Hey gamers,
recently there have been a number of scam blogs on tumblr claiming to be Gazan victims. They've been making a number of iterations of the exact same blog and story but with different names and sometimes different PayPal links.
These are some examples, but they will likely change their names or make even new iterations by the time you see this post
Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. They throw together a brand new blog with a story of needing aid, then use bots to go through follow lists and post notes to send messages to random users. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.
They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.
They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating
They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.
It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc.
Like many of the above examples, they often have a completely random string of words as their blog name.
Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles so people don't find the source and think it's original
When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.
In name of the situation, here are great verified resources to support real people who need help:
Many organizations and gofundmes for Gaza
Click to donate for free using ad revenue
Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada
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