Someone contacted me on Steam and asked if I wanted to play TF2 with him. It was one of my most played games at the time and I had a TF2 avatar, so no surprises here.
That person later asked me to rate their TF2 team on some website. Didn’t care first but did it eventually. The website needed Steam auth but just faked the Steam auth and relayed every bit of information you entered to steal your account.
Quickly realized my mistake and reset my password before anything happened. Im still surprised how much effort went into this fake rating site just to steal some Steam accounts.
Had some Steam based scammer a couple months ago. I basically instantly suspected a scam and played along, trying them to waste time.
Sadly, they didn’t play along that much and ghosted me :(
Mind if I steal your idea and turn this into a psych/thriller/adult manga?
feel free! if anything comes from it, I’d be interested in seeing it
A buddy of mine got her Discord account hacked by someone doing this. They gave her another Discord user who was playing as an employee. To “prove” the account was hers she had to change the validated email to something they sent. She mentioned something about it and then I and another person in IT started freaking out.
All in all it was fine and she got her account back. I think she was just embarrassed. I think it’s the first time she’s ever had someone try to do something like that. Me and the other person who caught it were trying to reassure her that we noticed it because we’ve had to do so many IT trainings and phishing tests over the years.for work.
yeah, the second they said something about reporting me by accident and steam banning my IP I knew it was a scammer. Although I suspected it before, as I never had a random person message in in 20 years of using steam.
I had hoped to lure the scammer a little bit further and figure out what they wanted to do, but I got too excited and scared them. very sad
They were almost certainly going to tell you that if you didn’t act then both of you would get banned then direct you to a fake Steam employee or fake website. It’s interesting they randomly messaged you. Normally this relies on being done to friends.
I have basically the same story, except it was one of my actual friends on Steam asking me to rate their CS:GO team. I fell for it since I was trying to be nice, and luckily changed my password before they could turn around and use my account for the same thing.
Something similar to this happened to me but I think it was for CSGO. The steam sign in page was a fake popup window inside the main website, draggable and all. I realized it was fake when I noticed it was light theme while my computer was dark theme.
Edit: I realized it was fake before I signed in, luckily
I haven’t changed my Steam password since I got an account many, many, many years ago. No idea what it is anymore—something really short and basic—but other people do. I get two-factor hits all the time 🤣
I made a purchase on a sketchy site (during Covid when things were hard to find). A day or so later, some unauthorized transactions were made on my card. “Bank” called from actual number of my bank, to verify if I actually made the transactions. provided some of my personal information, transaction amount etc then asked to verify ssn. It was very convincing.
Luckily I refused because I know anyone can call you claiming to be any number, and I didn’t give out any info, and said I would call back that number (my bank).
Bank had no knowledge of a call.
15 minutes later, get real fraud department call from my bank. They just wanted to know if it was fraud or not and didn’t ask for any other info.
Moral of the story: if someone calls you, never give out personal info. Tell them you will call back if needed.
My bank sometimes call me with questions about verification, as I travel a lot and have weird purchase patterns that can span several continents over a few days.
But it’s easy for me to verify that it’s them: Not only is Norwegian a rare language among Nigerian princes, but I use a tiny local bank so I recognize them by the dialect.
And even if it were a scam verification, they only ask for relatively inconsequential information, such as how much I have in my savings account, where I use my card the most, and roughly how much is paid into my account by my employer every month.
Anyone can call from any number? Surely it’s not easy to spoof numbers.
In a trains station gave someone enough money for a ticket cuz he was claiming that he lost his train. Felt real stupid when I saw him the next day asking the same shit.
Consider that at the time you were helping a stranger with the relatively trivial cost of a train ticket.
Now you know you “helped” a likely homeless dude.
Technically a scam but a pretty minor one.
Probably not homeless, pretty well dressed, that was probably his day job.
An assumption on my part.
I’ll argue that not everyone begging for coins is scamming though some probably are. Trying to figure out which is just a recipie for misery.
Train tickets by me cost 4x an hour of minimum wage work. Even if a single person helped per hour, that’s more than enough to make it worthwhile compared to a paying job. That’s a scam, taking advantage of people’s help as a regular living rather than making an honest living.
Train tickets near me have a variable cost depending on how far you’re going, but the bus costs about 1/4 or 1/5 of minimum wage per hour…lol
That’s a much more costly train ticket than I was imagining.
I was assuming something like the inverse of that: a quarter of an hour of minimum wage.
That does tip the scale back to scammy.
This happened to me in a Walmart parking lot with a guy telling me a sob story about how he’s traveling with his family and out of gas (with a gas can in his hand). I didn’t give him any money but saw him there in the parking lot a couple weeks later and he gave the same story obviously not recognizing me from before.
I fell for this one in college. At the time I felt really stupid, but it was less than $20 and that guy probably needed it more than I did.
When I was younger, like 15/16, I was working a job in a stone quarry during my spring break. Long days, hot sun but all cash and made decent money.
One of my neighbors whom I would briefly speak to all the time wanted to borrow some money. I think it was $400 or something. At that age, I wanted to help out and I wanted seem cool, so I lent it. He asked for a bit more and more and eventually it ended up to about $1100. My neighbor said their paycheck was coming ‘next week’ and could easily pay me back.
Next week never came. I followed up with the neighbor and they said something happened to their paycheck but the money was coming. He then said a showing of good faith, he’d give me his payslip as proof and that I needed to get it back to him so I he cash he check. Stupid me knew something to was up but because I was naiive and impressionable, I told him I trusted him and I’ll await the money.
I managed to get his number and I called to follow up again, but he had some girl answer the phone and when I asked to speak to him, she said, “Oh he’s getting cookies right now…”
A week later the phone was disconnected and then I didn’t see him for a while. I then moved out of the neighborhood.
Eventually I saw him a few years later and mentioned about the money that he owed me but he ‘wasn’t sure what I was talking about’. I long since before then realized the money was gone. Expensive lesson but that’s a story of how I got scammed.
That’s pretty expensive for the age, but cheap overall. I was in a similar situation with my coworker at the same age, but it was luckily about an order of magnitude smaller a loan. I mentioned it to my family and they sat me down to explain that I’d inadvertently given both of us a gift, just mine was in the form of experience.
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I think it is possible the guys sold you the decoy model.
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Oh man, you got in the van with them and were taken to a second location?
You are lucky you actually got speakers
This is the bigger story than the speakers! Lmao
Not only that, but driven there for the specific purpose of putting your card into an ATM and entering the pin.
When I was 16 I looked a bit older, so people would often assume I was over 18.
I was in Boston one day wandering around and I was approached by someone who wanted to give me a free personality test or something. He was handsome and I was a young gay boy so I figured why not?
It ended up being a scientology recruitment. They freaked and stopped trying to hard sell me their book when I told them I was 16. And their recruitment video had me laughing like crazy as I walked out.
I didn’t know how crazy of a cult they are at the time. But it was a funny experience.
i did that test and got a ~$40 book for free 😆
I went to what I thought was a job interview, but they were really just recruiting people to sell Cutco stuff. I was still pretty excited about it, because I’d never heard of Cutco before. When I got home, Dad explained that Cutco was basically a pyramid scheme.
They almost got me. They had rented space in an office park and everything; it wasn’t at some dude’s house. The interview seemed legit… to a young and clueless college student, anyway.
I once had one of those crypto-people message me with a sales pitch, asking for money to help start their small business in Africa or something like that (can’t remember what, I think it was a micro-brewery)
As an actual business owner, their initial ideas sounded okay, and I began forwarding them resources on how to secure a low-interest loan from their government and grants and stuff like that and then they abruptly closed up with:
“This is scam, brother. This is scam. You have good heart. I tell you only once, do not message this number.”
We forget that on the other end of scams are real people with real problems, morals, and lives. The person on the other end of your scam probably started to feel bad and helped you out. And likely that person is being forced into performing these scams on people.
There’s an excellent “Search Engine” podcast episode about this that came out recently called “Who’s behind these scammy text messages we’ve all been getting.” It’s well worth a listen because it dives into all the slavery and human trafficking involved in modern scams that people aren’t aware of.
The especially vile thing about these scam centers is that often they trick normal people just trying to find work and support their family. They steal their passport and then hold them hostage with slave labour.
Can you link the podcast?
That’s the website, but it’s not rendering for me for some reason.
Here’s a PocketCast link:
Look up “pig butchering” by John Oliver. Yes, this is the technical term for it.
The podcast goes much more in depth than Oliver did. But they’re both good content.
Aww.
Student loans for in-person university. I’ll be paying for that for a long time.
Eventually dropped out and finished my degree with WGU. I highly recommend that for anyone considering a college degree. I was able to finish with PELL grants so I added no debt and have a degree
Student loans had to be a top answer. The fact that they even call loans “student aid” is bonkers. There were two events with student loans that really drove that home for me.
First, there was a school I was considering applying to that advertised that they would pay 100% of what the government determined was your family’s need. They had 2 admission windows, one “early-decision” with a good chance of getting in, that was before when the govt releases their estimates of your need, and another with abysmal acceptance rates, but after you’d know the cost. For someone without money, you would have to give them a binding agreement to go there if accepted without knowing what you will end up paying, or you likely wouldn’t be accepted at all. I ended up not applying, but if I had, I could have attended a good school for around $3,000 per year, including room and board.
Second, one year i was in college, my parents (who weren’t paying for any of my education) made less money. This made the government offer me higher loans. Because I could get more “student aid” from the government (loans), my school reduced my scholarships.
I had a scam that netted me in no change in money whatsoever.
These scammers offer you this “you’ll rate these stuff on sites and we’ll give you money”, after completing a first batch and they give you some money, they’ll try to get the victim to believe they are legit. After believing that you’re trusting them enough, they pull the ponzi card “for next missions pay us 30-1000$ amount; you’ll recieve double after doing them”.
I got 30$ from them in total so I sent 30$ knowing it was a scam to see what they would do; of course they blocked me. I was expecting them to try to get more money out of me, appearently they’re satisfied with getting their bait back.
Curious what would have happened if you just stopped at $30 up (also remember, $ before the number; ¢ after)
Was the $30 paid into your account, or in the form of a check or something?
Imagine if it was check, and it bounced a week later and OP never realized, living his whole life thinking he didn’t get scammed.
Couple years ago I won a scholarship to a college in Germany, for the carreer I had always wanted to work in but couldn’t practice it, as it just doesn’t exist in local colleges. I was born and bred in the third world, and still live here; I thought my luck was finally turning around. I’d be able to maybe have a better future, doing what I really wanted instead of just what I was good at.
One night as I was overthinking ish, I decided to look for everything relevant about the college. It was a scam college. No certifications, and the owners had recently been in hot waters due to money laundering. I had everything ready to hop on a plane.
Nice idea, scammers! Weeding out what works and doesn’t with this feedback! But it won’t work on meeeeeee
This absolute bastard said he would give a rune platebody to the person that traded him the highest value item as a sign of trust… lost a DDP++ to that jerk.
Which sounds like a joke, but that was a real eye-opening experience for 8 year old me. Enough that 20+ years later I still reflect on it on an almost daily basis, to remind myself that if something seems like a bleedingly obvious scam it invariably is.
When I was playing that game as a youngling, someone asked me to help get some wine from a cult temple. I did, which made the door slam shut and every cultist in the room attack me. I just barely made it out of there alive.
Then they told me to go get a second one. Yeah, they didn’t need wine, they wanted me to die to a trap so they could take my stuff without killing me.
I’m embarrassed to say I actually went to get that second wine.
I fell for the same thing back in the day. Probably where my trust issues began….
I don’t have trust issues, and I think that might actually be worse. Like, if that happened now, I’d only shirk at going in twice, but I’d still go in once.
Lol when I was 15 or so I got way into competitive pokemon, and that eventually led to me breeding my own mons. Early on in my journey, I met some dude on Serebii chat that wanted to to do a 2 for 1 trade for my kingdra. He just sent over the pidgey and didn’t send over the other mon. I was really salty about that.
by the time gen four ended, I had bred a flawless Kingdra and (still to this day even) have all my .pkm files backed up on a hard drive somewhere.
Where would one go to look into backing up Pokemon?
…and if they’re backed up, why not Gen them? Haha
I guess it’s the satisfaction of knowing they’re truly legit.
Lol so the program I used was called HyperGTS. You could change the DSs target server, and you changed into to your routers IP, and then you could send stuff up to the GTS, at which case it would be saved into your PC. You could send it back the same way. I also have my .sav files. I might have gotten into the switch games if there was an easier way to transfer my old pokemon over.
The practice of cloning was (and I have to imagine, still is) pretty standard among breeders. Most competitive pokemon was (and again, still is) tool assisted: We made use of tools to check IVs, and to clone. The mons themselves were not altered. That was the point; no one cared if you were battling with hacked mons, as long as they were legal. There were still events that checked legitimacy, and those created a demand for legit mons. That being said, once RNG became standard issue, I just bred because I was playing in the pre RNG days and I liked them.
Is “Gen” the new pokesav?
Thanks for that! That’s some good stuff for me to look into.
Gen is just the word I saw people using for “generated Pokemon”. It was probably Pokesav, but obviously I’ve never gotten too deep into the scene, haha
My RuneScape account got rinsed because of my teenage stupidity in the early 2000’s, learned a very valuable lesson and haven’t been scammed since.
That’s why I’m glad lemmy censors your password if you write it in a comment, For instance: /*******
All I see is
hunter2
I got lured for my bandos armor back in the day, I stopped playing for a couple of years after that one
In the early 2000s, I bought a book for someone from amazon.com. I’d had good experiences with Amazon a few years earlier in the late 90s when it worked like a normal store - you pay Amazon and they send you the book you ordered. Little did I know that Amazon had since become a ‘marketplace’ where they let any old scammer list, take your money, and not send anything. After a couple of months with no book arriving, luckily I was able to charge back and get the money back from the bank.
