PSA: Stop going to scam urls!

Figured this was the best place to post this to get the most eyes on it. While I've received plenty of scam tells in the past, it's the first time I've seen this one in particular, as I've been gone for a while. People really should know better by now than to go to suspicious links, but, well... this keeps occurring, hence this post.

The scammer sends a random tell saying something about a "raffle give away" and that it's starting shortly and to post a number between 1-whatever at this totally-not-a-fake-fo-realz forum url - juuuust like this tell here:

https://i.imgur.com/a5YN2Ak.png

It's bunk, full stop. It is 99.99% of the time just some scammer trying to steal your account. "But what if it's not?!", you say... Oh, you poor, poor, rube... the original owner of the account that sent you that tell probably thought the same! Compromised accounts are often used to spread the scam further, resulting in more people falling victim to it because it looks more legit coming from a player with multiple classes at 80... such as the one that sent me that tell.

Seriously, err on the side of caution and just report the player that sent it. Right click the name, then "Report", then "Report RMT Activity." Whatever you do, be it report or ignore, DO NOT copy and paste the link into your browser and login to whatever shifty website it shows... unless you don't mind losing everything. It's really depressing knowing people keep falling for this stuff. >_>

Actually it's better if you report it as harassment rather than RMT. Yes, it's a bit more effort but it's worth it because the account that is sending you a tell is also a compromised account and reporting it will let GMs take the appropriate steps for it.

Fair point, though I wonder if they'd actually see it that way since it's not technically harassment? I report on reflex whenever I get such a tell, but considering how long stuff like this (and botting in general) has been an issue, I wonder how effective any of this actually is... Eh. I'll keep doing so regardless, since that's about all I or anyone can do anyway.

Unfortunately like all scams they work on gullibility, and the human tendency towards "fear of missing out". It's good to let others know about the dangers of this sort of thing, but as usual it's better to follow SE's official advice on account phishing and scamming - that is; don't open or click on any URL link sent to you by tell from a stranger, that SE will never contact you by tell out of the blue to direct you to a website about your account, and to be aware of the URL for the official FFXIV sites so as to not be fooled by fake ones pretending to be official (as fake/scam sites usually seem legitimate but have URLs with slight differences that are obvious once you know what to look for).

And it should go without saying but keep your security/antivirus software up to date and functioning and to use a hardware or software token with your SE account, as they will all help protect you from scammers and phishers.

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Originally Posted by Mirhd

Fair point, though I wonder if they'd actually see it that way since it's not technically harassment? I report on reflex whenever I get such a tell, but considering how long stuff like this (and botting in general) has been an issue, I wonder how effective any of this actually is... Eh. I'll keep doing so regardless, since that's about all I or anyone can do anyway.

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They will. I've already reported one instance and I had a GM response to the ticket almost within half hour. It's quite serious for them and they take the accounts out of circulation almost immediately. I suspect that after that they will try to identify the account's rightful owner and set things right, but that's conjecture.

Unfortunately, "awareness" does very little, and the GMs are very bad at dealing with these situations. The most effective means of stopping these scams is to report them directly to the host of the website in question, as well as use some scripting to spam their website with fake logins.

If you'd like to do more to stop these scams, you can report them to the Anti-Phishing Guild when you get these tell messages.

https://discord.gg/hmy77T5xhU

I was just about to post something like this since a fc mate and I got another one earlier today.

Literally got the exact same copypasta as a whisper 1 hour ago. User account had actual playtime, which us sadly some poor fool who fell for the scam and now their account is being used to further perpetuate it. Don't report as RMT, as I'm sure those reports take much longer to comb through.

Report via the player profile on the official FFXIV site as other, and include all details, message and timestamp. More details the better, coming from someone who works in IT.

Joke's on them, I play on PS4. I can't follow hyperlinks!

Internet security also helps because the fake website they're linking to will set off every red flag imaginable and probably not even let you go there if you're using a good program.

The sheer fact that this reads like an oldschool e-mail scam is already a big red flag.

it is easy to dodge, look at the url... they always write something like square-enix.com-v-e.something... notice the .com-v-e or whatever they use.

SE's URL will always be like this: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...o-scam-urls%21 with no additional dashes and whatever else symbols used after the .com