reply guys

First Draft Club

The Anatomy of a Farcaster Scam (and how to avoid them)

1. An account you’ve most likely never interacted with will send you a DC. 
2. The DC will compliment you or your work and ask for some type of collaboration, consulting job, testing, etc. 
3. If you reply, they may throw out a large number for compensation and ask to have a call to discuss terms. 
4. Usually, right before the agreed meeting time, something will go horribly wrong. The Google Meet or Zoom link they sent won’t work. 
5. You will panic. 
6. They will pressure you that if you can’t meet in the next few minutes, they will need to move to the next candidate on the list. 
7. But magically they will have a solution: they have another video conferencing tool that you can download right now and they know it works. 
8. You click the link without a second thought. 
9. You’ve been scammed and now they drain your wallet with malicious software. 

Let’s show a real life example.

Friendly reminder, most Direct Casts from unknowns are scams. 

Unsure? Post about it publicly. Ask others.

🚨PSA: HOW TO AVOID GETTING SCAMMED IN DIRECT CASTS🚨

A few easy steps to help key yourself safe from scammers getting up in your DCs:

🚨 Lock down your DC settings*.

🚨 Consider all unsolicited DCs from someone you don't know as a scam.

🚨 Carefully scrutinize any unusual messages from someone's account you know just in case they've been hacked: especially if it's an offer that seems really lucrative.

🚨 Search FC and X with key terms from the message; it will help you to identify many common scams.

🚨 If you're still not sure, cast about it publicly to ask.

🚨 Name and shame any scammers who get through to your DCs in public casts warning others (using these siren emojis and phrases like "SCAM ALERT" helps get past people's short attention spans, BTW).

* These DC settings should honestly be the defaults, if not "Don't allow" for both settings 👇

🚨PSA: HOW TO AVOID GETTING SCAMMED IN DIRECT CASTS🚨

A few easy steps to help key yourself safe from scammers getting up in your DCs:

🚨 Lock down your DC settings*.

🚨 Consider all unsolicited DCs from someone you don't know as a scam.

🚨 Carefully scrutinize any unusual messages from someone's account you know just in case they've been hacked: especially if it's an offer that seems really lucrative.

🚨 Search FC and X with key terms from the message; it will help you to identify many common scams.

🚨 If you're still not sure, cast about it publicly to ask.

🚨 Name and shame any scammers who get through to your DCs in public casts warning others (using these siren emojis and phrases like "SCAM ALERT" helps get past people's short attention spans, BTW).

* These DC settings should honestly be the defaults, if not "Don't allow" for both settings 👇

https://farcaster.xyz/pichi/0xfe1af460
https://farcaster.xyz/pichi/0xf1b04dfa

Pi-chi.eth Artist /animeoutcasts
Hosting: /sakura /kyoto /anime-manga /farcasterunion

https://portrait.so/pichi

Here they tend to sit on accounts for a long time. Gain followers and trust and then change the whole account right before the scam!

They are very sophisticated and good at draining wallets!

I saw my fair share of these when I first joined the crypto art community on X a couple years back, was really grateful for unequivocal advice from some OGs to just lock down direct messages. 

Since then, I've only had one scam message: from a prominent collector of my art whose account had been compromised.

Thankfully a quick search identified it as a hacked account scam that had started to spread on X.

Thanks for sharing! We gotta help keep the community safe!