This will hopefully help some people as I see people getting scammed here almost every day and it sucks. Also, it seems that it's mostly the new members that get pulled into these scams because they aren't aware of scams/carders and decide to trust anyone with a higher activity number than their own. Also with the amount of accounts being bought, even legendary ranked accounts will scam for these amounts.
1: Gift card sellers with auto buy links. Auto buy links include;
- Satoshibox
- Payivy
- Sellfy
- Payivy
- Slut.io (Thanks krunox123)
Never buy a gift card from an autobuy link as literally 90% of all gift card scams happened with an autobuy link. The seller just makes an account, creates a payivy account, puts something of value IE: "$5000 Amazon Gift Card" and offers it for a really low price. Examples include;
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/content-removed-1321388 -
Apparent scamhttps://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/sell-egift-starbucks-papa-johns-amazon-1314691 -
Scam or carded GCThere are many users doing these kind of things, here are a few that I found on the first page;https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/egift-starbuck-507629https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/steamoriginalkey-7158172: Uses broken English in posts & is brand new. IE: Says [Sell gift card] instead of [Selling]
These users are almost always scammers. Newbie + bad English = Very bad sign. I'm not saying that if they don't know English they're scammers, but if they go straight to selling high value gift cards/items then you know the drill.. Always use escrow & say you want to use card/item before releasing funds.
3: Ignores escrow. Most scammers will completely ignore offers to use escrow because they don't have the item that they claim to be selling. Also, "guarantees" or "warranties" are pretty much lies. They never replace your codes or items, so don't bother asking if they have a warranty. Always use escrow and say you want the funds to be held until you can use the card/item you are buying.
4: Changed password. If someone has changed their password recently (visible on their trust page) and they go sell something of high value, it's most likely a scam. Be sure to use escrow with anyone who has changed their password or be safe. Check recent posts & compare the writing style with posts from earlier.
5: Asks for 50% of payment upfront instead of escrow to "save time". People fall for this, but it's pretty easy to just not deal with people asking for upfront payment and ignoring escrow. Never send money upfront if the person is suspicious or they make some lie about escrow. Be safe.
How to not get scammedThis should be pretty easy, but I guess some people don't really care until they get scammed. Here are some steps to prevent you from getting scammed (not 100% perfect but anything is better than nothing)
1: When buying an item, use an escrow from this list (unless the person has a substantial amount of trust and you trust them);
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcointalk-escrows-trade-safely-855778If you're buying a gift card or something similar, ask for escrow to hold funds until gift card is fully used because if you bought a carded or stolen gift card it won't go well for you.
If carded; Card will get your account banned if it's on a site.
If stolen; It's possible for you to get doxed by the real owner of the card. Lots of stolen eBay cards going around right now + Nike. Those are easy to dox with. Be safe.
2: Deal on site. Don't use things like ICQ or Skype if the person you're trading with is a Newbie, Jr Member, etc. Search their Skype username and ICQ number online, sometimes a search brings up a lot of information. Most scammers can't be bothered to change their details on alternate accounts and that's what gets them caught. You can use Skype or ICQ if you want but it's more safe on the site so if you get scammed you can use your account as proof, easier communication, etc.
3: Don't buy it if it seems too good to be true. Remember, "If it seems too good to be true, it's not". $50000000 Amazon Gift Card for $2000 = scam. People make threads selling things for cheap prices because they think people will be attracted, and it's an easy scam. If you pay first there is nothing forcing them to give you a code, they can easily sell it again on another site & make more money. Deal with trusted users, if the user isn't trusted use escrow or something
"Google the address the other person is requesting the payment to, and search for linked addresses(via walletexplorer), to know if the account is an alt of a scammer"
If I have time I'll update this, I wrote this on my iPad so there might be spelling mistakes & that's also why the layout is ugly
thx
