So as a player who likes to hang out in the trade server a lot, I have been seeing multiple occasions of players getting scammed each day. After an attempted scam by a white star (no picture no proof, so I won’t post name), I thought it could worth a couple minutes of my time to lay out a few common scam techniques.
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Deselect: most basic technique in which a player unclicks his offer, making you give him goods for free. Some players will also private message you a big blob of text to distract you. Very easy to deal with with a little patience. You can never go wrong with double-checking before clicking “accept”.
1.5 Similar items: going along the idea of patience, scammers can use similar-looking items to deceive you (para hp vs exa hp, wis vs life, etc…). I find it useful to turn on tier level in the setting, but hovering you mouse over the selected items should always do the job.
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“Trust”: scammers offer a juicy reward for “trusting them with an item”. Don’t believe them kids, this is not how you build trust.
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Game: Typically found on the far left or right of the trading platform, these scammers hope to lure you to play a game for a chance to win a big price. They might have mules to support their credibility, but no, just stay away.
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Multi-window Trade: very common when dealing with valuables like DECA (typically sold for 9 life pots). Scammers will ask for some of your payments first, then just leave. Keep in mind that some honest traders also ask for multi-window trades, so players selling goods for more than 8 slots of payment are not necessarily scammers. How I usually deal with this issue is to try to compensate with items (like 7 life + Elvish or something). A scammer usually just leaves at this point.
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Key Popper: basically, a scammer takes his payment to pop a key and does not do so. A seemingly obvious solution is to pay after pop, but the scam can really go either way. There really isn’t much you can do except to be aware that a scam is possible and proceed with caution.
I know these techniques are fairly basic and probably well-aware by experienced players. However, I do hope that this post can save a few newer players from getting scammed in the future. Suggestions, comments, and criticisms are welcomed.
