How to Report/Avoid a Scammer

As some of you may know, yesterday I was scammed by someone who I thought was a long-time former guildie/friend, but it turned out that it was a completely different person who may have hacked her account.

As a result, two of my perm costumes were stolen. Usually I am very careful about letting people try on my costumes, but since I thought the person I was letting try on my costumes was a friend, I did not ask her for any collateral (a perm or something of the same value in exchange for what I was trading) to trade.

I didn't want to make a report against this person's account since it was most likely not her on the character, but when worst comes to worst, it has to be done.

Today I received an e-mail back from Aeria Games letting me know that the scammer has been appropriately taken care of, but here I will post for all my guildies a short guide on how to report and avoid getting scammed.


First Step:

Analyze the person you are trading with. If anything about their behavior is suspicious at all, then be prepared to get all the information you can by taking screenshots, video footage, and chat logs.

To take a screenshot, simply hit the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard, which should be at the top right next to your F12 key, if you have them.

To find your screenshots, go to your AeriaGames folder, DOMO > Screenshots

To find your Chat Logs, go to AeriaGames > DOMO > Temp > Log and look for the TEXT FILE that says TalkWindow.log.201002, or whatever month in which the incident occurred. The most recent month log will always be the last TalkWindow.log. file.

MAKE SURE that in your Options window in your DOMO client, you have checked the box that allows the system to save chat logs.

To take video, follow this guide here: http://forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=110434

Second Step:

Contact any GS or GM currently available and calmly tell them what happened. Give them the correct name of the player that you were dealing with, and anyone else who may have been involved.

You may also try to ask for GS/GM assistance in the DoMO forums ShoutBox, but you will have to LOGIN with your Aeria account name first.

Third Step:

Make a Contact Us report. A guide to Reporting Behavior can be found here: http://forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=491601

Like that topic says, MAKE SURE you check the box in the form that will send you a copy of the email you sent, and write down that RT# they give you so that you KNOW that Aeria Games received you report.

Then wait until they respond.

Don't forget to change your password regularly.

And that's it! Three easy steps. Remember you can always ask an elder or branch head for help.

Ugh, so after asking Aeria if I could get my stolen items back, they said they cannot be returned because they were "traded away". I don't know if that means because its supposedly my fault I traded them away to the scammer, or because the scammer traded them to a mule/someone else. >.<

Well...bye bye to my costumes....

This is another warning to you all...be careful because once someone steals your stuff, you're never getting it back....

Sorry to hear you lost your two perms Celi. D:
>> Aeria probably means that it's your fault you traded them.
Pretty sure other people that traded the person won't get their perms back also since they 'traded' also.
.-. -hug-

*hugs*

Aeria is very fail for that. Sadly the aeria team has a very bad habit of pointing the blame on the users...

I mean how hard is it to replace some pixles, seriously <.<"