#ScamBuster

[jweiprofile]

HyperTech CEO's Ongoing Exploits: Jayden Wei Launches Another Scam

Beyond the surface, explore the depths of Jayden Wei's actions and unravel the mystery - Who is Jayden Wei, and how did he become a central figure in crypto controversy?

[lesbosisle]

Gaza donation/aid scam

Hey lovelies, there have been a lot of scams going around of people pretending to be Gazans seeking aid. So this is a reminder that if a person shows up in your tumblr inbox who you don't know asking for money, don't give it to them. Ask further questions. If things don't line up on their account they are probably a scam.

This person who

Seemed legit enough right? I have now verified is a scam.

After asking some very simple questions they dodged all of the questions giving answers which didn't make sense.

Some of the things that didn't add up:

BIG RED FLAG

their account seemed to be four hours old, after turning on timestamps the oldest repost on their account (in fact all of their reposts) were four hours old - this is a massive red flag

said name was Tasneem Doreen Rajaab in the ask, email address is a completely different name, paypal is another different name 'Dorine Nanjala.' All three names are of different ethnic backgrounds making it unlikely this person was using a family member's account.

used very fluent english in their donation post but broken english in the ask and dms

+ more

Some of these things could be explained however when I reached out for clarification they dodged my questions and gave me nonsensical answers. A lot of these scams seem to use diabetes as part of their story so watch out for that.

Some scam busting blogs I'd recommend following are mysillypoker, kyra45, mangocheesecakes, and neechees.

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

instead of giving your money to random blogs who might be scammers donate to

any of the families on this verified list from @palestineasdiqa on instagram

USPCR's toolkit

Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada

gazafunds.com

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Doctors Without Borders (they provide medical care to many impoverished and war torn countries other than Palestine)

guide to buy & send esims to gaza

I will be tagging any of the people who reposted this scam not to call you out or anything but to spread awareness

@blossommagicghost @vendettafrank @lesbian-rlbmut @dylaadywptd @ohnoitsoak @petitommo @squidarts @nervestatic @py-dreamer @shippin-my-sanses @helllonursee2 @mirajanefairytailmage @leafwateraddict @passinhosdetartaruga

fyi they blocked me

[goblinbugthing]

Hello my dears! My name is Mahmoud Abed, I ask you to support my campaign to help me reach my goal. I am now in dire need of your support to help my family save them from the besieged and destroyed Gaza Strip. Gaza is a very dangerous place. I need your financial support to enable me to obtain the basic needs of my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help the family survive their ordeal through your small donations or by sharing my campaign with your friends and others. Thank you very much for standing by those in need.

(note: i am not 100% sure if this fundraiser is real or not, since they only have one post on their blog and it is their pinned, and i didnt see any evidence of it being vetted, but ive reblogged their pinned before (likely from my best friend) and i trust their convictions.)

[callcentermaschen]

Als YouTuber gibt es verschiedene Programme und Tools, die nützlich sein können, um Ihre Videoproduktion zu verbessern, Ihr Publikum zu erreichen und Ihre Inhalte zu optimieren. Aber hey, wenn du auf der Suche nach etwas Besonderem bist, dann besuch meinem Kanal "CallcenterMaschen" auf YouTube wirklich aus der Masse hervorstechen lässt, dann bist du hier genau richtig!

In meinem Kanal dreht sich alles darum, Telefonbetrüger auf die Schippe zu nehmen und ihnen die Zeit zu stehlen. Kein Telefonbetrüger ist sicher vor mir und meiner einzigartigen Herangehensweise. Aber um die bestmöglichen Ergebnisse zu erzielen, braucht man natürlich die richtigen Werkzeuge. Deshalb habe ich für dich eine Liste mit Programmen zusammengestellt, die dir dabei helfen werden, die Scammer in die Flucht zu schlagen und gleichzeitig professionell und lustig zu bleiben.

1. Videobearbeitungssoftware: Um deine Videos auf das nächste Level zu bringen, empfehle ich Programme wie Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro oder DaVinci Resolve. Damit kannst du Schnitte machen, Effekte hinzufügen, die Farbkorrektur verbessern und vieles mehr. Lass deiner Kreativität freien Lauf und verpasse deinen Videos den perfekten Schliff.

2. Grafikdesign-Tools: Ein ansprechendes Thumbnail und ein einladendes Kanalbanner sind entscheidend, um Zuschauer anzulocken. Nutze Programme wie Adobe Photoshop oder Canva, um professionelle Grafiken zu erstellen, die deine Videos zum Klicken verleiten.

3. Keyword-Recherche-Tools: Damit deine Videos von potenziellen Zuschauern gefunden werden, solltest du relevante Keywords in deine Titel, Beschreibungen und Tags einbauen. Nutze Tools wie den Google Keyword Planner, VidIQ oder TubeBuddy, um die besten Keywords für deine Videos zu finden und deine Sichtbarkeit zu verbessern.

4. Analytics-Plattformen: Erfolg auf YouTube erfordert ein tiefes Verständnis deiner Zuschauer, Aufrufe und Engagement-Raten. Nutze YouTube Analytics, um Einblicke in deine Daten zu erhalten. Zusätzlich kannst du externe Tools wie Social Blade nutzen, um Statistiken und Trends im Zusammenhang mit deinem Kanal zu verfolgen.

5. Musik- und Soundeffekt-Bibliotheken: Die richtige Musik und passende Soundeffekte können einem Video das gewisse Etwas verleihen. Durchsuche Plattformen wie Epidemic Sound oder Artlist nach lizenzierter Musik, die deine Videos aufwerten und ihnen den perfekten Klang verleihen.

6. Livestreaming-Software: Wenn du Live-Streams auf YouTube durchführen möchtest, empfehle ich Plattformen wie OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS oder XSplit. Damit kannst du deine Streams professionell gestalten und eine interaktive Erfahrung für dein Publikum schaffen.

Mit diesen Tools bist du bestens ausgerüstet, um deine YouTube-Inhalte zu verbessern, deine Produktionsqualität zu steigern und das Wachstum deines Kanals zu fördern. Denke jedoch daran, dass die Wahl der richtigen Programme von deinen individuellen Bedürfnissen und deinem Budget abhängt.

#ScamBusters #CallcenterComedy #NotoriousScamSlayer

Also schnapp dir deine Tastatur, lass deiner Kreativität freien Lauf und mach dich bereit, die Telefonbetrügerwelt zu rocken!

[my-silly-poker]

gaza scam warning

I'm locking this post because it was about the original wave of gaza-scams and is now outdated when it comes to recent real fundraisers that have been appearing on Tumblr. Please don't pass up people in need because you're afraid of scams. Identifying scams from the real fundraisers is easy.

@el-shab-hussein does a lot of vetting on Tumblr. @nabulsi is another reliable user who has done vetting (but as of this time is not vetting new posts). @90-ghost is a real palestinian person but they don't do a lot of in-depth vetting.

el-shab-hussein and nabulsi have a vetted fundraiser google sheet. el-shab-hussein has a list of direct contacts in gaza/yemen who are certifiably real people. operation olive branch is a coordinated effort to gather certified crowdfunding campaigns both for families and humanitarian provisions.

When you receive an ask, check any of the above resources to see if they're there. Some also have pre-existing social media accounts, such as Instagram, that they certify as theirs and prove that they are a real person in Palestine. Scroll down their blog, look at the notes in their post, and look for confirmation that they are verified anywhere (do not trust their claims until you see the confirmation yourself).

Then if you see confirmation that they are a real person in Palestine who needs help, reblog their post and maybe donate $5.

Feel free to message me about anyone who sends you an ask that seems suspicious and I'll tell you if they resemble any scam archetypes I've seen.

Original post:

Hey gamers, recently there have been a number of scam blogs on tumblr claiming to be Gazan victims. They've been making a number of iterations of the exact same blog and story but with different names and sometimes different PayPal links.

Thus far, the content of these scams are being stolen from 2 real fundraisers. Please lend your aid to these people who need help instead of the disgusting scam farm

Help Haya Orouq's family escape Gaza

Help Rawan AbuMahady's family escape Gaza

These are examples within the past month which have been deleted.

Ma22ya

Khalilhan

jovialsuitdonutai

miniaturepostkingjaiur

Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. You have likely encountered them before and not realized it. They throw together a brand new blog with a story of needing aid, then use bots to go through follow lists and post notes to send messages to random users. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.

Scam Spotting Tips

They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.

They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating

They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.

It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc. Pay attention to and trust the suspicion of details that stand out as odd.

Like many of the above examples, they often use an automatically generated username consisting of random words

Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it entirely - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles or alter the images so that people don't find the source. An image not having a source should also be suspicious, as you should wonder why this person's social media presence is exclusively a 3 day old tumblr blog

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

In name of the situation, here are great verified resources to support real people who need help:

Many organizations and gofundmes for Gaza

Verified fundraisers for individuals in Gaza put together by @palestineasdiqa on Instagram and Twitter

Click to donate for free using ad revenue

Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada

USPCR's toolkit

[dude-iloveu]

Hello this a long shot call, am a citizen of Palestine. I am here to request for your support to help get my insulin (Humalog), just an injection for today to save my life please I beg.I was diagnosized with type 1 diabetes and due to current situation in Gaza I'm unable to get my insulin injection as a result I'm here begging for little financial support to help me purchase insulin for this week. Am sorry if am sending you again this request, kindly donate any amount please. My donation link is in my pinned post🇵🇸

22 September update:

This is a scam. I've condensed this post so it is easier to read.

Current accounts: shinytastemakerphantom || magnificentdragonengineer || bitchygardenarcade

Past accounts: androgynousrunawaytree || deepesttragedyprince || atomiccollect29r || androgynousmusicpeace || generousreviewladdy || scrumptiouswastelandphantom

Please report and inform anyone you see reblogging from them (report -> unlawful uses -> phishing. explain that the blog is not legitimate and their post is using the same story by past scam accounts). Check scambuster blogs like kyra45 for guides and updated list of scams.

Also as @/nabulsi mentioned in the notes, be aware of this profile picture as well as a few others. They have been reused multiple times when a scammer makes another account:

I'm very concerned that scam blogs like this have more notes than some actual Palestinian's fundraisers. GFM posts are very rarely scams, and there are people who thoroughly vet them! Please take your time by donating and sharing these verified fundraisers instead.

-

Mahmoud Khalaf's family reached the initial goal! Now the goal is raised to cover expenses that will arise from moving to Ireland whenever they are able to.

Post: supportgaza

Verified by: el-shab-hussein & nabulsi (151, line 155)

Current amount: €31,188 out of €55,000

GFM:

-

Previous GFM that I included (mohammedayesh) has reached their goal! so here is Hossam's fundraiser that is shared by him

Post: gaza-evacuation-funds

Verified by: nabulsi & el-shab-hussein (251, line 255)

Current amount: $11,581 CAD out of $20,000

GFM:

-

this person has reached out to me to share their campaign. The funds are going in very slowly, it would be very cool if we could reach at least $2000 soon! Abdulrahman is a skilled graphic designer and you can see his works in the link to his Behance account.

Post: abdulrahmanpixel

Verified by: nabulsi, Vetted Fundraiser Spreadsheed (225, line 229)

Amount: $1,689 CAD out of $31,000

GFM:

and all else do your daily click as well

[lakesbian]

the thing about people accusing el-shab-hussein and nabulsi and other palestinian bloggers of running a scam ring that's really bizarre to me is that it's just so completely thoughtless. and i don't mean that in the sense of "inconsiderate," it's far too dangerous to be called just "inconsiderate," i mean in the sense that it demonstrates that literally not a single second of meaningful thought was put into the purported "scambusting." the bloggers vetting have been openly palestinian and openly talking about palestinian politics and culture for an extended amount of time--you could literally go to, e.g., nabulsi's blog right now, open up the archive, and scroll to see posts about palestinian politics, muslim character headcanons, etc., from as far back as 2021. the idea that any of these people would be...what, successfully pretending to be palestinians for years online? prior to launching their scam ring is so ridiculous it beggars belief. and the fact that the people making the scam accusations started with implying that the palestinian bloggers responsible for the vetting spreadsheets were running a scam ring, and only later backpedaled to "well, i guess they're real people, but they're probably still bad at vetting and verifying scammers" (which is still, to be clear, a deeply uninformed and dangerous accusation to make) is extremely indicative of how little thought or care was put into the accusations. if the people making the accusations couldn't even take thirty seconds to check that the people they're accusing of being scam ring leaders have been openly palestinian for years online prior to insinuating they've been lying about literally everything, there's 0 reason any other 'investigation' they post about doing should be taken as intelligent or useful. completely callous and negligent behavior

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting “The Bezzle” audiobook, sequel to Red Team Blues

I'm heading to Berlin! On January 29, I'll be delivering Transmediale's Marshall McLuhan Lecture, and on January 30, I'll be at Otherland Books (tickets are limited! They'll have exclusive early access to the English edition of The Bezzle and the German edition of Red Team Blues!).

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to last year's Red Team Blues, featuring Marty Hench, a hard-charging, two-fisted forensic accountant who spent 40 years in Silicon Valley, busting every finance scam hatched by tech bros' feverish imaginations:

http://thebezzle.org

Marty Hench is a great character to write. His career in high-tech scambusting starts in the early 1980s with the first PCs and stretches all the way to the cryptocurrency era, the most target-rich environment for scamhunting tech has ever seen. Hench is the Zelig of tech scams, and I'm having so much fun using him to probe the seamy underbelly of the tech economy.

Enter The Bezzle, which will be published by Tor Books and Head of Zeus on Feb 20: this adventure finds Marty in the company of Scott Warms, one of the many bright technologists whose great startup was bought and destroyed by Yahoo! (yes, they really used that asinine exclamation mark). Scott is shackled to the Punctuation Factory by golden handcuffs, and he's determined to get fired without cause, so he can collect his shares and move onto the next thing.

That's how Scott and Marty find themselves on Catalina island, the redoubt of the Wrigley family, where bison roam the hills, yachts bob in the habor and fast food is banned. Scott invites Marty on a series of luxury vacations on Catalina, which end abruptly when they discover – and implode – a hamburger-related Ponzi scheme run by a real-estate millionaire who is destroying the personal finances of the Island's working-class townies out of sheer sadism.

Scott's victory is bittersweet: sure, he blew up the Ponzi scheme, but he's also made powerful enemies – the kinds of enemies who can pull strings with the notoriously corrupt LA County Sheriff's Deputies who are the only law on Catalina, and after taking a pair of felony plea deals, Scott gets the message and never visits Catalina Island again.

That could have been the end of it, but California's three-strikes law – since rescinded – means that when Scott picks up one more felony conviction for some drugs discovered during a traffic stop, he's facing life in prison.

That's where The Bezzle really gets into gear.

At its core, The Bezzle is a novel about the "shitty technology adoption curve": the idea that our worst technological schemes are sanded smooth on the bodies of prisoners, mental patients, kids and refugees before they work their way up the privilege gradient and are inflicted on all of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

America's prisons are vicious, brutal places, and technology has only made them worse. When Scott's prison swaps out in-person visits, the prison library, and phone calls for a "free" tablet that offers all these services as janky apps that cost ten times more than they would on the outside, the cruelty finds a business model.

Working inside and outside the prison Marty Hench and Scott Warms figure out the full nature of the scam that the captive audience of prisoners are involuntary beta-testers for, and they discover a sprawling web of real-estate fraud, tech scams, and offshore finance that is extracting fortunes from the hides of America's prisoners and their families. The criminals who run that kind of enterprise aren't shy about fighting for what they've got, and they're more than happy to cut some of LA County's notorious deputy gangs in for a cut in exchange for providing some kinetic support for the project.

The Bezzle is exactly the kind of book I was hoping I'd get to write when I kicked off the Hench series – one that decodes the scam economy, from music royalties to prison videoconferencing, real estate investment trusts to Big Four accounting firm bogus audits. It's both a fast-moving, two-fisted crime novel and a masterclass on how the rich and powerful get away with both literal and figurative murder.

It's getting a big push from both my publishers and I'll be touring western Canada and the US with it. The early reviews are spectacular. But despite all of this, I had to make my own audiobook for it, which I'm pre-selling on Kickstarter:

http://thebezzle.org

Why? Because Audible – Amazon's monopoly gatekeeper to the audiobook world, with more than 90% of the market – refuses to carry my work.

Audible uses Digital Rights Management to lock every audiobook they sell to their platform. Legally, only an Audible-authorized app can decrypt and play the audiobooks they sell you. Distributing a tool that removes Audible DRM is a felony under Section 1201 of the 1998 DMCA.

That means that if you break up with Audible – delete your Audible apps – you will lose your entire audiobook library. And the fact that you're Audible's hostage makes the writers you love into their hostages, too. Writers understand that if they leave the Audible platform, their audience will have to choose between following them, or losing all their audiobooks.

That's how Audible gets away with abusing its performers and writers, up to and including the $100m Audiblegate wage-theft scandal:

https://www.audiblegate.com/

Audible can steal $100m from its writers…and the writers still continue to sell on the platform, because leaving will cost them their audience.

This is canonical enshittification: lock in users, then screw suppliers. Lots of companies abuse DRM to do this, but none can hold a candle to Amazon, who understand that the DMCA is a copyright law that protects corporations at the expense of creators.

Under DMCA 1201 commercial distribution of a "circumvention device" carries a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that if I write a book, pay to have it recorded, and then sell it to you through Audible, I am criminally prohibited from giving you the tool to take it from Audible to another platform. Even though I hold the copyright to that work, I would face a harsher sentence than you would if you simply pirated the audiobook from some darknet site. Not only that: if you shoplifted the audiobook in CD form, you'd get a lighter sentence than I, the copyright holder, would receive for giving you a tool to unlock it from Amazon's platform! Hell, if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CD, you'd get off lighter than I would. This is a scam straight out of a Marty Hench novel.

This is batshit. I won't allow it. My books are licensed on the condition that they must not be sold with DRM. Which means that Audible won't sell my books, which means that my publishers are thoroughly disinterested in paying thousands of dollars to produce audiobooks of my titles. A book that isn't sold in the one store than accounts for 90% of all sales is unlikely to do well.

That's where you come in. Since 2020, I've used Kickstarter to pre-sell five of my audiobooks (I wrote nine books during lockdown!). All told, I've raised over $750,000 (gross! but still!) on these crowdfunders. More than 20,000 backers have pitched in! The last two of these books – The Internet Con and The Lost Cause – were national bestsellers.

This isn't just a way for me to pay off a lot of bills and put away something for retirement – it's proof that readers care about supporting writers and don't want to be locked in by a giant monopolist that depends on its drivers pissing in bottles to make quota.

It's a powerful message about the desire for something better than Amazon. It's part of the current that is driving the FTC to haul Amazon into court for being a monopolist, and also part of the inspiration for other authors to try treating Amazon as damage and routing around it, with spectacular results:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson

And I'm doing it again. Last December, I went into Skyboat Media's studios where Gabrielle De Cuir directed @wilwheaton, who reprised his role as Marty Hench for the audiobook of The Bezzle. It came out amazing:

https://archive.org/details/bezzle-sample

Now I'm pre-selling this audiobook, as well as the ebook and hardcover for The Bezzle. I'm also offering bundles with the ebook and audiobook for Red Team Blues (naturally these are all DRM-free). You can get your books signed and personalized and shipped anywhere in the world, courtesy of Book Soup, and I've partnered with Libro.fm to deliver DRM-free audiobooks with an app for people who don't want to mess around with sideloading.

I've also got some spendy options for high rollers. There's three chances to name a character in the next Hench novel (Picks and Shovels, Feb 2025). There's also five chances to commission a Hench short story about your favorite tech scam, and get credited when the story is published.

The Kickstarter runs for the next three weeks, which should give me time to get the hardcopy books signed and shipped to arrive around the on-sale date. What's more, I've finally worked out all the post-Brexit kinks with shipping my UK publisher's books to EU backers. I'm working with Otherland Books to fulfill those EU orders, and it looks like I'm going to be able to sign a giant stack of those when I'm in Berlin later this month to give the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Canadian embassy:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

Red Team Blues and its sequels are some of the most fun – and informative – work I've done in my quarter-century career. I love how they blend technical explanations of the scam economy with high-intensity technothrillers. That's the the same mix as my bestselling YA series Little Brother series – but these are firmly adult novels.

The Bezzle came out great. I hope you'll give it a try – and that you'll come out to see me in late February when I hit the road with the book! Here's that Kickstarter link again:

http://thebezzle.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/10/the-bezzle/#marty-hench

[kyra45]

Thank you for being the best scambuster on this website. In light of recent events, I especially appreciate how you try to rationalize it and do actual research instead of jumping into conspiracies such as "Belgium scamming ring."

I’ve seen the post that started all the sudden drama (or at least one..) and can confirm I try my best to ensure any suspicions are reasonable and don’t generally question any verification process as that’s none of my business to doubt their legitimacy (others are free to decide what they want to, that’s their business). Though I do apologize for the occasional mishap that may occur due to communication issues or misunderstandings.

About the only conspiracy theory I have is just Laura Deramas running all these scam blogs (ones with PayPal links and obvious fake names that are clearly scams using stolen content off other sites) with her friends but it’s not too serious just a light joke at best due to how much she scammed people and how we still don’t really know how much she made to this day and how many others will never know she was a scam.

[12percentspider]

Interesting.

Guess what? The twitter account has a donation campaign that's been shut down. I'm also finding like... multiple weird shit going on that I'm gonna try and sort out as best as possible but it's getting to be deep as hell and looking like this is NOT the first time this scammer has attempted something on tumblr.

So uh. I think this might be a DIFFERENT?????? maybe??? Insulin scammer but from what I've seen poking around they KNOW about scambusters.

[fox-guardian]

coolsublimewolf is a known scammer! Please check their tag for more info or Kyra45, who is a dedicated scambuster! Or you can check with el-shab-hussein or 90-ghost who verify funds! But you should delete your reblog for now so nobody reblogs it or donates to the fund!

THANK YOU oh my goodness

i try to be better about that stuff, that's my bad!

[lesbosisle]

Swagprincessfire is a scammer

@swagprincessfire is a scammer this is their 'donation' post. They are profiting off of Israeli occupation and genocide. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY

They do not tell you their name, they only have a PayPal which the name is "Sharon Opioyo," they have not been vetted by anyone, I dmed them to ask them questions and they blocked me, their blog is two days old and they have been sending the same asks to people.

If you have reblogged their post please delete it from your blog so their scam doesn't spread. Additionally please report their account on Tumblr so it can get taken down.

Please share this post to spread awareness about them and these types of scams

[literalite]

Hey, these following blogs are known scammers: atomiccollect29r, futuristicbouquet, Emmilyy3, generalconnissuerdestiny, beatricergiveer, and coolsublimewolf. all of these funds are not vetted by anyone, they only claim they are! Rule of thumb; if there is a paypal link involved, it’s most likely a scam!! Please check their tags for more info or Kyra45, who is a dedicated scambuster! Or you can check with el-shab-hussein or 90-ghost who verify Palestinian funds! But you should delete your reblogs for now so nobody reblogs it or donates to the fund!

AHHH i only just aaw this but ty for telling me 🙏🏼🙏🏼😭 these ppl r sick for trying to profit off genocide

[greengirllover]

i appreciate you explaining your thought process and expressing your empathy for the situation, that means a lot. even though we may disagree on whether or not posting scams without clarifying that they are scams is truly helpful to those escaping genocide, i understand you are trying to help others. again, i recommend using the tumblr search bar to look up the text/usernames/paypal account names used by people asking for money. there are many scambusting blogs already here on tumblr, for example the ones i linked in my first ask. kyra45 has been documenting tumblr scams for years at this point, and azalea-alter has a list of current scams they update daily/every few days. other users you can check with are mangocheesecakes, neechees, 12percentspider, anonthescambuster, and tired-and-unjellied. even thought neither are currently verifying fundraisers, el-shab-hussein and nabulsi have painstakingly put together a google doc of hundreds of palestinian fundraisers that they have personally vetted as palestinians themselves that you can find here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yYkNp5U3ANwILl2MknJi9G7ArY4uVTEEQ1CVfzR8Ioo/edit?usp=drivesdk

i appreciate u having a real conversation and being informative seriously thank u now that there are more resources that i know of that can help me verify these campaigns i will do more research

[my-silly-poker]

insulin scam warning

Hey gamers,

for a long time on tumblr there's been a guy who really, really wants you to believe they need insulin, on many different blogs, with different paypals and different names. They make a new blog, put a few reblogs on it so it isn't obvious it's brand-new, and then start spamming asks to people for donations.

Here is their most recent blog, but their username will likely change by the time you see this. Kyra45 reports updates on them here

Here are examples of past iterations of this scam, which have been taken down

Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. The insulin guy has been a long-running one for months now. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.

Scam Spotting Tips

They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.

They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating

They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.

It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc.

Like many of the above examples, they often have a completely random string of words as their blog name.

Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles so people don't find the source and think it's original

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

[hellodahliah]

Hey, these following blogs are known scammers: atomiccollect29r, futuristicbouquet, Emmilyy3, generalconnissuerdestiny, beatricergiveer, honestlyhollieallie, and coolsublimewolf. all of these funds are not vetted by anyone, they only claim they are! Rule of thumb; if there is a paypal link involved, it’s most likely a scam!! Please check their tags for more info or Kyra45, who is a dedicated scambuster! Or you can check with el-shab-hussein or 90-ghost who verify Palestinian funds! But you should delete your reblogs for now so nobody reblogs it or donates to the fund!

Thanks for the info!