Beware of "Quitting FFXIV Giveaway" messages

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

Do you want an award for being overly paranoid or something?

Most people, I would think, would trust something coming from a friend if they have no reason to doubt it. Can't fault them for that. Also as much as we can hope people are aware scams exist, you'd be surprised how many don't bother reading the lodestone on a regular basis or look into things involving this game.

no it's called due diligence LMAO. You question in game and out of game. As I said people are getting dumber. You learn even at a job never never never NEVER click links even for friends it basic IT 101. Good lord are IQ's dropping?

[AngelCheese77]

I wouldn't exactly call it evolving, this is literally the "hey I'm an african prince and I want to send you gold" email scam from the early 2000s.

It wasn't long ago that hackers/scammers created a replica of a Lodestone page with a QR code in e-mails that were sent out to FF14 players. I won't put a copy of it here, but you can Google it. It spoke about a mount that was the "last chance" to get it.

Aim for those gamers who have a weak spot of their wallet or FOMO.

Not my fault people fall for it. Even if a friend sent me a tell I am not dumb enough to click on it. It's not victim shaming its a thing called COMMON SENSE if you decide to follow such a link out of the blue then you deserve to have it taken. I mean if you really can't think for a second that something seems off then you just deserve it. Just have to think and be smart enough

Scammers look for specific victims; the lonely, the elderly, the financially desperate, and the non-tech savvy. They have no qualms about sending thousands of e-mails, phone calls or texts. They make e-mails and calls look and sound genuine with actual icons and pictures of companies.

You can call people dumb and not using "common sense" but everyone has their weak moments. You don't know what was happening at that time.

[AngelCheese77]

no it's called due diligence LMAO. You question in game and out of game. As I said people are getting dumber. You learn even at a job never never never NEVER click links even for friends it basic IT 101. Good lord are IQ's dropping?

You are believing that every single person is as tech-savvy as you are. And they're not. Heck, my mother could just figure out how to push the power button on her computer and go to the QVC website!

So your "basic IT 101" is gibberish and unknown to many people. So instead of helping you'd rather shame and make fun of. Terrible.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

You are believing that every single person is as tech-savvy as you are. And they're not. Heck, my mother could just figure out how to push the power button on her computer and go to the QVC website!

So your "basic IT 101" is gibberish and unknown to many people. So instead of helping you'd rather shame and make fun of. Terrible.

How long has link scams been out for like 20 years now? People should be well aware by now or heard of said type of scams it's nothing new at all.

[dspguy]

While an OTP is a good idea in general, from my understanding of these website scams, it doesn't protect you from the ones that redirect you to a fake site as it will ask you for your OTP there as well, but since your login attempt does nothing (being a fake site and all), the OTP is still viable and they use that to hack you right away.

But sorry to hear that happened, OP. Hopefully the GMs will be able to fix ya up quickly if any damage was done to your account.

Nothing protects people from stupidity. Maybe there is a better term than that. However, when I swapped out my token a few months ago, I had to use the token once to login to Mogstation once and then use the token a second time to confirm the switch. So, giving someone your User/pass/OTP a single time would give them one-time access to your account (which is still bad) but not permanent loss unless you provided OTP a second time.

Of course, it stands to reason that if you saw that tell, you are in-game and would be immediately be logged out when the scammer utilized it. Which would mean the player should see they were logged out and then they can log back in, effectively killing the opportunity the scammer had.

However, I'm sure there are those that don't catch it and probably have gotten robbed.

[MontecristoSandwich]

The people who are the loudest over shaming others probably have the most to be ashamed of in other areas and it's a way to compensate. Someone who is intelligent has no need to put others down.

OP made a braindead mistake falling for an incredibly obvious scam and decided to make their lapse in judgement known by trying to act as though this was something anyone with two braincells to rub together needed a notification of. OP is putting themselves down by making their own failing public. Pointing out that this is an incredibly blatant scam that is routinely avoided by 99% of the playerbase is not "compensating." It's making it known to anyone that if you do fall for something like this, you should be humiliated. That way next time anyone sees an advertisement for something this dumb and obvious remembers the humiliation of someone that fell for it. If you act remarkably stupid, expect to be called out on it.

[Ishnar]

I think you're being overly judgemental.

First of all, people giving their stuff away when they quit is a thing in every MMO. It happens a lot. So there is no reason to assume all giveaways are scams.

1. Don't click links - This is because links can be spoofed. This is why you should always copy and paste the link. No one can spoof links in chat. So that is not a worry. If you get a /tell link, you can copy and paste that link without worrying that the link will send you somewhere different than it says.
2. Read the link. https://forum.square-enix.com-fg.eu/[redacted] The link I got looked pretty legit, it is even https so usually when you get an https address they have to have a valid certificate or your browser will reject the site. the -fg.eu threw me off though and made me look closer.
3. As a general policy, when you follow a link and shortly after following that link you have to enter a username/password it is best to go to the site directly. Open another tab and, in this case, type out https://forum.square-enix.com and then login and look for the post. It wasn't there and thus I learned it must be a scam.
4. Don't feel rushed. The whole reason scammers use time limits, "In 15 minutes there will be a raffle," is to create a sense of urgency, and hopefully panic. People are stupid when they panic. It is a fact. The only solution is to never panic. The "raffle" post also created a false sense of urgency. There was 30 slots and 3 pages of people claiming slots already. "Oh no! I have to log in quick or I'll miss out!" is what they want you to think.

And yeah. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone is prone to different mistakes. So you would never make the mistake the op made. I believe you. But, I'm sure that there is some mistake you are prone to that the op would never make. It is part of everyone being different. Your strengths might be another person's weakness, but another person's strength is your weakness in turn.

Human brains have been shrinking for the last 10,000 years. Yes, people are getting dumber, but it's not just "other" people. We just can't see our own blind spots. We all have them.

[AriannaStormwake]

when i get one of these i put them on blacklist/ignore
did someone notice on the launcher we have a post about there being an attack at SQE?and including a link to reset password
besides the topic about to not click on suspicious URLs

[Hozomeen]

How people actually fall for this kind of stuff is absolutely beyond me. Like, someone random you've never met just whispered you a link for a free raffle of a "FFXIV Quitting giveaway" that requires a sign-in... and you're not even a little suspicious? It should be a natural, common-sense reaction to ignore/report for anyone even a little familiar with the internet as a whole. This is just the old school "Congratulations, you've won a free iPhone!" translated into FF.

Someone new logs on to the internet for the first time every second, probably. It's generally good to be more understanding of other people's situations.

[Ujifujimaru]

I just got this scam and fell for it cuz I'm a dummy. Luckily I found this thread, so thanks for raising awareness to this. I changed my password quickly.