Viatrice

Most of the time, the message scammers get banned or stop responding before getting anywhere for me. But there does not seem to be a lot of variety in the scripts they use. They always start with a message complimenting your art, saying something like they are thinking of using one of your pictures as an inspiring muse for an art project they are working on with a client, and you will be be getting paid and credit.

The amount you allegedly would get paid always seems to be $500, and they tell you that money is needed for supplies, and maybe that you would receive more money after it is complete.

They ask for what bank you use, your first and last name, an email address, your address and a phone number. It seems like they only really care about the email address or phone number, so they can send you a fake digital check for you to try to deposit in your bank account. I am not fully sure on this, as I never gave them a legitimate email, but they press more on this without ever seeming to check the other information they asked for. They then request a screenshot to show if you deposited the fake check into your bank, but this can be circumvented by pretending you don't know how to take a screenshot. They may just ask how much you have, so you can make up a number that is at least a few thousand.

Finally, once they think you are convinced you received money, they ask for $300 back for "supplies" and ask you if you have something like Paypal, Cashapp or Venmo to send them money. Then they give you account information you can report to Paypal, Cashapp or Venmo's fraud teams. You could get multiple accounts from them if you ask for one and then pretend that you can't log into that account, and ask for a different method to send the money.

If you are comfortable doing so, playing along with them and giving them BS information every step of the way could net you the information needed to get their accounts removed from these payment processors.

I will not be leaving dA, but I have made an account on a Mastodon instance to share my artwork.

I will post there as well as here.

Where is the friends list in Eclipse? Is it just gone now?