#verification scam

“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

A continuation of a random blog sending a DM telling you they reported your account, a random blog pretending to be the tumblr staff tagging you to tell you that your account has been flagged.

However, there are some rather blatant red flags to look for.

Misspelling, a string of random numbers, and talking about services tumblr doesn't offer, such as monetization.

A blog named "confirm-page" tagged my sideblog (and various other blogs) in the comments under its post claiming that a "minor anomaly" was detected with my account, telling me to verify my account within 48 hours by clicking a random link.

I did not click the link, of course; I reported the account for phishing and then blocked it. Just wanted to share what it looked like in case anyone else encounters it and isn't sure whether it's legit or not! :)

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Tumblr would NOT contact you through tagging you on a post like this (never will); they would contact you privately e.g. via email if there was an issue. If you're unsure of if something is actually from Tumblr, either report it (my preferred method) or look up which email address to contact Tumblr though, and use that to ask them if it's legit or not!

These are scams. There is no creator funding program that requires you to pay for verifying your blog and these are not official staff blogs.

Eyy new info dropped on the Avoiding Scammers - tumblr help page!

Remember: Nobody paid money to sign up and join [tumblr], so you will never have to pay money to 'verify' or 'fix' your account.

Anyone telling you to go to a website that is not 'tumblr dot com' aka where you are now, and any website asking for money and/or personal information or prompts you to log in with your tumblr info, is 100% going to scam you.

(No, not that tumblr verification; this one is being run by bad actors we can’t point out, as opposed to by tumblr itself.)

I got a mention earlier today from @ system-updates-some-long-number-tumblr-helpfully-truncated (helpfully for the scammer, that is!)

(Which was patently false, because the same post that likely attracted the scammer’s attention continued to get likes and reblogs!)

The comment mentioning me and 4 other accounts was one of 73 comments the scammer had made on their post:

(Ignore the weird line; apparently I dragged my finger across the image when switching the screenshot to full-page mode 😂)

I immediately reported the post to tumblr and blocked the scammer, but hours later, the post is still up and replies have increased! Beware!

Hello! Thanks for reaching out cause I wanted to make a post with receipts about this scam anyway and you're reminding me now. :)

As of now, I have not gotten my old account back though. Let's wait and see… 🤞🤞

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Verification Scam Warning ⬇️

The left image above shows the scam post I'm referencing. Real tumblr support would not ask you to verify via a certain post, it wouldn't even be actually helpful that way imo. Verification happens via emails, 2FA via SMS or maybe Whatsapp and they'll send you a single use code or link. But in fact not with a public post that offers the exact same link to everyone.

I accidentally clicked on the "Action Required" link you see at the end of the screenshot with my clumsy fingers and glanced at a fake "tumblr desktop" website for like 30 seconds. Then immediately turned back to the tumblr app and got error messages left and right with any click. Thought I'd better log out and in again but then my account was suddenly gone. 🕳 Therefore please be careful when reading/ scrolling such posts so you don't click any links. I only saw the post because I (along with dozens of other users) was tagged in the comments.

The right image above is of my blocklist but it's only a part of the accounts involved. If you search for support + 1 - 9 you'll probably find more of these accounts.

Below are images of two example blogs doing the scam shit. They all have the same icon, blog title and a similar description.