How to spot a scam on tumblr
Scammers are getting smarter and in light of the recent “help my cat” scam posts going around which @meluvcheese22 has a pretty detailed post on here I just thought that this might be a good time to help people know what to look for.
Those message requests that come through your askbox that look similar to this:
[image id: a screenshot of a tumblr ask from user catgirlmacaroni that says:
catgirlmacaroni asked a question
“Heeeeey im really sorry, I know you might find this a bit strange but I really do have a huge favor to ask but im so embarrassed to ask for it but I guess there’s no harm on trying, right? Can you consider boosting/sharing the post I pinned for my cat please? We’re in desperately need of help rn. Im so sorry for coming across your inbox like this. Please also consider answering this privately or send me a msg instead! Wishing you well and I hope that you’ll have an amazing year ahead of you (hear emojis)”
Posts like this are almost always a scam. Especially if they’re coming from someone you don’t know.
@you-reblogged-a-scam has a great post on this
Go to the user’s profile and type [their username].tumblr.com/archive you can see that they have only been posting on tumblr for a couple of months before they made their crowdsourcing request for their cat. That should be a red flag as they’re only giving the illusion of being a tumblr user.
(This is also a good way to vet for bots that aren’t just empty blogs.)
The fact that they weren’t using a Crowdfunding platform was suspicious to me, especially because those platforms crack down on scammers and afaik, offer protection to people who have donated if they discover it’s a scam. This isn’t failproof as I know a lot of people do use just P*aypal or V*nmo but this should still be a red flag.
Search the P*ypal account user’s name through Google to see if they’ve done anything like this before. As you can see here, and here this user has posted VERY SIMILAR cat stories under different tumblr accounts but they all go back to the same P*ypal.
You can also reverse image search included images or search parts of the text they’ve written to see if it appears as “original posts” under different Tumblr users’ accounts (or whatever other social media you use)
The notes being turned off was also suspicious as you can see that some people got the word in and the scammer realized their mistake.
[image id: a screenshot of the cat post’s notes with the tumblr message stating that Replies have been turned off for this post and Some replies may have been hidden, blocked, or removed.
tumblr user eatingcroutons writes: “Weird how this person had a different cat in a different state needing money for a different treatment just a week ago: http://www.tumblr.com/axellhere/705044183042392064/pay-axell-cruz-apuyan-using-paypalme”
tumblr user hoodiedeer writes: @ eatingcroutons and the oldest posts on their account are a bunch of reblogs a day before this post lol”
If you notice something’s a scam, please please say something in the notes and try to spread the word. Please report it to tumblr and report it to P*aypal or whichever cash transfer source they’re using. Make a Tumblr post about it, just get the word out.
Please be careful out there. I know we all want to help, but please make sure your money is actually going to people who need it, and not people like this.
Also, please add to this post if you have any other ideas for how to spot scams.
