HOW TO AVOID GETTING SCAMMED - 1

[Questmaster]

SCAMMERS are increasingly becoming a bane to the game. This has increasingly removed a lot of fun for some hard working players. It is quite hypocritical to turn a blind eye to this matter, botter or no botter. Too often, it is even the botter who scams. I have seen a lot of players, stalling day and night, selling items, just to gather gold. they even borrow from their friends and guild mates.. and then they get scammed. How are scams perpetuated in SRO? Here are the number of ways:

1. Powerleveling or PLVL or taxi. Unscrupulous players make a global about doing ong or wing tribe plvl or farming, and ask for gold for a number of hours. Too often, the first few days are so much fine. Then, they ask for 1 week payment, because the party is autoinvite and autoress and autolog in. The newbie (noob) players, not expecting anything bad, give their hard earned gold willingly... then player plving disconnects or bans the players from the parties... THEN HE GLOBALS --- CHAR FOR SALE... Next time the char logs in -- he claims and says "new owner". Poor New Players --- no plvl, and not even enough gold to grind alone.

2. Trade of Items. Because of the high prices of some items, which is more than 1B, and the limit that joymax just won;t fix (limit is until 999,999,999 gold only, or in the case of exchange, 100,000,000 only), Many people get scammed trying to get a good item. The scam is done like this: for example, a seller is selling a Seal of Nova Bow +9 with no Advanced Elixir used yet(AE). It is Full Blues 100%, and it has great stats. This is worth at least 3 billion as of January 2011 prices. So the seller will say, okay he will sell for 3b. The buyer agrees to the price. so they meet at a hidden place, and Seller stalls 2 bolts, 1 bolt each for 999,999,999. but he does not put the bow, he just shows it. Buyer has to buy the bolts worth 2B. Only then will the seller stall the bow, with 999,999,999. BUT - after the buyer gets the bolts worth 2b, the seller refuses to stall the bow... Poor Buyer. A variation is this: the Seller trusts the buyer and stalls the bolts and the bow, each for 999,999,999. The buyer gets the bow, and does not buy the bolts. POOR SELLER....

3. Selling or trading of Accounts. Let us face it, this situation has become regular. you see people trading/selling/buying accounts. let us not be hypocritical. Most reasons of trading accounts is that either you want a support character, or one simply wants to play another build, and has no time to make one from lvl 1 to lvl 110. Another reason is the character was badly built, and the owner simply wants to start over, but does not want to waste that account. So how are scams done? 99% OF THE TIME, SCAMS are done on this kind of trading. there are two types. The first is the trading accounts scam. The Scammer will demand that he gets the details from the other trader. so the other trader gives the account name, password, and Secret Answer. they trade details together --- BUT the scammer gives fake details.
The second type is the selling acccounts scam. The account is given by the scammer to a buyer. he gives the right accound name, the right account password, but the wrong account secret answer. when he receives the payment, he simply changes the account password again. You have seen a lot of complaints about hacked accounts. well, this happens to almost all the traded or sold accounts. When the character is high level or fuly farmed already, the original owner just changes the password cause he knows the secret answer, and presto, he has the account again. he proceeds to loot the account of everything in that account.People then claim they are hacked.

4. Selling of level 5 guilds, silk, and other items. The same --- the buyer gives the gold first, then is not given whatever he is buying. They simply get scammed.

5. Fake Name, Fake Guild Seller - SCAMMERS will try everything to trick you, including making up fake char names in fake guilds. The most frequently done is to write names that look the same as the real player's names... like Dark S V Vord to fake the name of DarkSword. or Ev i i mind to fake the name of EvilMind. The most frequently done is the letter L and i, and the letter V and W. See the guide on how to easily recognize these letters.

6. The 10k pls or the 100k or 1m pls scam. This is a very irritating scam, and I am sorry if I have to mention this, but this is perpetuated by most players from one geographical location. I do not mind helping people, but --- when you see a lvl 1 person who can earn 10k just by picking up stuff, and instead spends their time roaming around, harrasing people with an exchange request or a party request, mind you, I get peeved, and simply ignore the person. IT IS SIMPLE LAZINESS. I pick up stuff, and sell them at the right time. I buy things from players who do not have the time to stall and sell them, like I did in 10d, with 1m or 2m added, to earn gold.

7. The Free gold scam. This is a very idiotic scam, and yet, some players fell for it by giving their info.. There is no such thing as free gold!

8 The Free Bot/Free keylogger/free software/free porn/free whatever software scam. LOL. yeah right.Download it, and let the hidden trojan software log your data, then send it to someone. They use those to hack your data afterwards. I guess you have to check the hacking guide and read it for more information.


How to avoid being scammed:

There is no 100% surety of not being scammed in most cases, unless the buyer and seller both DO TRUST EACH OTHER. However, there are ways to avoid getting scammed.

1. Powerleveling or taxi. There is no 100% surety of avoiding scams. Just get plvls from trusted players. Also, be prepared for a scam. It is the risk you take for paying for plvl. As much as possible, pay by the hour or by the day. Too often, the characters used for plvl are hacked or scammed characters, and since they are avoided in parties or guilds, they have become useless except for plvl or gold botting. So --- if you value your time and your gold, get plvl from trusted plvlers only. Ask your guild mates or union mates about their experiences. Ask about the player name first. Get advice.

2. Trading. This is a hot topic and somewhat very hard to avoid a scam. FIRST: KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUYING FROM. If he has scammed before, forget it. Don't buy from him. If the price is about 1b and below, always have it stalled inside the town, preferably jangan or alexandria. the center is the best, at least the copy bug will not work there. never trade outside the town, specially outside hotan. REMEMBER THIS: THE COPY BUG HAS NOT YET BEEN FIXED UNTIL NOW. An Alternative is to do it via an intermediary, someone trusted in the server, who is trustworthy, never scammed, and is trusted by you and the seller or the buyer.Give your item and the gold to him first. then he will turn over the gold to the seller, and the item to the buyer. But then -- this is not fool proof... cause some people share accounts, and the scammer might be using that so-called "TRUSTED" Character.

3. Avoiding SCAMS during trading or buying of accounts. SIMPLE -- If you do not know the player, forget about buying the account, not unless you can afford to waste your gold.

I have experienced getting scammed till it was placed right. (I guess I was so desperate for that item then, and trusted the player - simply cause he was from a "trustworthy" guild), I had experienced a lot of scam attempts afterwards.. and when I smelled something fishy -- I simply walked away.

4. Avoiding the fake names scam. The letters w, i, and l are the most common exploited fake char names. So ---- check the name of the person you are dealing with. sometimes, even the names can be tricky. fix how your fonts or letters will look like so you can easily see the letters if the l you are looking at is actually a capital letter I, or the w is actually two letter v's, etc...

5. Make a list of the scammers you know. keep your own list. Confirm if there really was a scam, then, take note of the details. Keeping a list might save you later.

6. Block the 10k pls people from your messages, both server and your side.

7. Always be a clean player. LOL... this reminds me of two scammers, one scammed an EGY staff, the other used a different char to befriend the scammer (Complete with porn pics on FB), and scammed the staff back.

8. Do not use these so called free bots/keyloggers/etc. Simple. Again, read the hacking guide in this forum.

9. If you must play in an internet cafe, where a lot of players have no choice but to play there, be reminded that the pc you are using may have a keylogger running already --- and the one who installed it is the internet cafe owner. I have seen an actual demonstration of this when Oasis server was the big thing then.


NOW, BEFORE ALL YOU SO-CALLED PROGRAMMERS AND HACKERS AND PROS GIVE COMMENTS, REMEMBER --- NOT ALL PEOPLE ARE AS GOOD AS YOU. Too often, the one who suffered is one who wanted to have a bit of fun - and suffers at the hands of so - called PROS. If you are a PRO or a hacker or whatever --- show of by hacking and deleting scammer and the numerous safsadfs player accounts instead. This guide was made to assist newbies(noobs), or those who need a bit more warning. It is a layman's guide.

Having said that, any corrrections, constructive comments, and other advice would help.

[The Invisible]

another known scam is someone selling an item very cheap and wait for alot of players to enter the stall then add 1 or 2 ( Zeros ) and immediatly open the stall .

it is easy to avoid it just when u see a stall alot players are in it and IT ONLY HAS ONE ITEM and still closed just leave as 80% it is a scam .

[Boiler]

common sense ftw?

[Questmaster]

Common sense -- well, I would have mentioned that, and I do agree, but then, I have seen situations where common sense would have been useful, and yet, a person got scammed. I guess, instincts, known as "common sense", vary per person.

Trading or selling specially involves a little risk - where one person would have to trust another player. Sometimes, if there is only one item, and you want it so bad... you risk it all.

[The Invisible]

i meant something like an arena coin for 1m with closed stall and many people are in the stall and it is still closed .

The + 1 billion items are totally different story ( kinda disappointed that they didn't increase the stall cap to 10 billion at the last uptade ) .

[Questmaster]

Yup... You are absolutely right on that. When there are a lot of them in, one grabs it, and before you can get it, someone else gets it...

There are two sides to this style. The scammer absolutely insists that he needs one witness to enter the stall. So --- due to need, you let the so-called "witness" look at it, but upon opening the stall, it is the witness who buys it... and you did not even get it.

If you complain, he says okay.... I will stall again.. so you click on the item while it is still being modified... and is ready to buy it as fast as possible. So he changes the price, clicks open fast -- and you get scammed.

Thus - in any stalling sales, make sure no one else is there...

[apan]

Best way is to just use common sence.

[Questmaster]

Yes I also agree.

However, Common sense also involves knowing something, and what if the player is perfectly innocent about it? Let me give you a prime example -- You want to buy an Egy 2H, where going rates in Pacific Server is 8B. How do you go about it then? There are only two sellers currently in that server for 2H. The seller does not trust you.

Or let me use an easier example. You need to buy a Grade B AE or Advanced Elixir for Weapon. The seller insists it is 1.1b. How would you do it without getting scammed?

Well common sense is right... but then, mate... I still see a lot of people globalling that they got scammed, and I sure do not want to say they are bereft of common sense.

[apan]

Best way, really is not to buy anything above 1b...

[Legs]

The taxi scam is more common with poor players.
If the partyleader got +0 gear, the chance of getting scammed is higher than from a full sox, since he/she probably already got enough money.

Scamming is for the poor and the stupid.

[Questmaster]

Well, Partly that -- cause I have been scammed for 3m way back for a supposedly "taxi" or "plvl" at the Donwhang Cave.

However, some players have made it into a fine art, and have targetted rich players, though the scammer himself looks like "rich" players to me.

One explained that he had scammed a player cause he got so riled up about his "arrogance".

[Questmaster]

With this new update, all the more to be careful of scammers. I hope the warnings you got are enough. Scams Have heated up again in Pacific server.

[pizzagirl2008]

best way i find to check if someone is a scammer when buying items > 1b:

trade some valuable (smaller) items with the item you want, then buy them back from the seller for agreed amount. if they say "no", and tell u that u must buy something from them for say 1b and then stall the real item for 1b (eg. if item selling was 2b) -> they're usually scammers...

[Questmaster]

I guess this will also work -- although I never had this situation before. Everyone I had bought or sold items over 1b was done using stalls, trust - paramount.

Kinda hard to negotiate what items to trade over though...

[Questmaster]

DDITIONAL SCAMMING TRICK

This is an old bug, that was being done way back in 8D, and it is still being used to trick people until now. When Someone is making a deal with a character that he does not know, and has no other way to ask about that character except to global, sometimes the character trying to scam does a trick using messages.

He will send a seemingly innocent message to the buyer, and attach a fake message from popular trusted players, where the trusted players will say the scammer is a clean good guy.

for example, Player1 is a buyer, God_of_Count is the seller, PentDeath and Sap_D are trusted players. Player1 will global "Is God_of_Count a trusted Player? I am buying something from him"

then he will receive this message:

God_Of_Count(From):Hey
PentDeath(From): YES YOU CAN TRUST HIM, HE IS NOT A SCAMMER.
God_Of_Count(From):Hey
Sap_D(From): Yes I trust him too, he will not scam you.

HOWEVER --- He could have been tricked, and this, sadly, can not be seen by a clean client, but by the chat window of a BOT.

How could the scammer do it?

Simple. an old 8D bug. The scammer types this and it is what is seen:

God_of_Count(From):Hey \\PentDeath(From): YES YOU CAN TRUST HIM, HE IS NOT A SCAMMER.

Notice the spaces and the backslash characters. The space is used so that the message spills over to the next line. The backslash is not seen via a normal SRO Client. However, due to the spaces, if the scammer did it right, it will look like there was a message from a trusted player. In Globals, He can also use this:

(Global)God_Of_Count: Can I be Trusted? \PentDeath:Yes he is fully trusted!

The Difference between Two Backslashes and one backslash is that when you click, like the one shown in the global, you think it is real. Sadly, a normal SRO client will not show you that the message is a fake. VERY SAD THAT JOYMAX HAS NOT FIXED THIS TILL NOW....

You may wonder, how come he has the spaces just right? of course, he does. he has saved this already in a text file, and all he did was cut then paste it to his BOT chat window.

So, how do you avoid this fake messages? Easy --- talk to the guy himself. If he is offline --- the message is a fake. If he is online, ask him directly. Ask his guildmates. A few more sentences won't hurt.

(BTW ANY PROS OUT THERE WHO CAN TEACH PEOPLE TO HAVE THEIR CLIENTS SHOW ALL THE SPECIAL CHARS, THAT WOULD BE ASPPRECIATED)

SO WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU GET FAKE MESSAGES BY THE PERSON YOU ARE DEALING WITH? SIMPLE. BLOCK HIS MESSAGES, AND QUIT THE DEAL. hE HAS ALREADY STARTED THE SCAMMING TRICKS. FORGET IT. YOU WILL NEVER GET A GOOD DEAL FROM A SCAMMER.(Well, I did, but only after he had to trust me and he needed to sell - no one wanted to buy from him anymore.)


SADLY SOME UNSCRUPULOUS SELFISH UNCOUTH FILTH ARE USING THIS AS SO-CALLED SCAM PROOF, TO DAMAGE GOOD PLAYERS. DON'T YOU DARE BE ONE OF THEM. HOW SO? THEY MAKE THIS TRICK USING SECOND CHARS, AND SCREEN CAPTURE SOMETHING WHERE BAD WORDS ARE SPOKEN. SO DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON SCREEN CAPTURE.

Thanks to Viet_E Guild Members who pointed this out.

[Questmaster]

BLACKMAIL SCAM by some SCAMMERS!

Cheap Scam variation now. BlackMail Scam. OMG I think I pissed some people off...

Anyway this happened first to a guildmate of mine, and also to some union mates. THEN --- LOOOL it happened to me yesterday when some scammer tried to blackmail me with a char named Fin_Sie.

The scammer will make a char, and will then pm you with that char. He will ask if you are on, and then if you reply yes, he will ask you the question: "Why did you scam my friend?" or "Did you scam a legend staff?". Of course you get irritated since you did not scam anything. So, he will say "you have to pay me 100m or I will global you as Scammer!"

Of course, you will not mind him, and just ignore him. then he will global you as a scammer. then he will pm you again and say "give me 100m or I will tell that i have a screenshot" and video..

and he will cut and paste the chat you had a while ago, and put your reply after his question! He uses a simple Graphics editing tool to do this. He will then fix that screen so that it will appear that you are a scammer. Then he will upload that in free site. LOL to me -- he said he said "give me 200m so i will remove the screen". LOL. The truth is, if people know you better, it will backfire on the scammer.

(be very careful with this when he sends you a link. He sent a link to one of the curious players, but it was referring to a .pps file with a vbscript that later downloads a keylogger, or at least attempts to download).

When this scam happens to you, LAUGH OUT LOUD! IT SEEMS YOU ARE FAMOUS, AND THE SCAMMER THINKS YOU ARE RICH! If you have lots of silk, global him, and let him global back, let him waste his precious gold buying globals. If not, well you can also describe this kind of scam via globals so that everyone else will know this cheap trick. I had been told by a lot of union mates that I was wasting my time on this kid.(Sorry Ele,Bri,Seba - I just couldn't resist posting this). I am just going to spend this wee bit of time to post this, to forewarn other players, specially the new players(since new players of SRO are getting fewer and fewer).

[WoIfe]

I started to read this just for kicks, because IMO, all you need is common sense? that would have been what I suggest >.>

[The Invisible]

Common sense can help you in most of these "scams", but not everyone got the same common sense and some can be fooled easier than others.

Anyway it is always nice knowing what scams can be used againest you, makes it a lot easier to avoid them.

[WoIfe]

Common sense can help you in most of these "scams", but not everyone got the same common sense and some can be fooled easier than others.

Anyway it is always nice knowing what scams can be used againest you, makes it a lot easier to avoid them.

Yeah, I guess, but I still think having common sense would solve the problem of ever getting scammed. I think what you meant to say, most people dont have commons sense? idk I could be wrong.

[The Invisible]

most people dont have commons sense? idk I could be wrong.

Common sense -- well, I would have mentioned that, and I do agree, but then, I have seen situations where common sense would have been useful, and yet, a person got scammed. I guess, instincts, known as "common sense", vary per person.

Trading or selling specially involves a little risk - where one person would have to trust another player. Sometimes, if there is only one item, and you want it so bad... you risk it all.

That's what i meant by common sense.

[WoIfe]

most people dont have commons sense? idk I could be wrong.

Common sense -- well, I would have mentioned that, and I do agree, but then, I have seen situations where common sense would have been useful, and yet, a person got scammed. I guess, instincts, known as "common sense", vary per person.

Trading or selling specially involves a little risk - where one person would have to trust another player. Sometimes, if there is only one item, and you want it so bad... you risk it all.

That's what i meant by common sense.

"risking it all" - common sense (sarcasm)