Not get scammed

[tvl]

stupid that this was posted 1 day to late :s
just got scammed by someone on this forum. don't remember his name here only his skype acc .
i'm willing to give our whole skype history + trades on paypal if someone is possible to get me my money back.
i'm going to contact paypal tomorrow to try to get my money back and if they can't help me i'm going to contact the police.
his skypename is knott please watch out for this person

[Fisher]

Sorry mate, I should've wrote it earlier I guess. There's a forum linked in the main post which you can use to report the scammer and attach any evidence you may have. While nobody here can help you restore the money, you gotta do that one on your own, you will be helping the community out by reporting a known scammer thus forcing him to change identity and reducing chances of other people being scammed, which is a good thing to do =)

Peace!

[Razor33]

Thanks for this great guide witch explain both parties how to trade "safe" Fisher

[Kreitz1003]

This is a very helpful guide, thanks!
I've heard of Skrill but didn't look into it until I read this guide, and I must say, if their "Chargeback protection" is as good as they make it seem, I hope everyone that uses paypal ends up moving to Skrill.
+rep!

[Jogex]

Very useful guide! Thanks for sharing, buddy

[Forinris]

Nice guide, I am a very very very careful gold seller and I dont sell for shit ratios but convincing people is always the hardest part

I use paypal as its pretty easy and most familiar for me (Haven't been scammed yet)

I always see people prefer Skrill over paypal security wise because skrill security > paypal security (Chargebacks etc..) Yet most of the people seem to use paypal... Why is that? :S

Also,I usually sell to people I met ingame because they offer the best prices, Convincing them to go first is really hard because they are not familiar with the situation (multiple small trades is the easiest, but also easy way to see i'm selling gold ) These people are very unlikely to scam me through paypal but you never know... The annoying part is that if I want to have an almost bulletproof story to avoid scamming (Considering the chances these people are using any of the scamming methods like cc chargeback is very unlikely) I need them to email me with their name etc as you said, Most of them will just back off here because they just feel like it's too personal, I'm not sure if you know this kind of situations, But it's almost impossible to get people to do this, And finding a guy who offers a good ratio ingame is very hard (Considering you can't just be like "yo wanna buy some glodz? ") Is there any other way to get a good cover? Like making them say some keyword in the message along with their payment?


- Do you have any idea if Blizzard is allowed to look into your Battle net whispers if they think it's concerning gold selling /buying? One of my friends said they had a problem with something I honestly dont even remember but the point was that blizzard told him they'r not allowed to look at his battlenet whispers which was required to solve his problem, Another said Blizzard doesn't really give a shit (lol) ...If no, Is there a difference at all between people with their real name whispering you or with their battletag?



Lastly, Do you know some good methods to convince someone you are actually legit? Whenever I find a nice deal It's so ****ing hard to convince the other party, Today I had the chance to buy a HS key for 30k and I ended up buying it for 50k due to trust (He had gotten offered by someone else while I was trying to determine if he was legit or not, I mean, 30k for a hs key? xD) - He send me an e-mail of the invite + Swore it which was enough for me in the end, Not all people are as dedicated :/


I find myself in the same shitty situation everytime trying to convince someone I am not going to steal their stuff, Scam them whatever.. It always ends up in a long ****ing conversation,



I mean a perfect example would be a guy who wanted to buy a gamecard (2months) for 65k earlier, He was a level 1 claiming he boosted RBG and received gold on that server, His total gold owned showed exactly 65k.. But didn't convince me of going first, In the end, We didn't do the trade because neither of us wanted to go first, What would you have done in this situation?




Sorry, I know, Alot of questions here, heh. I'll make sure to award you with reputation if you can answer them :P

[Fisher]

...too long to quote =P...

Hey mate, I just saw your post. Let me do my best here to answer everything =)

- About PayPal, everyone uses PayPal because it offers protection, lets you scam people, and is very easy to setup. I remember my initial setup of Skrill (back in the day) required me to give them my address and wait a few days to get a letter with some code I'd type in. Not the kind of thing people want to do. Furthermore, Skrill does not offer any type of buyer protection, so in case someone pays you and you scam them, nothing they can do about it. Aside from that, almost all webshops support PayPal, while just a few support Skrill (this is growing - let's hope it grows even more).

- About convincing them that you are legit, make a website. Or sell to one. Making one may be a lot of hassle, and people will expect you to have gold on all servers, so why not sell to one? There's quite a few sites that offer decent deals, and prices as well. Sure, you lose some money (eg you get 0.5 instead of 0.6) but you avoid the hassle of convincing customers to trade with you, as well as risk of being scammed. I'd say that's a fair trade. I won't name any, but we do have a gold seller review section here, and most of those sites are always looking for suppliers, so poke around and find what suits you the best (some take bulk, some do it on-demand)

- Avoid in-game chat. The whole reason why battle.net merge was forced back in 2009 I believe, is exactly that. In order to merge your account to your battle.net, you had to agree that Blizzard can and will monitor your chat if they feel like it. Huge fuss was created about it, but it stayed that way. More than a few people got banned over that, and were unable to restore their account as the representative simply copied a part of their chat and sealed the ban.

- I would never go first. But I do keep my MMO related business right here, where everyone knows me and anyone can vouch for me, including mods and what not. I've never scammed anyone and I have a decent reputation, so if a customer doesn't want to go first, there will be no business. That being said, convincing a customer out of the blue to go first is not that hard. Read about social engineering, but don't go too deep. Some of the ground rules are: be prepared, be honest, be nice, have a good written english skill and you'll be fine. Strike a nice conversation with the person, make a nice comment about their country (if you know it/can guess it). Basically, be that guy that wants to sell you cars, but don't be that overwhelming. I've written a small guide on how to social engineer Blizzard, there's some tips and tricks there you may want to use. To be honest, I've never had a case where customer declined to pay up front, but as I said, I keep my business here, I wouldn't be able to transfer my reputation to WoW or any other game as the community is too huge and it would take years to build any image there.

As for "not all people are as dedicated", trust me, scammers are getting somewhat sophisticated. The *****ian prince, you can tell him apart in few minutes, but they are getting better and better. There's another post here written by me about why people shouldn't scam, and there's an example of a couple of people running a bank scheme in my country. Took them years and a lot of dough to pull it off, but they did, in the end. So yeah, be careful ^^ And remember: customers will appreciate you a lot more if you have a firm attitude and are not willing to bend your rules for them. Lay out the terms and stick to them, they will see you are serious and do business with you. I've had much better business relationships with people where I charged a lot and stuck to it than with kids I've given discounts to and played ball basically.

Hope it helped, peace! =)

[Forinris]

Hey mate, I just saw your post. Let me do my best here to answer everything =)

- About PayPal, everyone uses PayPal because it offers protection, lets you scam people, and is very easy to setup. I remember my initial setup of Skrill (back in the day) required me to give them my address and wait a few days to get a letter with some code I'd type in. Not the kind of thing people want to do. Furthermore, Skrill does not offer any type of buyer protection, so in case someone pays you and you scam them, nothing they can do about it. Aside from that, almost all webshops support PayPal, while just a few support Skrill (this is growing - let's hope it grows even more).

- About convincing them that you are legit, make a website. Or sell to one. Making one may be a lot of hassle, and people will expect you to have gold on all servers, so why not sell to one? There's quite a few sites that offer decent deals, and prices as well. Sure, you lose some money (eg you get 0.5 instead of 0.6) but you avoid the hassle of convincing customers to trade with you, as well as risk of being scammed. I'd say that's a fair trade. I won't name any, but we do have a gold seller review section here, and most of those sites are always looking for suppliers, so poke around and find what suits you the best (some take bulk, some do it on-demand)

- Avoid in-game chat. The whole reason why battle.net merge was forced back in 2009 I believe, is exactly that. In order to merge your account to your battle.net, you had to agree that Blizzard can and will monitor your chat if they feel like it. Huge fuss was created about it, but it stayed that way. More than a few people got banned over that, and were unable to restore their account as the representative simply copied a part of their chat and sealed the ban.

- I would never go first. But I do keep my MMO related business right here, where everyone knows me and anyone can vouch for me, including mods and what not. I've never scammed anyone and I have a decent reputation, so if a customer doesn't want to go first, there will be no business. That being said, convincing a customer out of the blue to go first is not that hard. Read about social engineering, but don't go too deep. Some of the ground rules are: be prepared, be honest, be nice, have a good written english skill and you'll be fine. Strike a nice conversation with the person, make a nice comment about their country (if you know it/can guess it). Basically, be that guy that wants to sell you cars, but don't be that overwhelming. I've written a small guide on how to social engineer Blizzard, there's some tips and tricks there you may want to use. To be honest, I've never had a case where customer declined to pay up front, but as I said, I keep my business here, I wouldn't be able to transfer my reputation to WoW or any other game as the community is too huge and it would take years to build any image there.

As for "not all people are as dedicated", trust me, scammers are getting somewhat sophisticated. The *****ian prince, you can tell him apart in few minutes, but they are getting better and better. There's another post here written by me about why people shouldn't scam, and there's an example of a couple of people running a bank scheme in my country. Took them years and a lot of dough to pull it off, but they did, in the end. So yeah, be careful ^^ And remember: customers will appreciate you a lot more if you have a firm attitude and are not willing to bend your rules for them. Lay out the terms and stick to them, they will see you are serious and do business with you. I've had much better business relationships with people where I charged a lot and stuck to it than with kids I've given discounts to and played ball basically.

Hope it helped, peace! =)

Didn't know they could monitor the battle net chat too, Because I wasn't sure I never really mentioned the gold selling anywhere on the game... I'll have to convince my convinced friend they can monitor your battle net chat, Which will be hard considering he told me that the representative told him they can't look into the real ID chat He told me he sells to Greeks only though, So that could be exactly why he's still playing WoW xD


I'm getting more experienced in these trades by the day (or I like to think so ) took some risks of going first but they all turned out very well (max risk was around 100k anyways)

I guess after xx amount of time in this game you can practically find out if the person is a scammer or not basing on his first 10 sentences

Unfortunately some people are just really stupid or try to find any small reason of suspicion after I give them a bulletproof scam method.. Paranoid ftw

I wish I could make them give me some feedback after every successful transaction or vouch for me, But obviously these people rather stay anonymous, Which I respect.

Other then that, I found some alternative ways to sell my gold, But it's hard and complicated, Involves buying games


I'm guessing the 0.5 - 0.6 price you mentioned was in $$ currency, Which just doesn't cut it for me :P


I don't bot for my gold, Which is probably why I value it much more then people who obtained it while they where sleeping.


Making and maintaining a website would probably be to much work, I'm kind of a lazy person when it comes to that, I think it would compromise me to much too, I'd have to make another bnet with a char who gives people their gold just to avoid getting caught, To much effort for me

Anyways, you responded, made it lengthy & worthy enough, So here's my promised rep

[Fisher]

Heya,

The numbers I mentioned were random, been a long time since I was in gold trades =) Yeah, the more you trade, the more experienced you become, but unfortunately, you will learn from your mistakes so be prepared for that. You don't necessarily need a big website, you may get one to serve as your portfolio, simply get people to leave anonymous feedback, much like threads here on ownedcore =)

As for your friend and chat monitoring, don't take my word for it. Says right here:

D. BLIZZARD MAY MONITOR, RECORD, REVIEW, MODIFY AND/OR DISCLOSE YOUR CHAT SESSIONS, WHETHER VOICE OR TEXT, WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU, AND YOU HEREBY CONSENT TO SUCH MONITORING, RECORDING, REVIEW, MODIFICATION AND/OR DISCLOSURE. Additionally, you acknowledge that Blizzard is under no obligation to monitor your electronic communications, and you engage in those communications at your own risk.

You can find the full terms here: click me

Peace! =)

[easytrader]

Good post, what's a VPN?

[Jogex]

Good post, what's a VPN?

Virtual Private Network

It enables a computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it were directly connected to the private network, while benefiting from the functionality, security and management policies of the private network.

In other terms; when using a VPN, people seein your IP will be seeing the IP of your VPN (which can be located pretty much anywhere)
I for example are using a VPN to bot World of Warcraft at the moment. I live in Norway, but blizzard sees me as playing from somewhere in Netherlands.

[Fisher]

Aye what Jogex said =) It's like a proxy, but for apps too (proxies works on browsers and proxy-supporting apps)

[Vendedorouro]

I got scammed as well right on my first try selling WoW gold :P (just a few days ago). I don't see it as a reason to quit, you get better as you go along i guess.
But i most say finding this forum did make a huge difference, thank you all that have been so kind and good business partners

[Alissa]

I've sold gold on this site once and it turned out to be a scammer (unauthorized claim on Paypal, probably a stolen one). My question is though, if I somehow make sure that the e-mail on paypal belongs to the person I want to sell my gold to, and I receive an e-mail stating that he/she is buying intangible items etc, and THEN he/she still fills in an unauthorized claim, saying that his/her e-mail got hacked along with paypal etc - is that scenario realistic and what will Paypal decide usually? I mean, can buyers just fill out those unauthorized claims with half-believable stories and get to keep the money?