/r/Scams

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Public description

Online, offline, email, or postal. If you know of or encounter a scam, this is the place to let people know about it. If you have any questions, you can post here and have your question answered by people who are knowledgeable about all types of scams. If you have fallen for a scam, you can post your experience here to warn others.#### Description Welcome to r/Scams, a subreddit for all your scam identification needs!

• If you believe you are being scammed, you can post your questions here and have them answered by a community that is knowledgeable about all types of scams. If you are the victim of a scam, you can post here to share your story and to warn others.

• We have detailed stickied threads to help you identify some of the scams we see most commonly in this subreddit; please read the stickies before posting!

 

Posting guidelines:

• You should post details in order to receive quick advice. Include details like: what the person sent you, details included in texts/emails/in-person conversation, etc. The more detail, the better. If you post screenshots, you should also copy and paste the text from the screenshot into your post so that the text shows up on Google and other search engines. Make sure you redact all personal information from your screenshots.

• Given the nature of this subreddit, you should treat any external links as suspicious, and you should be careful visiting any unfamiliar websites.

• External links, such as websites or videos, must be posted as a self post. We only allow images and self posts on this subreddit for safety reasons. If you use the link-only posting feature in this subreddit, it will be removed automatically by the AutoModerator.

• Please try to use archive.is, archive.org, unvis.it, or another archive website instead of posting the direct link.

• If you are posting an article, please copy and paste a few relevant paragraphs and submit them along with the link in a self post.

• If you're posting about another redditor then please report them to Reddit admins at www.reddit.com/report

 

Posting rules:

• Rule 1: no doxxing. Posting of personal information is against site-wide Reddit rules, and post/comments that include personal information will be removed. We do not allow any phone numbers, addresses, last names (fake or not) or personally identifiable pictures to be posted (unless the individual is a public figure, in which case last names are allowed), and this rule is strictly enforced. If you failed to redact that information from your post and it was removed, you may message the moderators to have it approved after you cleaned it up. Usernames and email addresses are generally fine.

 

• Rule 2: no spam and no solicitation. Posts on this subreddit should contribute to conversation. Your posts and comments should not focus on advertising your/a personal or professional blog, advertise your/a business, or solicit members to contact you via PM or email or outside of this subreddit. Individuals who post spam within this subreddit may be temporarily or permanently banned. If someone is encouraging you to contact them outside of this subreddit, proceed with caution. Additionally, crowdfunding links are not allowed on this subreddit.

 

• Rule 3: be civil. Posts and comments within this subreddit should be useful, respectful and use appropriate language at all times. Dissenting opinions are expected, but you should conduct yourself in a mature and polite manner. Name calling, personal attacks, flaming, etc are not permitted. Do not discuss moderator decisions in the comments. If you would like to discuss moderation, send the moderators modmail (no direct messages or chat requests).

 

• Rule 4: do not suggest illegal activities. We do not encourage you to participate in any illegal activities. In addition, we do not endorse “scamming the scammers”, or promoting “witch hunts” to take down a scammer. Also, reddit's policy regarding transactions is quite strict.

 

• Rule 5: no personal army requests. You cannot ask others to harass people for you, or to do other things for you like track down an email address or trace a phone number. You also cannot ask people to file reports.

 

• Rule 6: no low quality or off topic posts. This is a scam identification forum - if you want to take down or post a completed interaction you’ve had with a scammer, please check out /r/scambait or /r/scambaiting. Posts must conform to the posting guidelines.

 

• Rule 7: NSFW/NSFL posts need to be properly tagged. If your /r/scams post is NSFW please make sure to tag it as such. If your post contains NSFL content, please consider submitting a self post rather than an image post and make sure to tag the content and add a warning.

 

TL;DR: don't start witch hunts, don't post personal information, and be nice.

AutoModerator's knowledge base

You can summon AutoModerator to explain any of the following scams by writing a comment with an exclamation mark (!) in front of the keyword for the scam you want to be explained. If you would like to help expand AutoModerator's knowledge base, [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscams&subject=Bot Commands). Here are the phrases the bot currently looks for:

• list - AutoMod will respond with a list of all current keywords
• advancefee/advance/advance-fee - The advance-fee scam
• blackmail - The blackmail email scam
• brushing - The brushing scam
• calendar - The calendar spam technique
• car - The eBay/Amazon car shipment scam
• cartel/escort - The Mexican/Dominican cartel/escort threat scam
• crypto - Fake crypto site scams
• deaththreat - The blackmail email scam death threat variant
• fakecheck/fakecheque - The fake check scam
• fakepayment - The fake payment scam
• google/googlevoice - The Google Voice code scam
• influencer - Influencer scams
• job - Fake job scams
• mandy/wrongnumber - The wrong number/Mandy scam
• mlm - Multi-level marketing schemes
• parcelmule - The parcel mule scam
• pet/puppy - The pet scam
• pin/verify/verification - The verification code scam
• ps5 - The PS5 tester scam
• recovery - Recovery scams
• rental - Rental scams
• review - The Amazon review scam
• romance - The romance scam
• skype - The Skype sex scam
• steam - The Steam admin/item verification scam
• sugar - The various sugar scams
• tax/irs/cra/hmrc - Tax scams
• underage - The underage girl scam

Flair
People who consistently give good advice will be given the "Quality Contributor" flair. If you think you deserve this flair, please do not hesitate to send a message to the moderators.

Related subreddits:

/r/antiMLM
/r/legaladvice
/r/catfish
/r/rbi

/r/sextortion

/r/DebtCollectorScum
/r/SpotTheHustle

/r/UniversalScammerList - This subreddit is for scammers on reddit, their list of scammers can be found here and on their website.

Other subreddits:

/r/freebies - The place to get free stuff!
/r/coupons - Buying things is unavoidable, so you may as well save a little while doing so.
Other subs in the /r/freebies family

Resources:

Site to report scams in the United Kingdom: http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

Site to report scams in the United States: https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Site to report scams in Canada: www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/reportincident-signalerincident/index-eng.htm

Site to report scams in Europe: https://www.europol.europa.eu/report-a-crime/report-cybercrime-online

FTC scam alerts: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/scam-alerts

Microsoft's anti-scam guide: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/safety/online-privacy/avoid-phone-scams.aspx

Public database of various identifiers used in scams that accepts submissions: https://fraudski.com/

Trend Micro Check, website evaluator: https://check.trendmicro.com/

Reverse username search tool: https://usersearch.org/