Lukewarm Media Takes

21 | Lesbian | She/They Yes, English was my favourite subject

[artblock-tm]

I’m sorry to make a significantly more serious post so soon after my art post, but I got pinged by a scam bot that I’d never seen before, and so I wanted to make a more detailed post so people know what to avoid. So!

Right after posting this art, I get this notification:

Which is a scary notification to get, certainly. If you click on the post that you’re mentioned in, it looks like this:

This post will tell you that you are in “Lurker Mode”, and that your posts are fully visible to you, but hidden from the dashboard and search results. This isn’t true— I checked one of the tags that I had put on my art piece, and it showed up there just fine. And it was appearing on the dashboard of one of my other accounts.

This post will tell you that you need to take action, and that you only have a 48-hour window to do so. This is a common tactic in scams, where they try to put a time limit on you to make you panic and act hastily.

The link— which you should NOT click on, but I did anyway just to investigate further— is disguised on the outside as a link to tumblr support. This will redirect you to a captcha, which will then redirect you to a fake Tumblr page:

You aren’t able to click off of or minimize the window that asks you for your bank details— only the chat window or the Verify button works. Also, the fake log in pop-up doesn’t play the actual animation of the frog like tumblr does when it wants you to log in— it’s just a still image.

Seeing bank details there is definitely enough to prove that it’s a scam. I know that ID laws for the internet exist, but why would tumblr be asking you for your bank account information? Especially if you have never purchased something on tumblr— which I suspect most of this website hasn’t.

If you do click the verify button— which you really shouldn’t, but I did because I wanted to make as detailed as a post as possible— it will redirect you again to a page powered by a banking platform, Stripe. And there it will ask you to input your bank account information.

Furthermore, if you click on the original post that pings you, the one with a url that’s just a string of numbers, the account is completely empty.

I assume that there are multiple of these accounts to spam ping people while dressed up as tumblr staff in order to try and maximize profits.

I’ve never seen a scam on tumblr that disguised itself as the staff before, so I don’t blame anyone who was scared for it. Hell, I was scared! Reading through the initial post I was pinged on the first time was scary! It was only when I got to the first mention that it wanted my bank account that I realized it was a scam. I may not be the most computer literate, but I’ve fallen for a Discord scam before (luckily at no financial loss to me) and I now know how to recognize the signs.

I hope you find this post helpful and informative, and I hope if you do that you guys reblog it so more people can be made aware of this scam. I really, really don’t want people falling for something as predatory and vicious as this. And, if you are pinged by one of these bots, block and report BOTH of them— the one that pinged you, and the blog that has this post.

Thank you and have a safe day :)

@staff @support

[estees-attic-storage]

Yeah, I think @scam-alerts has been posting about this recently! I hope she doesn't mind the tag (and please let me know of you do!!). Still, it's a scam that's been going around recently.

I really hope your account is okay after clicking the links. I'd run an antivirus scan to be safe. The websites are already sketchy as hell, being scams and all. I don't mean to fearmonger. It seems the site relies on a manual input of bank details, but better safe than sorry.

Even so, you've gotten really useful information! Hopefully, this will reach the right people and help them to recognise the scams easily.

[sourdough-seal]

“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

[orbitalmirror]

"how did you get into writing" girl i've been tormented by the visions since i was eight years old

[bunchofdoodlesinspace]

@nanaimothoughts

[nanaimothoughts]

I can't deny this. I just picked up a notebook at 9 and away I went.

[queer-as-in-fuck-12]

drug addicts deserve housing, food, water, and healthcare btw

[gremlininho]

all ads are malicious

[musiicpix3l]

Yes yes i know love is love. But they are still killing CHILDREN. over this.

[cowboyhatesithere]

Oh! There’s a cool animation when you like pride posts now!

[nanaimothoughts]

I've been liking every post I see w pride tags in an effort to collect all the animations like pokemon cards

Thus far I've gotten Philadelphia rainbow, mlm, lesbian (me!), and non-binary.

[goth-queen]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I wanted to ask what you thought of this newly developed Fanfiction.lol if you’ve heard of it? For me it kind of looks like a ao3 knockoff with double standards (like allowing “dark themed fics” but not allowing things such as underage sex?).

It also says that ai isn’t allowed (and I haven’t fully read the details about the website yet) but it seems like the situation you often talk about how real authors could get damaged by witch hunt situations.

I’ve never heard of it before. that said, “we’re allowing this thing but we’re not allowing that thing” is pro-censorship — even though underage stuff makes me uncomfortable and it’s what I avoid if I ever come across it, when I say “no censorship” I mean no censorship — so that alone tells me the platform is not something I’m interested in (why would I be interested in a pro-censorship version of ao3 when I have ao3?)

also I can already see genuine writers getting wrongly accused of using ai because they write about ships or topics that are disliked by others.

I figure pro-censorship folks and bullies who like to harass others over fiction would enjoy it though. so I guess it’s a good thing if it means these people finally leave ao3 alone.

[redstonedust]

big fan of when a character is dead and the narrative frames them in a very angelic, soft, gentle manner but then it turns out not only are they still alive (plot twist) but theyre alive in the most gruesome and horrific way. your loving kind mentor who motivates you to fight in their memory came back wrong and theres blood and dirt under their fingernails from clawing they way out of the grave.

[ravioliet]

"why can't they just be friends?" not in the homophobic sense, but in the "in your need to center romance in everything you are missing the whole point of the media in question" sense

[decemberwinter]

listen. I’m all for “writers deserving of having their boundaries respected” but this is so funny to me and like the funniest part is that I don’t think it’s even grounded in reality. like, how are you going to require proof that your readers are in your specific age range? why does it matter to you how old your readers are??? they are???? strangers???? why do you care? how does it affect you? 😭

but to be fair, this is some shit I did when I was 12 and thought I was edgy too. so I get it.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

“hey just a heads up that this author writes dark fics” boohoo so scary how will you survive this!!!!! seriously go and talk to a real person in real life I beg you. “hey this person likes horror movies!!!! characters are brutally killed in those movies and this person enjoys it!!!! just a heads up” this is what some of y’all sound.

[mariacallous]

[valtsv]

time to make a post on tumblr. surely no one will interpret it to be as offensive and bad intentioned as possible.

[valtsv]

by talos this cant be happening

[myfootyrthroat]

It is funny with bigotry where people unaffected by it act like that somehow disproves it. At an old job, talked to HR about a co-worker who kept calling me a faggot, and the HR person was like "Are you sure? He's never said anything like that to me."

Gee, Hetero Jessica, he's never called you a faggot? Then I must have misheard him!

[heartseeker]

i think about “ham and bean” on the daily

[bunchofdoodlesinspace]

@nanaimothoughts

[nanaimothoughts]

@xakumi you also need to see them now

[stillnaomi]

using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold