users with no pfps no titles just following tumblr and not even following me and have many reblogs and likes, asking to be my friend are they scammers?
Hi there anon!
Unfortunately for the majority of cases, yes. These accounts are in many cases, run by scammers. However it's hard to say past just a general 'hello,' so unless you take it further than that to see what that person may want, you might not know how to proceed.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
The "I accidentally reported your account" scam.
If these new users DM you, or comment on your blog saying 'hey I can't DM you and it's important please message me' and when you do, they say they accidentally reported your account, this is likely a new account (or possibly a hijacked older account) that is trying to perform the 'I accidentally reported you' scam. You were not reported. [tumblr] staff does not use anything other than their email and will contact you via your email if there is an issue with your account. Remember that!
The art commission / "can you draw my son/pet?" scam.
If you are an artist and a random person asks to commission you for a picture of their 'son, daughter, pet, or anime character or oc', but then offers you a huge amount of money- one that is way beyond your usual commission price, and only wants your paypal email, they are trying to perform the 'art commission' scam. They want your email to send you a fake email from a gmail/hotmail/outlook address that will say there is an issue with the payment and will threaten law enforcement if you don't pay them.
The muse / "I feel so inspired by your work!" scam.
If you are someone who takes photos of any type and they say they want to 'buy' your artwork as a NFT or for a museum, that all falls into a fake check scam. Similarly, if they DM you and they say they feel 'inspired' by your work and want to make artwork of it, they're trying to perform what's known as 'the muse' scam.'
"You need to verify your account" / "click here to claim" scam.
This scam targets users via Direct message and via ask telling users to go to the link that leads to a phishing website (it will steal your login and payment information!) they provide that tells you to to "verify" your tumblr account. This message will tell you that if you don't 'verify' your account, it will be locked and/or terminated within so many hours. If you've received a message like this via ask or from a user claiming to be staff, report it immediately!
"If amount was deposited what would you" do aka free money scam.
If a user DM's you and asks if you had $5000 deposited into your account "right now", this is a scammer attempting to perform what's known as the free money scam. This is also going around as the sugar baby/daddy scam.
You can find more information about these scams and others on my index which can be found here!
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Lastly, these scammers may ask to "be friends" and then ask that you go to discord or another platform like WhatsApp or Telegram to talk or get to know you better or because they're having issues with tumblr.
Never do this. Scammers do this to perform their scams there so their tumblr accounts don't get flagged and banned. If they can't talk to you here on tumblr and say what they want, don't randomly give them your discord, email, or other personal information.
From my personal experience with random new accounts, random people in mobile games asking to be my friend for no reason wanting to add you on personal chat apps like discord or facebook want to perform two types of scams:
Romance scams (link to the fbi.gov link on romance scams)
Crypto investment scams (Link to Kitboga's video on it)
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Final thoughts: Always be wary with who you talk with online, and remember that nothing's truly 'free' without some sort of cost from you when it comes to a stranger who may end up being a scammer.
Most importantly: Never give money, to get money.
I hope this helps and thanks for writing in anon!
-Bee
