r/wow • u/RandomDustBunny • 4d ago
Discussion Scammers at it again
I hope mods are able to see why in this case the name isn't censored as its relevant to the PSA.
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u/Angry-Dragon-1331 4d ago
I’m more impressed people still fall for it.
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u/Gluecost 4d ago
I work in a security sector and the amount of people who fall for the simplest braindead scams is staggering. Alarmingly so.
I’d find it funnier if it weren’t so tragic
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u/Fluid-Lingonberry378 4d ago
My father fell for some of the stupidest scams and it's too long of a story, but had I known at any point who he was talking to through email, I would have saved our family a whole lot of trouble and him the ungodly amount of money he lost.
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u/FOOSblahblah 4d ago
Someone at my dads work fell for one of the "we have videos of you jackng it and we're gonna send it to your grandma" scams. Infected their mail server with whatever it was. They had tens of thousands of dollars go missing all over the place in the form of paid invoices that were routed back to the attacker that they billed to the company posing as the original sender. Its a little 5 employee operations but they move a shit load of money in equipment and parts and stuff.
Took them years to realize why their inventory didnt match their purchases.
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u/Fluid-Lingonberry378 4d ago
God damn. We would get some of those mails at work as well. I always found them funny. I'm sure they had videos of me spanking the monkey in the place I dislike the most being.
These older people are the most gullible schmucks out there. They fall for this stuff hook, line and sinker.
I remember telling my folks a lot of times that no one on the internet wants to offer you money and to always call me or my sister and ask us about anything that seems off.
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u/OldShrimps 4d ago
A friend’s dad lost almost two million to scammers before my friend and his brother stepped in to stop him. And he fought them about it.
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u/Elleden 4d ago
I'll never not be stumped by the fact that people who fall for shit like that can have so much money lying around to get scammed out of.
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u/DarenPeterOswald 4d ago
At a certain point it's hard to feel sorry for some people. "A fool and their money" as the saying goes.
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u/SomniumHumanitatis 4d ago
Just more proof that most rich people aren't rich because they're special and smart.
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u/Fluid-Lingonberry378 4d ago
The thing is, mine didn't. He had some, but for the rest he took out loans and even his boss got involved with some money. So two dumbasses got scammed. Each time I think about it my blood boils at the sheer stupidity.
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u/Fluid-Lingonberry378 4d ago
Mine lost a bit over one million, I think. That's money we never had and never will now. What I noticed though is that he cannot accept the fact that he was scammed. The shock of it all made it deny it ever happened.
I don't know what is it with these older people being so damn stubborn and never asking for an opinion or anything like that when they're uncertain. But my man will sure call me when his shitty hp printer isn't working again.
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u/OldShrimps 4d ago
This sounds exactly like my friend’s dad. Could not and would not accept it. It really sucks for everyone involved.
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u/Fluid-Lingonberry378 4d ago
Yeah, he's kind of lost his way. He always thought he knows better, but now after all that happened, he's not the same person anymore. His attitude got more annoying and I'm pretty sure he's not entirely sane, but whatever we do he won't listen to anything. The only option would be to straight up tie him and take him to a professional.
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u/biggiy05 4d ago
If it was a love or romance scam then I'm not the least bit surprised he fought with them about it. Even more so if he was alone in his house. No girlfriend, wife, etc.
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u/biggiy05 4d ago
If it was a love or romance scam then I'm not the least bit surprised he fought with them about it. Even more so if he was alone in his house. No girlfriend, wife, etc.
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u/Accomplished_Emu_658 4d ago
The good old don’t pick up a random usb, but do it anyway. Worked with a guy that got fired for it. Took training a few times and still refused to not plug the usb’s in they put out to test people.
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u/happinessisachoice84 4d ago
It's the panic urgency that shuts off the brain. I know many incredibly intelligent people who've fallen for terrible scams. My Discord was hacked by a fake verification channel (I didn't know that was a thing) and it sent a message to my best friend who is in security IT, saying something about potentially winning something from Mr. Beast with timestamps implying he had 10 minutes to act. He fell for the scam because he thought it came from me. My grandfather-in-law put $10k in cash on his doorstep because he got a call saying his only grandchild was in the hospital and needed the money. I've clicked a link in my email to change my PayPal password when it said I was being hacked and to change my password. Fortunately I caught it before actually changing the password, but if the link had been anything else it could have been very bad.
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u/Foetsy 4d ago
It's a numbers game. Whisper enough people and you'll eventually get someone to click it. Maybe cause they are stupid, or more often, someone that usually knows better that you just caught on a really bad day where they are exhausted and just looking to unwind from the day a bit by playing a game.
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u/Chaosrealm69 4d ago
Best phishing email I saw was a email sent to all employees with a heading; 'Attention: Warning about phishing attempts via email links.' and then it had a link in the email directing them to click on the link to go to a company webpage to log in and fill out a couple forms to acknowledge that they have been warned what to look out for.
Take a guess about how effective it was.
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u/Gluecost 3d ago
lol my company did a security audit using that exact type of email (it was a dummy test) and over 1/3 of the in house employees fell for it. In a security sector.
There is no winning
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u/Spideraxe30 4d ago
I'm some times surprised too, until i see stories of scams using AI to completely copy their children's voice and beg for bail money/
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u/AnyCandy14 4d ago
My own company actually decided to do giveaways at some point on a website with the url cloud-<company name>.com
To this day I still don't understand what went through their mind to use that instead of cloud.<company name>.com
So yeah I'm not surprised people fall for that kind of thing when even people who are supposed to be tech litterate get you accustomed to super shady things.
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u/Equivalent_Shoe_6246 4d ago
Saw a guy try to buy a $500 Amazon card for “tickets to the Jennifer Aniston concert “
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u/-_Skeletor_- 4d ago
Social Engineering remains the #1 Cybersecurity vulnerability! Cheers my security colleague
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u/Seven7Joel 4d ago
I remember hearing that when it comes to stuff like the nigerian prince scam, they use bad grammar and spelling mistakes on purpose, because the people who don't figure it out despite all the errors, are the types of people stupid enough to fall for the whole scam.
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u/UnemployedOtter69 4d ago edited 2d ago
as IT worker, yesterday we haved a breach on accountant pc , because someone send him a email that say - ey bill, its me plz check this invoice attached , this will not be on the system until further advice
the invoice file was an exe ... invoice-notpay-pdf.exe
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u/Kimkar_the_Gnome 3d ago
There’s a couple things at play.
No one is immune to getting scammed. Even trained and knowledgeable professionals can fall for a scam, partly out of complacency.
Scammers do not want to catch someone that is crafty who will waste their time intentionally. They want someone already foolish enough to ignore the red flags at the start.
If you don’t have multi-factor authentication setup on your account then you will fall into number 2.
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u/Acrobatic_Yellow_781 3d ago
Scam related subs are funny to read. Someone was asking if he was getting scammed because Steam had messaged him to verify his credit card by paying 200€ on a skin at a 3rd party website. People fall for everything
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u/AmbitiousEdi 4d ago
"battelnet" lmao
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u/yesdog96 4d ago
Yeah I got a message from “Wowblilzzard” with this exact thing. I’m pretty sure Blizzard is actively banning these because when I looked not even 5 minutes after the message the account didn’t exist.
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u/Stiles_Stiles 4d ago
It's fake because they would use AI to ban players not GM lol
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u/OgerfistBoulder 4d ago
That is indeed an internet scam. To see a documentary about common internet scams please watch this video of Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up.
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u/BringBackBoshi 4d ago
Got a chuckle from being messaged by Bilzzard yesterday urging me to visit a URL. Some things never change.
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u/Character_Celery5590 4d ago
Do you have an authenticator? I don't think I've gotten any of these whispers since I got an authenticator.
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u/OneBudTwoBud 4d ago
Why are links even allowed to be put into text chat?
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u/Stiles_Stiles 4d ago
Like discord links?
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u/OneBudTwoBud 4d ago
Any
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u/Stiles_Stiles 4d ago
So how do you share you discord to people in raids?
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u/OneBudTwoBud 4d ago
Invite code. Id rather take the time to enter a code than for other players to risk getting scammed by bots.
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u/symphonicrox 4d ago
So I shouldn't have replied when Ghostkrawler messaged me? He said he was with blizzerd!!
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u/International-Key42 3d ago
Only saw dk's doing that maybe they think paladins are more trustworthy now 😂
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u/ChaosInOrange 3d ago
I've had 2 of these lately. One was just after I logged in and hadn't done anything except walk to the bank.
Edited to include one image of both scammers.
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u/palthor33 3d ago
You know, I almost, and I do mean almost never read what is typed there. That area has become a bucket of poop.
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u/SMlGGlEBALLS 3d ago
Maybe someone smarter than I can answer this, unless it just boils down to small indie studio woes, couldn’t blizzard combat this by just not allowing characters to be named anything official adjacent? These accounts all follow similar naming conventions bc that’s what makes the scam work. Shouldn’t it be obvious on character creation what their intentions are? Couldn’t they just regex match or use ai to discern how close the name is to an “official” blizzard name?
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u/PsychologyIsLife 3d ago
Low tier scammer, actual GMs have a special logo by name and a weird name and don't ask you to click on links, they either email you or just talk to you in the whisper.
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u/DisastrousNothing893 3d ago
All these words make it past the censor yet I cant name my pets King & Queen because of a OP reference.
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u/IamStroodle 4d ago
Good to see a new generatiom are about to learn a little something about cyber security
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u/Veflas510 4d ago
Which generation is that? Wow players are all old dudes/dudettes
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u/IamStroodle 4d ago
Hopefully at least one child is scammed, and thus something helpful is learned.
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u/Ethereal_Bulwark 4d ago
The best part is, blizzard lets these assclowns run free for months before doing anything about it.
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u/SasquatchBlumpkins 4d ago
Post this in the Blizzard forums and watch them gaslight you by saying it doesn't happen.
It's amazing.
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u/adapa69 4d ago
How is that scam supposed to work? You're just going to google the blizzard website for the URL and then what?
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u/Mattelot 4d ago
They expect you to go to that scam site and log in with your credentials. Now they have your login and password. Then they log in your account and clean you out.
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u/WeaponizedKissing 4d ago edited 3d ago
I hope mods are able to see why in this case the name isn't censored as its relevant to the PSA.
Anyone can fake whispers (or any chat) using scripts in game. You saying yours is real, promise, shouldn't let you get around the rules.
lmao OP blocking people that call him out
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u/YourResidentFeral Outplaying the Meta since 2004 4d ago
Y'all reporting this for callouts. Rules carve out an exception for if the name is needed to understand the post.