hi im very sorry to bother you, of everyone i follow you reblog the most fundraisers so i thought you might be able to help - how does someone go about making sure a gfm is verified and not a scam? i recently received an ask from someone asking for reblogs and im worried about the possibility of a scam... but if its someone who needs help id hate to ignore them. do you have any advice?
Of course!
First things first-- there is a difference between unverified fundraisers and scams. There are a lot of people in need and they can't all be verified, but not all of them are scams. If you only want to access verified fundraisers by actual Palestinians, I recommend finding a list by one of them. There are several Palestinians vetting fundraisers constantly. Please trust them above me.
So once you get as many scams as I do, you get to know what they're like. Most scams repeat the same stories, which will have the same typos and odd grammar. This is the first thing I look for when receiving an ask.
Second thing I look at is the url. A scam account usually will have a tumblr-generated name-- something like preciousdarlingbean. Or smth. <came up w that. It's like. Three random words.
Third thing to do, tying in with no 1, is to look at the actual blog. Scams will use the same pfps and headers over and over again. Usually they'll be generic images, or if it's a picture of a person, the pfp and header will be the exact same picture.
Usually at this point I have a general feel of if a blog is real or not, but I always verify by tumblr searching their url. Oftentimes, people will have called them out before me. At that point I report their blog, answer the ask with 'scammer', and then block them.
Other ways to check:
Usually scam blogs will have reblogs of random posts to try and pretend to be a normal blog. If you scroll back, you'll see the oldest ones are usually from like. 3 days ago max.
The 'fundraiser link' will link directly to a PayPal and not a gofundme. Sometimes the name on the PayPal will be a different one from the post.
Once (and only once, because this is a reallt stupid mistake) a scammer sent me an ask using one name, with the pinned post using a completely different one
And there you have it! My (definitely not comprehensive) guide to spotting scammers!
