weedle-testaburger's backup blog

So basically, the scammer got in touch with me through @professional-dog-hugger, who they must've hacked too, and told me they 'accidentally reported me when they meant to report someone else' and told me I had to talk to a Tumblr mod through Discord. They faked an email showing I was reported and included the details of an actual Tumblr employee:

I got panicked by this and thought it was legitimate (it didn't help that I was up early for work lol), and the scammer told me I needed to change my account's registered email so he could 'check' (read: steal) it. He then sent me a 'report' telling me I had 19 reports on my account and that I would have to pay $350 (which he promptly amended to £350 on learning I was from the UK) to do a 'more thorough check' and avoid legal action!

So, just to run through the things I should've known: Tumblr staff do not communicate with users about these sorts of claims via Discord, you should never give someone else access to your account's email (including staff, who will have that on file and won't need to ask you if there is a legit case of your account being reported- I found this out through getting it back), and AFAIK Tumblr doesn't even remotely have the clout to force random users to pay that much.

Basically, TL;DR, I was dumb and got scammed out of my account. If you had a message from me after about 8:30 AM GMT on Friday, that was the scammer, and I'm really sorry for the bullshit they pulled on you- they apparently blocked a bunch of people (and the alt, @weedle-2-staburger, which I set up while this account was inaccessible), and I'm currently unblocking them and getting the word out on the alt that I got it back so hopefully they'll unblock me!

I should also share what to do if you lose your account this way, which is what I did to get my account back:

Make sure you know the email you were told to change it to by the scammer- the one they used to get me used the domain 'tumblr.database01', but I suspect they change it and/or have multiple scammers going on. Whatever it was, you need to know it so Tumblr Support can check it.

Go to the Tumblr Support section of the website (tumblr.com/support) and use the 'Account access' section, explaining you got phished and telling them the assigned email they made you change the account to and the email that was previously assigned to it, requesting they change it back.

The Support email will send you an automated message telling you to specify again your URL, the original email and the hacker's email.

They can then get back to you to ask for your IP address- they'll send you a link to an IP address tracker. Just use this while on on the Wi-Fi network where you last accessed your account before losing it (in my case it was my 4G network).

They can use this to validate that you were hacked and restore the account from the hacker's email to the original email- just change your password and you can get straight back in!