Yesterday I was grouped with an alliance member named xXStarFireXx, when I thought I got a PM from him asking me to allow his alt to have my weapon for a sec "to check his m-atk with it equiped". I was just about to reply to him that I have a +11 Hom and for what I payed for it, I would not loan it to my mother, when I realized that the person who sent me the tell was xXStarFlreXx not xXStarFireXx.
My question is, how did this piece of %@#$ scammer know who I was grouped with so he could create a char with almost the exact same name and try to scam me?
All they do is look for 2 people standing next to eachother at some point in time. Thats why a lot of people who Two box get those PM's lol. Its funny to have your second toon asking to see your weapon :)
Wow good for you!! If only more people would realize the value of what they have before just blindly trading it away :) Ha ha, that's excellent.
I have this scam in my guide (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=533688&an=0&page=0#Post5 33688) and what most people do is just watch people standing together, almost always clannies and then created a char with a name close to it. They watch with one character, which is usually a nonsense name like xkd4 while the fake name character is pming from whatever starter town they spawned in.
Every single time it's happened to me it's been a clan mate faker name, in town, when I'm standing with a clannie. ie: IceFlame/IceF1ame, Diabo1ical/Diabo1ica1, Stiltzz/Stlltz, Mirabai/Mirabal.
for what I payed for it, I would not loan it to my mother
Like Ellie said, good for you. There aren't a lot of people who have your attitude. I have seen several times the message that unless you are prepared to lose it, don't loan it. 100% agree with the fact that you don't under any circumstances loan anything, no matter who asks for it. I also refuse to exchange on something I am buying if I'm paying a lot for it. Set up a shop please :)
Thats why a lot of people who Two box get those PM's lol. Its funny to have your second toon asking to see your weapon :)
What's funner is when their english isn't so great and they don't understand when you catch them on it.
LiIith: hi give ur wapen to xiaoyoshi739 for check patk
LiIith: plz hury i am very trust
LiIith: fast
Tarun: Dude, Lilith is my 2box you goof
LiIith: check ID it is friend
LiIith: give wepan to xiaotoshi739
LiIith: rest assure it is friend
All they do is look for 2 people standing next to eachother at some point in time. Thats why a lot of people who Two box get those PM's lol. Its funny to have your second toon asking to see your weapon :)
Awww...it's so cute! I can't wait for my portable mana battery SE to start asking to see my armor and gear when I rarely touch her keyboard...I'll jump at the opportunity!
Best thing is when your mother tongue is not English. Happened to my clannie, we were putting together some wth from hunt and suddenly I heard from him on vent (in non-english speech): "Hey I just got trade and PM in bad english from Relker, that you want to try my sword ... Hold on a second we will toy with him for a while"
As an extra precaution, always look at the Exchange window before you trade with someone. Chronicle 5 added the name of the person you are trading with and the name of their clan to the Exchange window, so hopefully that will help everyone double check their trade before it is confirmed.
Yeah, it's great when they use the name of the toon you're boxing at the moment. Played with one dude who was trying to get me to "take down my weapon" for a while. I was bummed that he hadn't done anything against the rules until I TPed away and he PMed to me. GMed his butt. Funny stuff.
Good stuff to know, but I think it is more than that. I made the group when I was shopping for shots in Giran and the other group members were in the Forsaken Planes. We were never together in Giran where the scammer was.
Yeah, it's great when they use the name of the toon you're boxing at the moment. Played with one dude who was trying to get me to "take down my weapon" for a while. I was bummed that he hadn't done anything against the rules until I TPed away and he PMed to me. GMed his butt. Funny stuff.
What do you mean take down your weapon? Just...unequip it for a while or pop it in the trade window as well?
Look at the messages they send, broken english because they dont know it. Pre-formed macro'ed sentences. Every person who has had a scam tried on them gets the EXACT SAME MSG AS THAT WORD FOR WORD.
Well...it can't be helped. Whether it's a video game or real life there will just be people out there who want to skip the hard work and go straight to the rewards and people out there not cautious enough to watch for it. Oh well...at least it's just a video game and not someone's life savings. Hopefully a life lesson is learned somehow.
It's just a poor translation of "unequip". Unequip is a pretty complicated word if you think about it, and different languages have different grammar.
If I were to translate "Give me your weapon" from norwegian to english word by word (using some crummy translator for example), it would come out as "Get the weapon your".
Selling Brig Helmet 900k > its always a bone helmet
Oh man...don't give anyone any ideas now...we already got enough scammers as it is. Now some random 10-20s are going to go out and buy bone helmets and flood giran or dion in hopes of finding a sucker. :p
the best is to put the weapon in the trade window and hit cancel constantly..
it really drives them nutz if you play along with it and "whoops i hit the wrong button... trade again"
Or quickly by a weapon that looks similare that's useless, and try and pawn it off on them by asking for say twice as much as the weapon is worth as "collatural" if the deal goes bad and you don't get it back, i've only been able to scam a scammer out of 2.5mil by trading him a roughly 1 mil value sword that he thought was a C grade weapon apparently or something.... not sure.... but got the sucker..
i sold a +16 brig helmet for 300mil though.. not sure what happened to it though... but that was a nice buck made 83pdef on the bugger, which is similare to that of a +3 S grade helmet.
Every time I see this scam I have to laugh. I can't feel sorry for someone who falls for this scam, I really can't.
I've had this tried on me numerous times. The biggest give away is the terrible english that's used as stated by a previous poster. Another huge give away is the scammed name telling you to give the item to this other ID with the weirdest random name ever. Now I can't say this about most of you, but I know for me that I play, most of the time, with player that have actual names...no numbers...no random capitalization...but real names.
By the way, I always ask my friends to try on their stuff and they let me, and visa versa. Thing is...I never ask via private channel. I always ask either in clan chat, ally chat, group chat, or even general chat. That way everyone knows who has what. It isn't me being conspiritorial like these scammers, lol.
In regards to knowing your party members: It wouldn't be the first piece of information someone not using the official client would be able to see about you. The server sends all kinds of information they probably shouldn't have to the clients.
Some who try this scam have good English skills, so don't trust grammar to save you. I suspect that it was a second account of someone in that party with you.
Just be careful always. The new trade window implementations that NC put in will help out significantly. Another big way to help avoid this scam is to confirm the trade also via ventrillo, or other voice program, or in a clan chat or group chat or ally chat. That way you're positive it's who you think it is. I know that some of those letters can look awfully similar in names, especially super duper long ones.
I always advise people not to trade in crowded areas (like MDT, that's one of the worst) and, when loaning gear, ALWAYS initiate the trade yourself with the /trade {playername} command. NEVER by clicking. I can't tell you how many times I've accidently targeted the wrong person and clicked "trade"...
On the positive side of things, while I've never accidently traded something away to anyone, I have bought things from people and then been able to return some of the items for a refund...like when I bought too many without thinking and got a refund for what I wanted to bring back. So while you may come across people who will simply accept that trade, no questions asked, there ARE players who are very honorable. I once died in the canyon area of death pass and lost karmian +3 pants. I ran back there as fast as I could and found they were gone. I freaked...I didn't have the money to replace them (and still don't I'm afraid) but I went up to someone in the area and (I made an assumption...but a polite one that he picked up my pants because he wasn't there in the area while I was leveling nor when I died) asked for my karmian pants. Know what he did? Dropped them on the ground for me. I was thrilled.
Don't count on such goodwill though. Just play it safe like these items are your credit cards...you don't casually give out that info or the plastic...so don't give out your items casually either.
People have tried to scam me or other familly members with that scam too many times Ive lost count.... maby over 5o times or so.
Sometimes they dont talk english (or barely) I sometimes open a trade window and give them 1a. Its the only way to properly let them know (by overcomming language barriers) that I know what they are doing. "heres 1a for you efforts, good bye"
Whats funny is that they will sometimes systematically go through the your entire clan. They try pming another "clan member" and I normally send them pms like these:
First try - " Thats my alt, it wont work"
Second try - "You just pmed another of my alts, wont work"
Third try - "Congragulations you pmed a toon thats not my alt. Unfortunatly thats my bros toon".
Fourth try: "No luck again , thats my dad and he knows your not me :p )
Fifth try: "Will you stop already, you just pmed my bf and hes sitting right next to me >< idiot"
Then they log off...... I guess they got the message
People have tried to scam me or other familly members with that scam too many times Ive lost count.... maby over 5o times or so.
Sometimes they dont talk english (or barely) I sometimes open a trade window and give them 1a. Its the only way to properly let them know (by overcomming language barriers) that I know what they are doing. "heres 1a for you efforts, good bye"
Whats funny is that the systematically will sometimes go through the your entire clan. They try pming another "clan member" and I normally send them pms like these:
First try - " Thats my alt, it wont work"
Second try - "You just pmed another of my alts, wont work"
Third try - "Congragulations you pmed a toon thats not my alt. Unfortunatly thats my bros toon".
Fourth try: "No luck again , thats my dad and he knows your not me :p )
Fifth try: "Will you stop already, you just pmed my bf and hes sitting right next to me >< idiot"
Then they log off...... I guess they got the message
What people will do for adena
Shrimp...be a dear and take a picture of all this next time, will you? I found reading this HILARIOUS!
It's a shame simply sending someone tells using freshly created names in an attempt to scam them out of valuables isn't (gamewise) illegal. It would be rather amusic to get a hold of an active GM's name and say that person has an even better weapon than you and play it off as though you think they are really who they are claiming to be.
Someone used my name to attempt a name scam. I felt so honored when that happened, if he was on i would have pmed him and told him thanks for using my name :)
That's kind of a strange honor...but whatever makes you smile. I remember someone making a copy of a character I had in Evercrack. His name had one extra R in it...but since he had the same appearance, facial structure, hairstyle, and everything people thought it was me because they were blind. When I talked to the person they said it was because they admired me (I was the server's "crack dealer") In Everquest, with the right points put into abilities plus items, certain buffs can last over 3 HOURS...the most popular, long lasting one I casted on everyone for money was called KEI and it lasted 207 minutes...made a lot of people happy to get it and go level for a while. At any rate...I did this for so long I was server famous and I had 1/3rd of this server loving me, 1/3rd not giving a ****, and 1/3rd hating me because they couldn't compete or were just sick of hearing me advertise. So when I heard some guy was walking around with a name EXACTLY like mine...I was not amused. I got over it...but I didn't find it really amusing at all.
If you have any good stuff I'll give it a shot...but I'm highly demotivated...so you'll have to make it worth my while. If you could just think I'm some clan mate and drop all your armor and any weapons you might have...that'd be super.
I've only seen a name-scam toon being made and sent a PM to the real player's allymates - but with a name like Martzch, isn't it nothing less than expected that someone would try to name-scam you? :p