they verify fundraisers. i suspect this is an attempt to discourage people from helping palestinians altogether.

gazans are making fundraisers because they have no other choice. many of them cannot work and earn money as their workplaces have been destroyed. some have been disabled by injuries thanks to the iof's targeting of civilians. the fault is on israel for besieging them and on the egyptian government for exploiting their need to evacuate.

they're doing this for the same reason they have been posting photographs and videos of genocide so that people will pay attention to their suffering, so the world will not forget. is it such a leap in logic to understand they will also use social media to start fundraisers? do you just expect them to sit there and die in silence? so you can ignore them and your countries can keep arming israel as it commits atrocities?

[kowabungadoodles]

How to spot a (heart wrenching sad cat) Charity Scam

So I've been get a lot of requests for money in my askbox lately, from users I have never seen before! Usually sad cats, sometimes gender affirming medical bills, a queer person being made homeless etc etc... and guess what? None of them are real! It's scammers who have learned how to work tumblr's userbase and prey on our general sense of community and charity.

Here it is, so sad! So tragic! But let's note a few things:

It's generic. They don't know me, I don't know them. it's addressed to 'friend', no use of nicknames or usernames.

Even the cat and the problem are generic 'little kitty' who has 'urgent needs'. This is not how real people talk, this is because this scam is being used over and over with different accounts a different 'cats'.

Praying (uh huh.)

Asking you to reply privately- This is so people don't spot the scam and point it out the mark and because if too many people posted replies to the same message it would beome really obvious that this is a scam. If they're looking for 'boosts' so badly, then why do they need you to reply privately?

Now that I'm suspicious, let's investigate.

Sent me an ask and then followed me! Sounds like they're just hitting up anyone and everyone, but even more likely they have a list they're working from.

(I get so many, I'm probably on a mail-out list a mile long, just being hit up for cash. Likely I fell for one of these once and got my name added to every scam list for miles, but oh well.)

So let's see if they're a bot or a real person!

The blog looks genuine enough, they've got a bio, a fandom etc. And it says they're an artist!

And of course there's that sad cat post, pinned right to the top, so I don't have to look any further through the blog for verification... Looks super legit, pics of the cat, pics of the bill... of course anyone can print out a bill and take a picture of it...

As I do scroll futher, it's full of reblogs making this look like an active user. So how can I tell it's not genuine?

Well, if they're an artist they probably post right? Doodles? Pictures? Let's have a look at their origional posts.

The fastest way to do this is by using an outside tool like Original Post Finder.

just type in the suspicious username and go...

Voila! As suspected, the only post this bot account has ever made is Sad Cat Post.

Confirmed: Scam. Do not give your money to these guys, it looks so real but they're just here to make you feel like a bad person for not handing over everything you can. Charity is wonderful, supporting friends is wonderful, but tbh save it for people you actually know irl/ mutuals you have an actual relationship with. Don't believe any rando who comes knocking!

Love and kisses, stay safe out there.

[tamisdava2]

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. Every day is a struggle, a relentless battle against hunger, fear, and despair. Your support will make a significant difference in alleviating the my suffering.

Your blog is 1 day old, your blog consists mostly of reblogs and you are literally using the same text that another scammer salimaabdallah used (Perhaps it is still you). Basically, you are an awful person that tries to earn money by pretending to be someone from Palestine. I am reporting you.

[allhailweegee]

Hi! First of all I would like to apologize as I might really need your help, I know that you might find this ask weird and inappropriate at the same time but I do have huge favor to ask if you would be so kind to please check my pinned post, because its for my cat who needs an immediate life saving surgery and If you feel it in your heart to help me with this, please do boost or share it and I would be eternally grateful. 😭

Please if you can, send me a msg to reply so I could also say thank you if possible! Have an amazing day!

Nope. Fuck off with your animal pic stealing bullshit, scammer. :^)!! (Screenshot below of [previous scam ask] with the same exact icon courtesy of @kyra45)

[sixthrock]

the Fun Gang visits the Willy Wonka Experience ™️