Honestly one of the biggest red flags is low level accounts decked out in random treasure trail items worth a few mil. I don't know why but they're always wearing shit like that gilded apron, ankou outfit, ale of the gods, etc.
i have seen bots in random bullshit items. in their case i think they do it because jagex would see random items and think: real player.
for scamming it's to seem like a honest and real player, but to also make sure you are only getting the most gullible people to scam.
I heard something similar about phone scams. Apparently they’re so obvious to detect because they only really want someone who’s dumb enough to go all the way through with it
They're super obvious to detect because most of the scams you see these days rely on you thinking you can anti-scam. They lead with what seems like an obvious scam. This is designed to make you think you can anti scam as long as you don't fall for the obvious scam, then they get you with a different scam.
I used to work in a Bookies and this is text book. I remember the worst I got done, 2 lads came in close to closing, one trying to rush me and put £500+ Greyhound bets on before taking payment, close to the race Off (known as slow count). Then his mates talking to me being all nice and putting the odd £20 bet on with £50 notes saying "oh dont mind him he's just hectic, harmless really". I felt great as I'd stopped someone slow counting and refused his custom. Then, next day, I find out the £50s the other guy had given me were fake. I've never felt so stupid in all my life.
Honestly you deserve to get scammed if you think you can anti scam. If you already suspect it’s a scam, just hang up, there’s 0 reason to continue that convo except wasting your time (and to bloat your ego) unless you’re one of those anti scam youtubers that know what they’re doing.
And when I say you, I mean the dummies in general that try to pull that crap and proceed to get scammed when they could have just saved themselves by hanging up when they saw through the initial scam.
Yep. That’s why spam emails have a ridiculous amount of typos. If you recognize them, you wouldn’t have fallen for the scam anyways and you’re saving their time lol
i was approached by a dude called Spirc Mac (trying to copy Sparc Mac’s name, didnt know who he was before this) while i was killing Wyrms with Fang and he said “im doing something for people doing slayer, trade me your fang and say gold or plat”..
Obvious scam but dude was combat level 68 wearing a shadow and he swapped to a tbow while talking to me
the biggest red flag is someone trying to give you money for free. nobody gives away 1 billion for no reason. even if they did, you dont want to accept it. it will sour your game experience because you didnt earn it. just play the game normally and make money. it will be more satisfying in the end
But that's the problem, you got ass hats that go buy lvl 120+ accounts to go scamming on, because it's like an investment. You invest money into this character that has "walking trust" with players because "who would risk a high level account?" Right? Absolutely wrong. Don't be naive.
I doubt they are trying to target long term players with tons of experience - to a noob, that looks like a very wealthy player, and there’s low requirements to wear it
A good way to avoid this is to right-click the "trade" part of the chatbox and change it to "friends." That way, you should only see trade requests from people on your friend list.
A good way to avoid this is not to interact with people that are obviously trying to scam you.
I swear man, the only people that get scammed are folks like OP who just want to "see where it goes". It's insanely naive to think you're so smart nothing they do can fool you. You knowing it's a scam is part of the scam.
But how would I get a 4th free lightbearer from someone wanting to teach me raids? Thanks for the free 6m so far btw. (Not you but this scammer I know who try’s to get me every time I’m wearing max range )
This is true in real life as well. Many scams present as a more obvious scam to trick you into thinking you're outsmarting them. Meanwhile while your guard is low they throw in a subtle twist on the obvious scam and by the time you realize what happened they've already won
Yeah thats why they even let some people with huge followings anti-scam them. They purposefully “screw it up” so they get heaps of views, then you get people like OP who actually get caught. OP almost lost his bank for trying to find out and his friends outright told him it was a scam at the start.
Yup. You never know just when the scam hits you, only that it will at some point. The majority of the time, you only realize when it's too late. That's literally part of the plan of the scammer. They know the scam and you don't.
This is also literally the point of most scams. They have the actual scam happen before the obvious scam thing explicitly so they can get people "who just want to see where it goes".
I'll just blatantly bank, take a dds as a single item and when they say "Take your gear" I just respond with "This is good enough."
They get real mad when you engage them but just refuse to play.
Where’s the quality content? If anyone fails for trading their bank away in any form or fashion they deserve to be scammed.
You’d have to be brain dead on both sides of this to get scammed.
I remember back in 06 I tried to "see where a scam is going" and this guy just kept trying to teach me money making guides from an outdated youtube video. Legit multiple days, no scam. Just guiding me around flax fields and some other stuff. Wierd as hell.
Not only would OP have lost his bank, but it would have put a lot of strain on the friendship if his friend had mistakenly traded fake OP. This is a pretty evil scam.
You're a absolutely right and I usually don't but this one was new to me and I was curious, and since they were asking to trade my friend and not them I felt it was safer to pursue. Honestly if it was almost any other friend I probably wouldn't have done it and had he been a little less alert they would've gotten away with it for sure
> Friends say it is a scam and to ignore and I knew it too but wanted to see where it went.
Don't do this, ever. If you had been like, tired or something or just didn't clock the different screen name, you could have given 1b to a scammer to "see where it went".
I'd say most scams at this point. There's an understanding that rich players are generally savvy enough to not get scammed (OP was very nearly the exception to this rule) and they socially engineer an anti-lure/anti-scam.
In that way, scammers can be very good at *acting* incompetent and even getting anti'd for small amounts in order to get people to risk more.
It works a treat too - in OP's example they were willing to put up a bond just to gamble on the chance that the scam would work, which might seem insane but it only needs to work ~1/80th of the time to be profitable.
These days, long cons are very common on rich players. Holding a tbow at the GE makes you a guaranteed target for the long con. Do not ever friend anyone you meet at the GE while holding a tbow, or anyone who randomly approaches or messages you at all if you have ever equipped a 1b+ item in public.
Example:
Stranger: Hey [username], do you mind buying me 30k feathers? I hit buy limit.
You: Sure! here you go!
Stranger: Wow thanks man! mind if i add you so i can buy more later?
[2 weeks later]
New friend: Hey man wanna run some bandos/nex/etc?
you: Sure!
*drops and successful splits, friend seems trustworthy*
[2 months later after doing raids together and talking on disc]
Good friend: Bro this guy is trying to lure me at wild lmao, hop on disc and we'll counter-lure him! bring [insert 1b+ item] and we'll kill him, he's risking 2b!
this guy who you've been gaming with for months just lured you using some game mechanic you weren't expecting and took you for billions and then blocked you on everything you added him on.
I see this scam beginning all the time at the GE and its always targeting people holding tbows and they are always falling for it. I warn the victims of this when I see it and the scammers always get so damn angry. It's crazy obvious once you know about it. Why would a stranger call you out by username and try to get your help specifically???
Same thing happened to me around 2012. Guy befriends me at the GE, starts acting like a pal for two weeks, adds me on Skype pretends to be my friend, then one day starts talking about a new game made by Jagex and sends me a phishing link to a fake RuneScape site. I told him to fck off and he just sends me a stupid smiling emoji lol I swear the shit people would do
Exactly, and to make matters worse, many youtubers are playing into it. Scammers create an obvious scam, youtuber antiscams them for 100M and makes a video out of it. Now thousands of people THINK they know the scam and how to make profit out of it, but in reality the scammers planned all of it and added an extra layer to the scam no one sees coming.
"I wanted to see where it went"
You are part of the reason why scams keep popping up. You knew it was a scam, you have no idea when and where the scam hits, and you still fucked with it. All you had to do was ignore them, and you couldn't even do that.
Lmao why would you ever engage with a scammer
My man opens his front door, sees an angry bear with cubs, and instead of going back indoors and locknig the door decides to approach the bear that's preparing to disembowel him because he's curious where the bear is going with this
This is a very common scam, it originates from steam and is one of the most popular cs go knife scams.
Moral of the story: play with public chat off and never trade anyone anything.
or till you hit up the wilderness and wonder why you're dying to thin air i guess.
NGL I did this exact thing yesterday with some bones because I hid all the people during a couple wintertodt games on an alt XD
I fell for this in RS3. Had a friend that I always played with message me. They had one letter difference in the name and I went to wildly to do something and they Pked me
Hey this happened to me and my buddy on Steam when we were in high school. This was before Steam had all the popups and warning about it being an account not on you friends list or a newly created account. Buddy was trying to trade up a shitty knife for a super expensive one, traded it to me to "verify its real" and then third account changed its name and steam pfp and trade requested me.
They do this name change method quite a lot. Was splitting after TOA one time and they changed their name to be really similar to one of the people getting a split
Very common scam back during the duel arena days, My friend was a regular there and we'd go there to collect our money after our runs and eventually you'd get scouted and try this exact same thing but just spam trade you with a name similar to one of your friends.
We got caught by this once but thankfully it was only for about 10m at the time so it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Interesting that its happening outside the duel arena.
this scam still gets beaten by the patented 2 step process for never getting scammed
1 dont trade people
2 dont go to pvp worlds
and thats it. you will never get scammed
This happened to me yesterday. Traded a friend my Zaryte c bow and started with all that bs. Name changed while stalling and kept spam trading me. Exactly how this happened, I saw it was a fake name close to his and laughed
It's not ever worth considering what the usual scammer wearing the typical scammer gear (Crown/gold chef hat/Apron etc) has to say,it's usually a scam you won't be able to counter scam.
How did he bypass the trade limit for new accounts on the account with a similar name to yours? Maybe it was an old account and they just name changed?
i've played this game since i was 8 years old and never been scammed
anyone ever mention a 'trust game or any of that shit you should walk away immediately lmao
I always wondered why so many people still get scammed still in the Lord's year of 2024, but after reading this I feel like I have a better understanding. And no, it has nothing to do with how smart the scam or scammer are.
This is why you pm your buddy “you?” When you trade them something valuable. It’s not that complicated. Private on friends permanently and solves this completely.
If someone starts talking to me at the GE I just assume it's a scam and ignore them.
In fact, I do this everywhere in game, not just the GE.
Haven't been scammed yet
Not OSRS related but I got scammed out of a CSGO knife like this when I was younger. Someone wanted to buy a butterfly knife from me that I recently just pulled and wanted to inspect it, at the time I was busy with school work so I traded it to a buddy of mine to show the buyer. Scammer created a steam profile to look exactly like mine, buddy didn't think twice and traded the knife to the scammer thinking it was me.
Honestly I understand the allure of wanting to see where it goes but you also put a lot of pressure on your friend lol. If I was him I probably would have given you my account and never spoken to you again if I got scammed for your bank
Had this happen to me once, honestly impressive that they even managed to match my accounts combat level, meaning they either have a fuckload of accounts ready or it was just pure luck.
Rule number one - just ignore this obvious shit. No one's going to give you money to see your bank or whatever, don't be so fucking stupid. Don't think you can trick them or work out their trick - you are *stupid* because you engage with the scam at all, you aren't clever enough not to be tricked.
There's a mute by combat lv plugin and I've set it to mute anyone under 100cb. It works 2 fold, 1 as a filter to any low lv spam bots, chat bot, scams but also bc the clan I'm in and recruit for has a base lv of 100cb minimum. Works wonders for the public chat box
>I knew it too but wanted to see where it went
Never ever ever ever ever ever do this. Seriously. The trick isn't "we will try obvious scams on people dumb enough to believe it." Most people, like you, suspect its a scam. The scammer knows that you know it's a scam. But they do this to enough people that they know statistically how you react and use it to catch you slipping while you think you have the high ground of being smart, thinking you're safe because you know it's a scam.
They know what they have to do to get people to start spam trading, in your example. If you keep playing into these, wanting to see where it goes, you're gonna get caught with your pants down one day.
You and your friend waited to be safely in a POH this time because you felt like you suddenly lost control of the situation and didn't feel safe doing something as simple as trading each other in a public space. Don't put yourself in situations with scammers in which the possibility of you losing control of the situation occurs in the first place. So many posts about people losing their banks to scammers start with "I knew it was a scam but I wanted to see how the scam worked."
Of all the scams this seems like the easiest one to not fall for. If your friend is "freaking out" simply walk away from the trade and take your stuff back. No one will ever give you money for stupid shit like this
It’s 2001. My friend and I are on his Windows 98 computer playing RSC. We have nothing but bronze/iron gear and level 10 or so combat, back when you couldn’t see people’s levels unless you were in the wilderness.
We went to scam someone using the “trust test” method. It worked like this, “Do you want to join a clan? First you’ll have to pass a test. A trust test.”
It took about 4 hours but we finally got someone to trade us a pair of their Black Platelegs. I’ll never forget that.
This is a really old one lol, they aim to get people who trust each other and are relying on your friend wanting to give the items back quickly.
They will be ready with the name changer and world hop and only go for it when they get someone guillible enough to go through with the first part of the test.
Theres no free shit in osrs, unless its traded too you directly its a scam lol. And even then gifts are also often primers for scamming.
Had this happen with a friend of mine, friend lent a inq mace to another one of his buddy’s and went to nightmare, they ended up getting a drop and went to the G.E to split they were talking in the game and someone changed there name to the friend that lent the mace and the friend of mine ended up trading the scammer the mace
This has been around for a hot minute. It's just to trick people to trade their "friend" but it's just someone with a similar name.
This definitely works more than normal scams, but not new. Definitely more uncommon
This is not new at all. It was tried on me and a buddy of mine like 2 or 3 years ago, and buddy of mine had heard about it before they even tried.
They normally scout at raids banks.
Better to not play along at all..
I posted about this a few weeks ago. 😂 Lucky it was my gf sat next to me who was the trusted friend.
Friend of mine lost a tbow this way so it work unfortunately
This has been going on for a long time. They also try to get people wearing expensive items to trust trade their friends something expensive and then try to pull the same thing
Yeah the name change thing has been a common one for a while, and it will not always come at you in this "trust trade" way. Sometimes just good timing when they notice you splitting a drop at the g/e or nex room etc.
Always carefully check the username they are reeeally sneaky.
Me and my friend actually fell for this, and he traded 1.8b worth of max mage to the scammers. The trick is that even if you're wise up to it, it all depends on if your friend is dumb. Even if they know there's a good chance that the 1 letter off will make them trade the wrong person.
Yep, same, except I was high at the time and lost my tbow as well. Went on to angrily stake the rest of my bank away and proceeded to lose 6 in a row lol.
This scam has been around years. Love it when a friend and you have the same item and can just pretend to trade, then sit back and watch the scammer waste a bond on a name change.
Me and my buddies have a method where we always have to be on voice chat saying “confirming, confirming, confirming” when we trade items back and forth. This exact same scam was tried on us (yes we are stupid for entertaining it).
I said to my friend “confirming, confirming, confirming” and my friend screamed “it’s not me it’s not me!”.
Literally saved my buddies bank account. I had the trade window open with the items to the scammer with the fake name. Stay vigilant!
It’s a scam, during you guys swapping the gear around the scammer will log in with an account similar named to your friend. You’d be shocked how fast they name change to the person who currently should receive the item(s) had some guy try do it to us trading around a t bow but knew the scam so wasted a bond for their name change
So glad I’m an iron and stay away from the shit stain on the game that’s the GE, Jagex need to add a priff style ge where it’s open to end gamers, yeah of course you will still get the scammers but will be even more risky to try shit
Years ago when Runelite first gained popularity my friend and I were at the GE and we went to trade each other and on our screens our names were COMPLETELY wrong. It genuinely looked like we were trading with randomers, we screenshared our screens and even outside of the trade our names were wrong on the right click menu. Since then whenever we trade anything valuable between us we're in discord saying "is this you?" "yeah it's me" or if we're not in voice call we pause in the trade and wait for a message on discord/insta/snap. If we're trading GP we sometimes ask for the last 3 digits to confirm it's us too.
Never been more paranoid in my life and I have no idea what caused it, presumably it was a runelite bug and we've not seen it since but it was weird and enough to change the way we trade each other forever
I don't get why people still scam when the game is on its last leg lol
It's not like 10 years ago when hundreds of thousands of players played... I guess if there's money to be made sure, but there's other games you could scam in where the stakes are higher...
Honestly one of the biggest red flags is low level accounts decked out in random treasure trail items worth a few mil. I don't know why but they're always wearing shit like that gilded apron, ankou outfit, ale of the gods, etc.
i have seen bots in random bullshit items. in their case i think they do it because jagex would see random items and think: real player. for scamming it's to seem like a honest and real player, but to also make sure you are only getting the most gullible people to scam.
I heard something similar about phone scams. Apparently they’re so obvious to detect because they only really want someone who’s dumb enough to go all the way through with it
They're super obvious to detect because most of the scams you see these days rely on you thinking you can anti-scam. They lead with what seems like an obvious scam. This is designed to make you think you can anti scam as long as you don't fall for the obvious scam, then they get you with a different scam.
I used to work in a Bookies and this is text book. I remember the worst I got done, 2 lads came in close to closing, one trying to rush me and put £500+ Greyhound bets on before taking payment, close to the race Off (known as slow count). Then his mates talking to me being all nice and putting the odd £20 bet on with £50 notes saying "oh dont mind him he's just hectic, harmless really". I felt great as I'd stopped someone slow counting and refused his custom. Then, next day, I find out the £50s the other guy had given me were fake. I've never felt so stupid in all my life.
Honestly you deserve to get scammed if you think you can anti scam. If you already suspect it’s a scam, just hang up, there’s 0 reason to continue that convo except wasting your time (and to bloat your ego) unless you’re one of those anti scam youtubers that know what they’re doing. And when I say you, I mean the dummies in general that try to pull that crap and proceed to get scammed when they could have just saved themselves by hanging up when they saw through the initial scam.
Yep. That’s why spam emails have a ridiculous amount of typos. If you recognize them, you wouldn’t have fallen for the scam anyways and you’re saving their time lol
it's a filter technique that is used everywhere ;)
Literally if anyone approaches you or asks for anything. Those are the flags. "Hey you" 'Nah'.
Status items that don't require stats.
the hand egg has to be the most "hey i'm a bot" -item in the entire game
I always hand egg/gnomeball scammers that have nothing in their hands xdd
or that you just died at tob
i was approached by a dude called Spirc Mac (trying to copy Sparc Mac’s name, didnt know who he was before this) while i was killing Wyrms with Fang and he said “im doing something for people doing slayer, trade me your fang and say gold or plat”.. Obvious scam but dude was combat level 68 wearing a shadow and he swapped to a tbow while talking to me
the biggest red flag is someone trying to give you money for free. nobody gives away 1 billion for no reason. even if they did, you dont want to accept it. it will sour your game experience because you didnt earn it. just play the game normally and make money. it will be more satisfying in the end
So I can't even rock my Ale of Gods and Gilded armor anymore?
Straight to the cage with Nan, if you do.
I'm just an iron trying to flex my RNG :c
But that's the problem, you got ass hats that go buy lvl 120+ accounts to go scamming on, because it's like an investment. You invest money into this character that has "walking trust" with players because "who would risk a high level account?" Right? Absolutely wrong. Don't be naive.
You forgot the biggest red flag of them all, the royal outfit
I have a few low levels decked out in fashion scape that I'll occasionally hop on and do stuff...not typically in members but still
I wear an Ankou outfit when I’m skilling but I’m not a low level lol
I doubt they are trying to target long term players with tons of experience - to a noob, that looks like a very wealthy player, and there’s low requirements to wear it
It attracts noobs (who might have money)
Exploiting the halo effect.
A good way to avoid this is to right-click the "trade" part of the chatbox and change it to "friends." That way, you should only see trade requests from people on your friend list.
Yo that's a great tip! Didn't know you could do that thank you
Mods pin this comment or something
A good way to avoid this is not to interact with people that are obviously trying to scam you. I swear man, the only people that get scammed are folks like OP who just want to "see where it goes". It's insanely naive to think you're so smart nothing they do can fool you. You knowing it's a scam is part of the scam.
But how would I get a 4th free lightbearer from someone wanting to teach me raids? Thanks for the free 6m so far btw. (Not you but this scammer I know who try’s to get me every time I’m wearing max range )
“wanted to see where it went” is why anyone gets scammed, it’s never worth pursuing.
100% mate, they prey on people thinking they can scam the scammer. Even seeing how far the scam goes is a dangerous game. Grammer edit
This is true in real life as well. Many scams present as a more obvious scam to trick you into thinking you're outsmarting them. Meanwhile while your guard is low they throw in a subtle twist on the obvious scam and by the time you realize what happened they've already won
Jokes on them, I only anti-scam with my alt that has tutorial island starter kit on it
Yeah thats why they even let some people with huge followings anti-scam them. They purposefully “screw it up” so they get heaps of views, then you get people like OP who actually get caught. OP almost lost his bank for trying to find out and his friends outright told him it was a scam at the start.
I think this post is a perfect example of why you should never think you're scam-proof just because you never press accept in a trade window.
Yup. You never know just when the scam hits you, only that it will at some point. The majority of the time, you only realize when it's too late. That's literally part of the plan of the scammer. They know the scam and you don't.
KempQ has logged out.
prey*
🙏
Unrelated, OP is super excited about a meeting with a time-share rep he has this weekend
This is also literally the point of most scams. They have the actual scam happen before the obvious scam thing explicitly so they can get people "who just want to see where it goes".
I'll just blatantly bank, take a dds as a single item and when they say "Take your gear" I just respond with "This is good enough." They get real mad when you engage them but just refuse to play.
> it’s never worth pursuing To be fair pursuing it gave us some quality reddit content, even more so if he had fallen for it
Where’s the quality content? If anyone fails for trading their bank away in any form or fashion they deserve to be scammed. You’d have to be brain dead on both sides of this to get scammed.
I remember back in 06 I tried to "see where a scam is going" and this guy just kept trying to teach me money making guides from an outdated youtube video. Legit multiple days, no scam. Just guiding me around flax fields and some other stuff. Wierd as hell.
You see, you just enter the bank, stay there for years, *and they'll just deposit the money straight into your account!* Super clean and simple.
It was worth it to come here and share. I had seen similar things but didn't know how the scam worked, I am glad to know now.
Not only would OP have lost his bank, but it would have put a lot of strain on the friendship if his friend had mistakenly traded fake OP. This is a pretty evil scam.
Yes but maybe the person was quiting and giving away 1b and it was his lucky day.
Don’t forget to subscribe to their YouTube channel!
Yeah b0aty has done it plenty times already
You're a absolutely right and I usually don't but this one was new to me and I was curious, and since they were asking to trade my friend and not them I felt it was safer to pursue. Honestly if it was almost any other friend I probably wouldn't have done it and had he been a little less alert they would've gotten away with it for sure
You are honestly their target demographic lol
It is a sneaky one I will admit
You are honestly their target demographic lol
old scam always fun to hop on an alt as my "friend" to make these dickheads waste a bond name changing
Only needs to work like 1/80th of a time to profit.
Someone I know got their tbow snatched by this scam hahaha we give it to him daily about it
they might have accounts ready with forced name change it prompts you to set one on login skips requirement for bonds
You'd still need to pay for membership in some way since this is happening in a p2p world
you need membership regardless
>Friends say it is a scam and to ignore and I knew it too but wanted to see where it went Scammers are banking on this exact attitude
> Friends say it is a scam and to ignore and I knew it too but wanted to see where it went. Don't do this, ever. If you had been like, tired or something or just didn't clock the different screen name, you could have given 1b to a scammer to "see where it went".
Some scams have even progressed to the point where you think you know whats going on or try to anti-scam and thats where the reals scam begins
I'd say most scams at this point. There's an understanding that rich players are generally savvy enough to not get scammed (OP was very nearly the exception to this rule) and they socially engineer an anti-lure/anti-scam. In that way, scammers can be very good at *acting* incompetent and even getting anti'd for small amounts in order to get people to risk more. It works a treat too - in OP's example they were willing to put up a bond just to gamble on the chance that the scam would work, which might seem insane but it only needs to work ~1/80th of the time to be profitable.
I almost hopped across the ditch to pick up a guthix platebody one time.
These days, long cons are very common on rich players. Holding a tbow at the GE makes you a guaranteed target for the long con. Do not ever friend anyone you meet at the GE while holding a tbow, or anyone who randomly approaches or messages you at all if you have ever equipped a 1b+ item in public. Example: Stranger: Hey [username], do you mind buying me 30k feathers? I hit buy limit. You: Sure! here you go! Stranger: Wow thanks man! mind if i add you so i can buy more later? [2 weeks later] New friend: Hey man wanna run some bandos/nex/etc? you: Sure! *drops and successful splits, friend seems trustworthy* [2 months later after doing raids together and talking on disc] Good friend: Bro this guy is trying to lure me at wild lmao, hop on disc and we'll counter-lure him! bring [insert 1b+ item] and we'll kill him, he's risking 2b! this guy who you've been gaming with for months just lured you using some game mechanic you weren't expecting and took you for billions and then blocked you on everything you added him on. I see this scam beginning all the time at the GE and its always targeting people holding tbows and they are always falling for it. I warn the victims of this when I see it and the scammers always get so damn angry. It's crazy obvious once you know about it. Why would a stranger call you out by username and try to get your help specifically???
Same thing happened to me around 2012. Guy befriends me at the GE, starts acting like a pal for two weeks, adds me on Skype pretends to be my friend, then one day starts talking about a new game made by Jagex and sends me a phishing link to a fake RuneScape site. I told him to fck off and he just sends me a stupid smiling emoji lol I swear the shit people would do
Exactly, and to make matters worse, many youtubers are playing into it. Scammers create an obvious scam, youtuber antiscams them for 100M and makes a video out of it. Now thousands of people THINK they know the scam and how to make profit out of it, but in reality the scammers planned all of it and added an extra layer to the scam no one sees coming.
"I wanted to see where it went" You are part of the reason why scams keep popping up. You knew it was a scam, you have no idea when and where the scam hits, and you still fucked with it. All you had to do was ignore them, and you couldn't even do that.
Lmao why would you ever engage with a scammer My man opens his front door, sees an angry bear with cubs, and instead of going back indoors and locknig the door decides to approach the bear that's preparing to disembowel him because he's curious where the bear is going with this
Keep playing with fire and eventually you will get burned.
This is a very common scam, it originates from steam and is one of the most popular cs go knife scams. Moral of the story: play with public chat off and never trade anyone anything.
Dont play with public chat off wth, just dont fall for scams lmao
For real lol, at that point might as well use entity hider to hide all the other players as well if you want to play the game by yourself.
Ironman btw
I do. Honestly forget others are there at times till I look at the mini map. So dam peaceful.
or till you hit up the wilderness and wonder why you're dying to thin air i guess. NGL I did this exact thing yesterday with some bones because I hid all the people during a couple wintertodt games on an alt XD
Na I have the wilderness alarm plugin. My screen flashes and I can use control, shift arrows to jump world immediately
Yes, and?
To be really safe you should trade your expensive items to me so nobody else can scam you for them
I do lol, I only turn it off when I enter the wildy
hey its me ur brother
I love that one, when the steam chat shows the name change lmao
Fucking knew I’d see this comment here 😂
Great way to ruin a social game
[удалено]
No I just enjoy chatting with people when skilling or running past them
This scam is resolved by having player indicators turned on, and only trading back your tbow to the player that has a green name in the trade screen.
Not new, fun way to make them waste bonds if you’re not dumb with it
Bank stand with twisted bow for 5micro seconds and one of these shlats logs in and spam trades......
My man
I fell for this in RS3. Had a friend that I always played with message me. They had one letter difference in the name and I went to wildly to do something and they Pked me
Did the scammer also match your friend's cosmetic overrides too?
Hey this happened to me and my buddy on Steam when we were in high school. This was before Steam had all the popups and warning about it being an account not on you friends list or a newly created account. Buddy was trying to trade up a shitty knife for a super expensive one, traded it to me to "verify its real" and then third account changed its name and steam pfp and trade requested me.
>do you trus--- *mute carry-on with what I was doing*
Yeah, this is a classic. Had a friend lose a twisted bow this way.
Pro strat, don’t talk to these people to begin with
someone tried doing this after a few raids and i assumed it was a scam, toldem to fk off lol
They do this name change method quite a lot. Was splitting after TOA one time and they changed their name to be really similar to one of the people getting a split
Very common scam back during the duel arena days, My friend was a regular there and we'd go there to collect our money after our runs and eventually you'd get scouted and try this exact same thing but just spam trade you with a name similar to one of your friends. We got caught by this once but thankfully it was only for about 10m at the time so it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Interesting that its happening outside the duel arena.
this scam still gets beaten by the patented 2 step process for never getting scammed 1 dont trade people 2 dont go to pvp worlds and thats it. you will never get scammed
"trust games" are stupid even in real life. If you have good friends you should be in discord laughing at this dude instead of panicking in game.
"Do you trust your friends?" "Dude, I don't even trust my mother." Scam negated
When trading valuables with my friends we always message or chat somewhere outside of rs a simple text like is this you?
Same.
if runescape scammers used their brainpower on an *actual job*, i'm sure they could do some pretty cool stuff in the world.
This happened to me yesterday. Traded a friend my Zaryte c bow and started with all that bs. Name changed while stalling and kept spam trading me. Exactly how this happened, I saw it was a fake name close to his and laughed
It's not ever worth considering what the usual scammer wearing the typical scammer gear (Crown/gold chef hat/Apron etc) has to say,it's usually a scam you won't be able to counter scam.
Yes. They’ll name trade under y’all, be careful!
How did he bypass the trade limit for new accounts on the account with a similar name to yours? Maybe it was an old account and they just name changed?
Probably the latter
This has been around for years. Dumb dumb
"trust game" is immediate red flag
I tried to help somebody avoid getting scammed by this earlier today and then I was rewarded with a bot spamming accusing me of being a scammer lmao
I blame my 20+ years of playing this game for my trust issues. :) never been scammed though
you know the real reason I bet this doesn't work that often is because of people's friend being their alt lmao
Not a new scam method this is years old
> he saw the fake rsn and we both knew it was a scam from the beginning but it almost worked!! Yes, trade all your gear to a fresh level 3 account
i've played this game since i was 8 years old and never been scammed anyone ever mention a 'trust game or any of that shit you should walk away immediately lmao
I always wondered why so many people still get scammed still in the Lord's year of 2024, but after reading this I feel like I have a better understanding. And no, it has nothing to do with how smart the scam or scammer are.
>New Scam PSA >Old shit from 10 years ago >lol
What do you mean? It's gotta be a new scam, how could OP almost fall for it? Nobody's ever thought to do that before
It's never worth attempting to mess with these scammers. You're going to lose and you're going to lose big
Personally I am huge and bench 2 plates so this never happens to me
My boy almost gave away my tbow back in the day like a dumb ass. Not a new scam per se, just a slightly different approach
Y
This is why you pm your buddy “you?” When you trade them something valuable. It’s not that complicated. Private on friends permanently and solves this completely.
Scammers r nuts lol good lookin tho broski
Y'all falling for these scams trust random strangers wayyyyyy too much
If someone starts talking to me at the GE I just assume it's a scam and ignore them. In fact, I do this everywhere in game, not just the GE. Haven't been scammed yet
So you never chat unless you are the one initiating it?
correct I also never initiate it. The last time I talked to someone, ingame (that I didn't already know out of game) was 2012
Not OSRS related but I got scammed out of a CSGO knife like this when I was younger. Someone wanted to buy a butterfly knife from me that I recently just pulled and wanted to inspect it, at the time I was busy with school work so I traded it to a buddy of mine to show the buyer. Scammer created a steam profile to look exactly like mine, buddy didn't think twice and traded the knife to the scammer thinking it was me.
Honestly I understand the allure of wanting to see where it goes but you also put a lot of pressure on your friend lol. If I was him I probably would have given you my account and never spoken to you again if I got scammed for your bank
Why the fuck is your friend panicking? Is there a time limit for them where if things take too long they just won't give it back?
Crazy I’m commenting so i can read this later. P
Damnnn thank you for testing that! Doing us a service here That's fucking insane
Had this happen to me once, honestly impressive that they even managed to match my accounts combat level, meaning they either have a fuckload of accounts ready or it was just pure luck.
Rule number one - just ignore this obvious shit. No one's going to give you money to see your bank or whatever, don't be so fucking stupid. Don't think you can trick them or work out their trick - you are *stupid* because you engage with the scam at all, you aren't clever enough not to be tricked.
There's a mute by combat lv plugin and I've set it to mute anyone under 100cb. It works 2 fold, 1 as a filter to any low lv spam bots, chat bot, scams but also bc the clan I'm in and recruit for has a base lv of 100cb minimum. Works wonders for the public chat box
People will do fucking anything but earn something
The first few sentences sound suspicious even
>I knew it too but wanted to see where it went Never ever ever ever ever ever do this. Seriously. The trick isn't "we will try obvious scams on people dumb enough to believe it." Most people, like you, suspect its a scam. The scammer knows that you know it's a scam. But they do this to enough people that they know statistically how you react and use it to catch you slipping while you think you have the high ground of being smart, thinking you're safe because you know it's a scam. They know what they have to do to get people to start spam trading, in your example. If you keep playing into these, wanting to see where it goes, you're gonna get caught with your pants down one day. You and your friend waited to be safely in a POH this time because you felt like you suddenly lost control of the situation and didn't feel safe doing something as simple as trading each other in a public space. Don't put yourself in situations with scammers in which the possibility of you losing control of the situation occurs in the first place. So many posts about people losing their banks to scammers start with "I knew it was a scam but I wanted to see how the scam worked."
I can confirm that this is indeed a new thing to look out for. Same kind of thing happened to my friend In game
This is why i play RS as a single player game. I just come for the grind and no one knows i play 🤣
This working on anyone would be sorta wild lol
This is not new. I saw this scam being done at Raids lobby since team mates often trade valuables to each other.
I don't really like to scam but if I ever get into it I'll try this out, thanks for the tip!
Of all the scams this seems like the easiest one to not fall for. If your friend is "freaking out" simply walk away from the trade and take your stuff back. No one will ever give you money for stupid shit like this
It’s 2001. My friend and I are on his Windows 98 computer playing RSC. We have nothing but bronze/iron gear and level 10 or so combat, back when you couldn’t see people’s levels unless you were in the wilderness. We went to scam someone using the “trust test” method. It worked like this, “Do you want to join a clan? First you’ll have to pass a test. A trust test.” It took about 4 hours but we finally got someone to trade us a pair of their Black Platelegs. I’ll never forget that.
Nobody ever is gonna give u free gp, u gotta always ignore that
This isn't new and has been happening for years now, me and my friends used to run into these scammers all the time at cox bank.
I know there's a plug in on runelite where you can filter public chat by combat level. This helps a lot by ignoring people sub 126.
This is a really old one lol, they aim to get people who trust each other and are relying on your friend wanting to give the items back quickly. They will be ready with the name changer and world hop and only go for it when they get someone guillible enough to go through with the first part of the test. Theres no free shit in osrs, unless its traded too you directly its a scam lol. And even then gifts are also often primers for scamming.
So they have to stall you all the way through them finishing tutorial island? Or they just name change?
That scam goes wayyyy back
Had this happen with a friend of mine, friend lent a inq mace to another one of his buddy’s and went to nightmare, they ended up getting a drop and went to the G.E to split they were talking in the game and someone changed there name to the friend that lent the mace and the friend of mine ended up trading the scammer the mace
This has been around for a hot minute. It's just to trick people to trade their "friend" but it's just someone with a similar name. This definitely works more than normal scams, but not new. Definitely more uncommon
This is not new at all. It was tried on me and a buddy of mine like 2 or 3 years ago, and buddy of mine had heard about it before they even tried. They normally scout at raids banks. Better to not play along at all..
If only they gave me the opportunity to ban bots, I would gladly stand on ge and do it for free.
Lmao this happened to my friend with full masori
I posted about this a few weeks ago. 😂 Lucky it was my gf sat next to me who was the trusted friend. Friend of mine lost a tbow this way so it work unfortunately
This has been going on for a long time. They also try to get people wearing expensive items to trust trade their friends something expensive and then try to pull the same thing
I saw something like this transpire earlier today, I also thought "scam" instantly but like you, was curious how tf, thanks for the PSA, u a real one
Yeah the name change thing has been a common one for a while, and it will not always come at you in this "trust trade" way. Sometimes just good timing when they notice you splitting a drop at the g/e or nex room etc. Always carefully check the username they are reeeally sneaky.
Me and my friend actually fell for this, and he traded 1.8b worth of max mage to the scammers. The trick is that even if you're wise up to it, it all depends on if your friend is dumb. Even if they know there's a good chance that the 1 letter off will make them trade the wrong person.
This aint new lost a tbow to this a year ago, but the PSA is always nice
Don't interact with randoms at the GE. Sorted.
Isnt this old?? I thought people were doing this with dmm pretending to be the middlemen like 3 or 4 years ago.
Very fun to fuck with them if you and a friend both have the same gear, just pretend you traded and the scammer wastes a bond renaming the alt
Ask me how I drunkenly lost a tbow to that scam about 2 years ago.
Yep, same, except I was high at the time and lost my tbow as well. Went on to angrily stake the rest of my bank away and proceeded to lose 6 in a row lol.
Absolute same. Proceeded to go lose -17 for the rest of my 6B bank. Just an unlucky night.
don’t ever ever ever ever ever ever “see where it goes” THAT is how they get you simply ignore them
bro anyone who engages you in this was is a scammer every time. if you engage at all your chance of being scammed increases exponentially.
This scam has been around years. Love it when a friend and you have the same item and can just pretend to trade, then sit back and watch the scammer waste a bond on a name change.
Me and my buddies have a method where we always have to be on voice chat saying “confirming, confirming, confirming” when we trade items back and forth. This exact same scam was tried on us (yes we are stupid for entertaining it). I said to my friend “confirming, confirming, confirming” and my friend screamed “it’s not me it’s not me!”. Literally saved my buddies bank account. I had the trade window open with the items to the scammer with the fake name. Stay vigilant!
It’s a scam, during you guys swapping the gear around the scammer will log in with an account similar named to your friend. You’d be shocked how fast they name change to the person who currently should receive the item(s) had some guy try do it to us trading around a t bow but knew the scam so wasted a bond for their name change
Not new, just uncommon, i almost lost my mates tbow with this a few years ago but realised at last minute
I had the exact same thing happen to me, except when I posted it I got downvoted and flamed hard
nothing about this is new
Dumbass. "Trust" games are always without a doubt scams.
So glad I’m an iron and stay away from the shit stain on the game that’s the GE, Jagex need to add a priff style ge where it’s open to end gamers, yeah of course you will still get the scammers but will be even more risky to try shit
Years ago when Runelite first gained popularity my friend and I were at the GE and we went to trade each other and on our screens our names were COMPLETELY wrong. It genuinely looked like we were trading with randomers, we screenshared our screens and even outside of the trade our names were wrong on the right click menu. Since then whenever we trade anything valuable between us we're in discord saying "is this you?" "yeah it's me" or if we're not in voice call we pause in the trade and wait for a message on discord/insta/snap. If we're trading GP we sometimes ask for the last 3 digits to confirm it's us too. Never been more paranoid in my life and I have no idea what caused it, presumably it was a runelite bug and we've not seen it since but it was weird and enough to change the way we trade each other forever
This is actually pretty common, my brother lost his tbow like this,
I don't get why people still scam when the game is on its last leg lol It's not like 10 years ago when hundreds of thousands of players played... I guess if there's money to be made sure, but there's other games you could scam in where the stakes are higher...