PSA: Scamming is no party!
Trigger warning: Scammers, those who operate social bots and AI bros.
I want to vent my gall on an elephant in the room in certain social networking websites: what this trigger warning exactly says. The notorious scammers are the following:
Commision bots (also known as GFX bots): As their name suggests, commission bots do nothing but asking their victims for commissions over and over again, regardless of the victims' stance on art commissions. If the victim either says yes or states that they wish they could use their credit card, the commission bot will lure them into sending them direct messages (DMs). Depending on their motivations, the final nail in the coffin is that the individual operating the commission bot would take the money as if nothing had happened, give the victim a piece of AI-generated art or even send them a script file under the goal of infecting and hacking their computer.
"Can you message me?" accounts (also known as "Accidentally reported your account" scammers): The nightmare begins with a clichéd copypasta, beginning with the phrase "Hey, can you message me?" and trying to trick the author into sending them direct messages, showing up in either the comment section or the ask box. Should the author of the post reply them, the fake support account will show the victim screenshots taken from Gmail that were doctored so that they can falsely frame the victim. To supposedly give them "protection", they will send the victim a malicious link with the goal of hacking their account. When I got this comment for the first time, I thought they were talking about my art request guidelines, but not. It was much worse than I had imagined.
If you realized that the "Accidentally reported your account" scammers were bad, just wait until you run afoul of spearphishers. This particular case of phishing is incredibly bizarre: shortly after publishing a harmless post (e.g. the announcement of a new fanfic), the author of that post is greeted by an unwanted reply by a spam account whose username is just too many numbers. Impersonating a member of the staff of a specific social media platform, the scariest part is that the spearphisher claims that the victim has engaged in suspicious activity for petty reasons, even if the victim did nothing wrong and just wanted to have fun (in the latter case, this can make the spearphisher a killjoy). The post where the reply is included as a comment is entirely AI-generated, complete with an infographic that has a noticeably different aesthetic. The link included there is claimed to take the victim to the staff section where they supposedly check to "save" their account, when in reality it is a shortened URL of an obscure Grenadian web page. Another flag is that this post put some emphasis on the suscription. Even the reply contains a typo. Although I researched the post without having to click the misleading URL to make sure that it was a fake, I was overwhelmed with grief. It was so bad that even my mother and my paternal aunt were worried about me to the point that I was forced to tell the truth without having to reveal too many details.
Other scams that I stumbled upon include the Gaza scam (one of these scammers once replied me in an off-topic post that I had already commented before), AI/virtual girlfriend propaganda (in fact, I received two direct messages of this nature from a bot although I had already stated that I only fancy men, so I had to block it immediately) and a spamvertisement (in this case, forcing the idea of buying jewels down my throat when I had no interest in jewellery whatsoever).
Take a misstep and stuff happens. Well, I wouldn't like to watch this tumblelog unceremonoiusly ceasing to publish posts of varying types, even reblogs, and then spamming more victims if I were gullible enough to fall into a trap. Just because I post fan labour of media that are deemed popular considering these are either already well-known at the start or contemporaneously relevant doesn't mean that scammers are allowed to exploit these hashtags by merely spamming the comment threads or even doing something worse than such action. Keep in mind that time is money. To prevent this, you had better not play along. Ignoring them is fine, but the best option to deal with them is to block them.
To paraphrase Shrek in the namesake 2001 animated film, "For five minutes, can you stop spamming me with scams…? FOR FIVE MINUTES!"
For innocent cybernauts: If you find any of the scams I have mentioned or other scam that I haven't stumbled upon yet, don't interact with them. The best way to deal with scammers is to block them and that's it.
For scammers and those who use spambots on their behalf: Please refrain from fiddling with me. Even if I actually freak out, that doesn't mean that I will fall for your confidence tricks. Failure to comply with my pleas and/or my guidelines will result in facing serious repercussions.
Piscie (who is my self-insert) © Me (@piscessheepdog)
