Probable Scam Alert

[ladydragon76]

I received this comment on my fic this morning. It's so obviously a scam/phishing attempt, and when I showed others I'm in a discord server with, a number of them mentioned having received similar messages on dA, ffnet, etc... I have the VAGUEST memory of something like this going around before? Like if you respond, they'll ask for money? Or the author writes the collab fic and never gets the art, so basically you did a free request for them? I'm not sure, but, FYI to everyone.

My fics are locked on Ao3 so they made an account (this one on sept 16th 2024) and eventually found me. I'm sure they're after others, hence this post. I've reported them to Ao3 for solicitation and blocked them.

I'm generally open to collab fun, but a form letter and not so much as a kudos on the fic they're posting the comment to is SO sus. Be careful out there.

Comments

[playswithworms]

Yeah, that showed up on one of my Discord friend's fics too - the whole "your imaginative worlds" thing is immediately sus, so vague

[ladydragon76]

"Dear Author" - Ummm Do you not know WHO you're talking to? And not in the "don't you know who I am?!" way, just the shouldn't you have at least TRIED just a LITTLE to put the author's name in there instead? Like, come on. This is SOOOO scammy looking. It's so impersonal. I've had perfect strangers approach me about art or fic of my fic, and I've approached strangers too, so it's not that at all, it's just the whole impersonal OBVIOUS 'this is fake!' flashing in red neon.

LOL. I'm offended they didn't put ANY effort into trying to scam me is what my issue is: ya know, other than the fact they're doing this, so they're BOUND to succeed and screw someone out of something if they haven't already, and that's fucked up.

[dinogrrl]

Yup, got one of these on my ff.net account. I laughed and deleted.

[ladydragon76]

I guess scammers gonna scam. I think I might be a late-comer to it simply because I'm only on archives where my fics are locked to registered users. *shrug*