Same old scam just new Bait.

[SannaR]

A little bit of a necro, but I guess they felt like the I'm quitting bait wasn't working so they're back to the SE don't release this content at such a sensitive time bait. With and I Quote " Square Enix Should not Remove This Content At Such A Sensitive Time, Please Vote Against it On the FFXIV Forum Post Before they Ruin the Game." So I guess we know which threads they're latching on to.?

[SannaR]

Holy crap. There are two groups having similar scams. I just got on that's for Discord. It says " You're invited to our clan's final giveaway of 850m gil starting in 45mins! Visit our discord for the location of the giveaway." They then give a discord link. Be safe in game folks.

[Veliaire]

I'm sorry but it is obvious it is a scam if you've spent even one day on the internet in the past 10 years. In the first place, the link is obviously fake because it doesn't end in .com.. but even if it did, how dumb do you have to be to fall for the oldest scam on the internet? If you are falling for that scam then, I'm sorry to say, you deserve what you get.

[SannaR]

I'm sorry but it is obvious it is a scam if you've spent even one day on the internet in the past 10 years. In the first place, the link is obviously fake because it doesn't end in .com.. but even if it did, how dumb do you have to be to fall for the oldest scam on the internet? If you are falling for that scam then, I'm sorry to say, you deserve what you get.

I'm not. Also what might be obvious to some might not be to others. No one deserves to have their account hacked just because they didn't pay attention to the tell they received from someone. There's also a lot of new people playing the game. It's different when they do their messages via say and shout as many can and will ignore not see such things. It's totally different for when many get one via pm. Also since a lot of FCs and or clubs love to hold end of the year parties and coordinate via discord and such the 2nd one might catch more. That and telling someone they could win almost max gil a character can hold at one time might be too tempting for some.

[Jojoya]

I'm sorry but it is obvious it is a scam if you've spent even one day on the internet in the past 10 years. In the first place, the link is obviously fake because it doesn't end in .com.. but even if it did, how dumb do you have to be to fall for the oldest scam on the internet? If you are falling for that scam then, I'm sorry to say, you deserve what you get.

People can be surprisingly naïve, especially children but even adults. There's no instruction in schools about online scams even with the increasing popularity of online instruction.

Put a get rich quick scheme in front of someone's eyes and their greed for easy money kicks in.

Put an outraged message about a terrible thing someone is doing, and people who thrive on drama and having something to get offended about will fall for it.

Do people deserve what they get? Not really. Some account compromises aren't even the owner's fault but rather the fault of other family members who are security lax and let keyloggers onto a shared system.

But people need to accept it is their responsibility to make sure it never happens again instead of trying to push the blame on someone else, like that one post a little ways back.

This isn't SE's fault. They do care or they wouldn't bother restoring player accounts once they're contacted about the account compromise.

[MevariNavalo]

Would anybody be interested in learning how I've been messing with the phishing scammers? Something immediately more effective than telling GMs about it and grinds their operation to a halt?

Essentially, I run some Python code on Google Colab that spams their website with tons of fake usernames and passwords. I figure it's working, because as soon as they realize that I'm doing it, they immediately go through the trouble of trying to change the link to the phishing scam. They also try REALLY hard to block me, but since I'm using Google Colab, the code is really running on a Google cloud server, which just means I refresh and do it again.

I have a seperate script that scans their website, searching for a currently operating webpage they're running the scam on, so I don't even have to wait for them to send it to me in-game, although it's faster if they do, or if a friend forwards me the URL they're currently using.

If anybody is familiar with programming, or Python in general, it's a pretty easy project to do, and I'm considering distributing my code so people can do it themselves.

[KageTokage]

I think the least SE could do is bring more attention to the scams by having it mentioned in the initial list of announcements when you first log in to the game.

Granted, it's not going to help people who don't read, but that's a universal problem.

[Veliaire]

People can be surprisingly naïve, especially children but even adults. There's no instruction in schools about online scams even with the increasing popularity of online instruction.

Put a get rich quick scheme in front of someone's eyes and their greed for easy money kicks in.

Put an outraged message about a terrible thing someone is doing, and people who thrive on drama and having something to get offended about will fall for it.

Do people deserve what they get? Not really. Some account compromises aren't even the owner's fault but rather the fault of other family members who are security lax and let keyloggers onto a shared system.

Maybe "they deserve what they get" is a bit too harsh... but I don't feel the slightest bit bad for people dumb enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book. There are real scams out there, and then there are lazily put together, transparent scams like this, fueled by people's own greed. If you want to take the lazy and greedy way to success then I'm sorry, you get what you get.

It's the people who fall victim to the other scam that I feel bad for. The one where the scammer says Square Enix is ruining the game with some new policy change, and they invite you to a forum to let you voice your opinion on it.

[Veliaire]

I think the least SE could do is bring more attention to the scams by having it mentioned in the initial list of announcements when you first log in to the game.

Granted, it's not going to help people who don't read, but that's a universal problem.

Square Enix? Actually lift a finger against scammers and bots? Rofl, I needed that laugh.

[Shibi]

how dumb do you have to be to fall for the oldest scam on the internet?

41% of Americans believe that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.
40% of Americans believe the earth is only 6000 to 10,000 years old

Believe me, there are a substantial number of people on this planet under 100IQ.