“I have something important to tell you but can’t message u pls message me ” - accidentally reported you scam

“I love your story and want to illustrate it dm me at discord” - commissioner scam

“I saw your post looking for artists to draw (x) and would love to draw it it sounds like a lovely idea and im an artist” - commissioner scammer who DM’d you when you didn’t ask

“Did you send me this link for free tumblr premium?” - accidentally reported you scam

Posted: 2/6/25 - Updated: 5/28/26

Note: Titles without links mean I have not made an awareness post on that scam myself but if one is made by another user such as @kyra45 or @ai-art-thieves (or others! feel free to send it to me!) I will include them until I do make a post about it in which theirs will be added to the body explaining it. :)

updated: added more, recent info on the accidentally reported you and verify your account scams. :)

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The "verify your account" scam

Were you @'d in a tumblr post by a user account called account-update, system-update, update-bot, ect with a bunch of numbers? Did did this comment tell you in that comment that there were issues on your account and that you need to go to the 'website in the post above' to fix it? Was a comment left on a post of yours by "tumblr staff" saying that you need to verify your account by clicking a link? Did it say that your account will be "terminated" in 24 hours if you don't? Or maybe you maybe get a comment saying your art had been purchased? Were you sent a DM or an ask with a similar message? This is not real, and is 100% a phishing scam that will steal your credit card and personal info!

The "I accidentally reported your account" scam.

Did someone leave a comment on your post saying "I have something important to tell you it’s about to your account, but i can’t message you idk whyy??" Did they send you an ask of a similar nature? Were you DM'd by another who says that they "accidentally reported your account" and that [tumblr] 'staff' told them to message you? Did they send you a screenshot of the report or 'email' they got and now they're trying to tell you to message a 'staff member' on Discord, telegram, whatsapp, or via another platform? This is your classic 'I accidentally reported your account' scam that started on Steam many years ago that moved to Discord, and is now on Tumblr and other websites like Bluesky. The goal of this scam is to get you to go on discord where they will try to convince you that if you don't 'follow these steps' to fix the issue your account will be terminated and or sent to the cops/FBI ect. These scammers will then tell you to change your email and/or password so they can steal your account, and they will then use it to scam others the same way. Additionally, they will try to extort you and blackmail you by telling you that you need to pay money to get your account back. Do not do this. [tumblr] staff DOES NOT USE Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, Google Meet, or any other platform.

Never change your email/password if someone online tells you to.

The "can you draw my sons pet?" aka art commission scam.

Are you an artist? Were you DM'd, sent an ask by a blog with no posts or little to no content, or had a comment on a post asking about a commission and to DM them? Did they ask you to draw their son, daughter, or pet? Did hey offer you $200-$500? If so, you should learn about this scam and how to avoid it.

The sugar baby/daddy scam. / Free money scam.

Did you make a post asking for donations? Did someone DM you wanting you to be their sugar baby or promising you money in exchange for something? Did they tell you that you need to send them money to verify you want to 'do this' or pay for 'shipping' or 'transaction' fees? You're about to get scammed!

The "I feel so inspired by your work!" aka muse scam.

If you post photographs frequently, you may find your posts receiving comments from 'artists' saying how 'inspired' they are and how eager they are to make art or a mural for your work. This is a fake cheque scam and you should avoid it at all costs!

The (read more) / Click here! scam.

If you see a post ending in a link that says (read more...) or Click here! This is an attempt to get you to click a link that will lead to a malicious website in an attempt to steal your information, or possibly even install malicious files onto your phone or computer. Do not click these links, and report these posts immediately!

"Company is Now Hiring!" Scams.

See a post like this on your dash or in a tag you frequent? Was the user once a normal user and now they're spamming ads like this in unrelated tags? This likely means that user got their account hijacked by clicking the link via a different post. Avoid clicking links like these at all costs as the websites are likely malicious and will steal your information.

HRT Medicine / Therapy service scams.

This scam is targeting transgender people, and is likely stealing peoples personal information and likely their credit card information. If you see or find a blog like the above commenting on your posts, in #transgender or other such related tags, block and report them immediately. (Selling stuff like this is illegal btw.)

Recruitment for the Illuminati.

This scam tries to recruit people into the Illuminati by offering people mass amounts of wealth, homes, and even cars. This is all an attempt to steal your money, or worse, your identity...

Recovery Scammers.

If you make a post talking about how you've lost money, be it bitcoin, crypto, or were scammed in any sort of way, you may find yourself receiving an ask from a recovery scammer. These are people claiming they can offer 'recovery services' while claiming to be 'ethical hackers' that have 'back end knowledge' to online services. Claiming they can retrieve your money, account, photos, and other such lost items. All you have to do is give them your account information and some money! :) (Do not do this, obviously.)

These scammers also target people who post in #scam and/or other related tags like #scams or #scam alert, posting things like this in the comments on peoples posts:

Dropshipping Websites. (Curtsy of @ai-art-thieves)

See a post of an object or a piece of clothing by a popular tumblr user that has 10k+ notes, does it say 'I got this here!' or '>>GET YOURS HERE<<' at the bottom with a link to a store? That user is a part of a dropshipping advertising scheme and are being paid to advertise these scummy websites. These websites are usually malicious in the manner that they sell cheaply products. In the worst case you'll get a bootleg or flawed product, or even a different product completely, or in even worse cases, you'll never get it at all.

(Or they will steal your information in the case of those shopify websites that popup online with deals you 'just can't refuse!!!' So buyer beware.)

Campaign boost/mutual aid support scams. (By @kyra45)

If you or anyone you know has posted looking for donations, and you receive an ask, DM, or even a comment about someone offering to 'assist you in boosting your account/campaign,' all you have to do is pay them <amount>, then this is a fake check scam you should definitely read up on and learn about to avoid.

Pet donation Scams. (by @kyra45)

See a post about someone needing help with a vet bill? Do they stress the pet is in peril and will die soon? Is their PayPal from the Philippines yet the vet bill is from the United states? Those are just two things to look out for with this scam.

Donation / Mutual Aid scams. (by @kyra45)

One of the most common and well known scams on tumblr to this day. These scams mainly revolve around brand new accounts made within a day or week reblogging very few posts and then suddenly asking for money via donations through PayPal. These blogs will send out the same copy/paste ask en masse to dozens if not hundreds of people, change their name frequently over the course of days if not weeks, and will even lie about being Palestinian, stealing stories from legitimate gofundmes, and even having conditions such as diabetes while not even knowing how it works.

Here is a list of documented PayPal scammers: Part 3 Note: this list is severely outdated, however it contains a lot of key phrases/words that paypal scammers tend to use when sending asks.

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Some helpful blogs to follow:

@kyra45 @ai-art-thieves @u-reblogged-a-scam

Tags to follow/check if you need to check on scams:

#scam #scams #scam alert #scammer #scammers

------ I think that's it for Tumblr scams, If I think I need to add more later I'll update the post and make an update note about it.

Take care everyone and don't get scammed! -----

Check out the Index of important posts I've made!

Here's a post on some tips and tricks on spotting scam blogs.

How to guide: Reverse Image Search. (now with web extensions!)

Art thieves and AI users pretending to be real artists and using stolen art to advertise their commissions.

Thankfuly, they seem to be a semi-organized scam circle. Meaning, if you see one, there's probably more in their comments and reblogs, sometimes even defending each other if they happen to be exposed.

I'm tagging @kyra45 and @ai-art-thieves but if you know any other active blogs warning about art thieves, feel free to tag them in replies or comments.

Long post with evidence under the cut

@isabellaartblog has, so far, stolen 6 pieces of art. In the art that she posts, there is absolutely no acknowledgement that the art is not made by her or made for her. She has reblogged fanart, posted other people's art and is currently open for commissions. She doesn't have any art of her own, however, so is appearing to be using other people's art in order to trick people into commissioning her.

In some of her posts, others have pointed out that the art is stolen. Some comments have been removed or hidden, which is suspicious. She thanks people for the compliments that they give the art.

Below are the pieces of art that she's stolen and a link to the original art by the real creators.

THE REAL ARTIST for the above image =======================================

THE REAL ARTIST for the above image =======================================

THE REAL ARTIST for the above image

======================================

What images I could find online, people gave credit to FlareLion99 but for some reason, they seemed to have removed these images from all of their galleries.

We know of the scammers that dwell on Discord, Twitter, or Bsky, and ask you to commission them, either giving you an AI generated picture or charging you 300$ and giving you something they commissioned on Fiverr for 5$ . I literally have a whole-ass guide on them. Then there's the ones who ask for commissions, trying to get you to draw their pet or whatever, then sending you a fake cheque or something, which has been very common on Tumblr. This post explains it well.

But now we're bringing the first type of scam (where someone tries to force you to commission them) onto tumblr! Our buddy miruuuwuu here is going to provide a really good example. Let's start with the circumstances this happened in. I got two DMs from this account, who had followed me few minutes prior to DMing. As always, I checked their profile first.

Few things to note in here that already told me this was a scammer: The account had a grand total of two posts in their profile, posted four hours ago. Nothing else. Completely empty account. The "femenine" name and the anime pfp already were kinda suspicious alongside this. A large portion of the "commission me" scammers will have a generic anime profile picture and a woman's name. The generic-ass description didn't help.

And well, since I haven't got this type of scammer on tumblr before, I decided to go along with it, because there's something inherently funny about some scammer trying this with someone who's specifically been doing guides about scammers for years. You will notice that my responses are rather mean, which... ngl I like being sassy about scammers what can I say

First initial impression: This person was trying very hard to try to be friends with me. Very weird from a complete random who just followed. The weirdest part here is, of course, how they instantly dismiss me saying "I'm not sure I think" about their random attempts to be like "you're my friend now" and simply proceed with their script. Now, this scammer is SLIGHTLY more specific than usual, since they mentioned DnD- which is closer to my interests than they tend to target. So uh, props to that I guess.

They inmediately tried to inquiry about my character. At this point, I know they'd be offering to draw them for money. I know these scammers tend to steal people's art as examples, so I just grabbed some shitty AI-generated tiefling from google. If they steal that and then try to use it as an example for someone else, I hope they can easily realize this is a scam. Notice how little they care about me being very rude and short-responsed: They're following a script. Afterwards, they sent me an example of "their OC". Alongside a massive AI-generated backstory that has no relation whatsoever to the character, which is supposedly a half elf.

I decide to poke a bit about it. Their response is pretty detached to someone who would actually know about RP or anything. "My setting's elves are green" would've been great. But nope, they immediately jump to trying to share me more examples of their art, and send me about 6-7 pictures in rapid fire. Some of them stolen, some of them traced, some of them commissioned from people in Fiverr for five bucks.

And then we jump immediately to the core of the scam: asking me to commission them. I already knew this was coming, but let's go for it. Their entire massive blurb on how they "work on paid and unpaid platforms" is extremely unhinged to read as an artist myself, but sure, whatever they wanna use to tell me why I gotta pay them. THE CRUCIAL PART HERE IS: YOU SHOULD NEVER COMMISSION PEOPLE WHO DMED YOU FIRST AT RANDOM! I have seen WAY too many people fall for this. If an "artist" DMs you to ask you to commission them, block them! Legitimate artists WON'T do that unprompted! I have way more information in the guide I linked in the first paragraph, but yeah.

At this point, these scams tend to go in different ways. If you insist you can't pay for them, they often will jump to guilt tripping you, or bringing some sob story on how they need money desperately. We had one in our Discord trying to convince two different people to commission them with entirely different stories (one of them was "I need to buy a gift for my wife" and the other one was "i need to buy hearing aids ASAP!!!"). DO NOT FALL FOR THESE SOB STORIES. They're just trying to get you to feel bad and agree even if you're suspicious.

This is the point where I just stopped going ahead with the conversation. They will try to haggle you. You tell them you have 100 bucks, they'll try to raise 150. A lot of artists online tend to have a pricing guide, a website, some sort of TOS kinda stuff. They won't try to see how much they can milk out of you by testing the waters. Again, please check out this guide if you're suspecting anything weird, or even feel free to DM me if you need someone to double check. Don't put your money on these scams: They will either run with your money, commission someone in the global south on fiverr for literal cents, or they'll just get you some AI generated mess.

Just a heads up because I was contacted by this user minutes ago: Do not respond to any dms from @/classymedallion. They request for you to commission art from them for $75 in an expressed need for rent money (that's already an odd start to the conversation), but they do not provide any up front links or avenues to send funds in their commission post or in the dms.

To add to this, prior to the back to back posts of their artwork, you're greeted with a recent reblog after reblog of popular posts and only that. But the biggest red flag was the stolen artwork they claim to be theirs, and they've specifically targeted one artist by the name of @cherrysphinx (who also has art on other platforms). You can do a reverse image search for almost every single piece and find where they're originally from.

If any of this feels familiar, then it's because another account used this exact same tactic in the past, and even stole a great number of Cherrysphinx's art.

Even their so-called commission template where they're begging for money to avoid losing their house is stolen and cropped to hide the watermark (the image in their commission post was ran through the search engine and it led to a post on Weasly by Rococospade).

I linked the sources of each post below, just for reference since it seems that the same pieces of artwork are getting targeted.

Obviously from the get go this is a portrait scam but i decided to play a long a little

When i got to the discussion of payment they tried this shit. This is bullshit btw, if someone cant "pay an invoice because security blah blah blah" they cant pay you at all.

They want to fake a payment and then try to get you to send money back they never sent

Do not give people your paypal email to RECIEVE money

Type of scam: Art theft / Artist Impersonation

"Commission me I need money for rent"

This user is your typical "I steal other peoples art, pretend its mine, please commission me I need it for <urgent reason> before <day> please I'll pay you back in art." And then they ghost you.

How this story started:

Part 1. The DM.

Part 2. How/Why this is a scam.

After the DM, I knew almost instantly this was a scam. So with the help of @kyra45 we started looking through the "art" on the scammers blog and found them to be.. rather inconsistent in style.

Not only that, but the first red flag was a 3D render that was straight up stolen.

The original creator/owner:

Note: the date of the op was 9 months ago.

And for me, I reverse image searched this image:

Which lead me to this website, tumgik:

which is where I found the user cherrysphix!

So then I looked them up on tumblr and: WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT!

Here is cherrysphinx's art from 2024!

Annnnnd...

Here is the stolen art/archive from this scammer this month!

HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....

And look! The 3D model's there too!!

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Long story short: Yeah. It's a scammer.

Don't commission them. If you have, ask for a refund. You'll never get your art. If they DM you, report them immediately.

If you don't know how to reverse image search images:

Here's a how to guide: Reverse Image Search.

And remember:

If an artists art looks inconsistent in style, do your research first.

If they only started posting on tumblr within the last week/month, and they're DMing YOU to ask you to commission THEM? It's most likely a scam.