Scam warning if you are on the ESO discord server

CaffeinatedMayhem · November 2021

This morning I was contacted by someone on the ESO discord (a player, not a dev or class rep) who claimed to have accidentally reported my steam account for fraud. This led to me losing my Steam account and being banned. Long story, 30 screencaps. Anyway, I don't know the extent of this scam, but if you are on the ESO discord and are contacted about your Steam account, I suggest not interacting with the person, but take a screencap of the conversation and contact Steam Support directly.

Vevvev · November 2021

I've seen this scam on my Elite: Dangerous discord server to. The moment they spoke about reporting me over this weird deal gone wrong, the vague details, the refusal to show a screencap of the person who supposedly pretended to be me, and the ignoring of the name of the game the server was apart of were massive red flags.

Dig into their story, and if they hold information back that's crucial to getting down the the bottom of their "problem" they're scamming you. Block them and run away.

CaffeinatedMayhem · November 2021

Vevvev wrote: »

I've seen this scam on my Elite: Dangerous discord server to. The moment they spoke about reporting me over this weird deal gone wrong, the vague details, the refusal to show a screencap of the person who supposedly pretended to be me, and the ignoring of the name of the game the server was apart of were massive red flags.

Dig into their story, and if they hold information back that's crucial to getting down the the bottom of their "problem" they're scamming you. Block them and run away.

This team was pretty good, had me up to the point of "ok well we banned you anyway now put money on your account as insurance so we unban you"

Not sure if Steam Support will help or not, but at least I don't play ESO through Steam.

Vevvev · November 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

I've seen this scam on my Elite: Dangerous discord server to. The moment they spoke about reporting me over this weird deal gone wrong, the vague details, the refusal to show a screencap of the person who supposedly pretended to be me, and the ignoring of the name of the game the server was apart of were massive red flags.

Dig into their story, and if they hold information back that's crucial to getting down the the bottom of their "problem" they're scamming you. Block them and run away.

This team was pretty good, had me up to the point of "ok well we banned you anyway now put money on your account as insurance so we unban you"

Not sure if Steam Support will help or not, but at least I don't play ESO through Steam.

Agreed, they were very convincing up until they started talking about reporting, and banning, etc. Bit scary tbh...

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan · November 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

This morning I was contacted by someone on the ESO discord (a player, not a dev or class rep) who claimed to have accidentally reported my steam account for fraud. This led to me losing my Steam account and being banned. Long story, 30 screencaps. Anyway, I don't know the extent of this scam, but if you are on the ESO discord and are contacted about your Steam account, I suggest not interacting with the person, but take a screencap of the conversation and contact Steam Support directly.

I'd suggest contacting the Discord admins also, anyone using Discord like that should be banned, for real.

Maitsukas · November 2021

I've had scammers message me for no reason, usually I check the servers I share with them, if there seems to be tool few or none at all, I just ignore them.

I've started being more cautious after my ESO account got hacked into a few months ago, I noticed my main character was in a different zone than the night before. I took immediate action on getting it back and managed to do it in under 5 minutes. After that I warned my guild in our Discord server to change their passwords just in case.

guarstompemoji · November 2021

vsrs_au wrote: »

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

This morning I was contacted by someone on the ESO discord (a player, not a dev or class rep) who claimed to have accidentally reported my steam account for fraud. This led to me losing my Steam account and being banned. Long story, 30 screencaps. Anyway, I don't know the extent of this scam, but if you are on the ESO discord and are contacted about your Steam account, I suggest not interacting with the person, but take a screencap of the conversation and contact Steam Support directly.

I'd suggest contacting the Discord admins also, anyone using Discord like that should be banned, for real.

This. Make sure to contact the Discord admins. Scammers like these, from my understanding, gain access to user lists via bots in a server. The admins can ban on their server, and at least look at tightening security.

redspecter23 · November 2021

Out of curiosity, was the scam implemented simply by replying to them or did they do some phishing? Can even just responding "go away" be enough to put your account at risk or do they dig around for info?

CaffeinatedMayhem · November 2021

redspecter23 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, was the scam implemented simply by replying to them or did they do some phishing? Can even just responding "go away" be enough to put your account at risk or do they dig around for info?

This was someone pretending to have been scammed as a seller on steam. They were pretty convincing that my account had been impersonated and directed me to talk with a Steam Community Moderator. The "moderator" asked for screen caps of account transactions/status to reverse the pending ban, then banned me, then asked for credentials, claiming something "went wrong". I went along for a bit, but when they asked me to put money on my account to reverse the ban I stopped. Should have been more suspicious, but we all have bad days.

I'm hoping Steam will reverse the ban and get my account back, but this is pretty nasty.

redspecter23 · November 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, was the scam implemented simply by replying to them or did they do some phishing? Can even just responding "go away" be enough to put your account at risk or do they dig around for info?

This was someone pretending to have been scammed as a seller on steam. They were pretty convincing that my account had been impersonated and directed me to talk with a Steam Community Moderator. The "moderator" asked for screen caps of account transactions/status to reverse the pending ban, then banned me, then asked for credentials, claiming something "went wrong". I went along for a bit, but when they asked me to put money on my account to reverse the ban I stopped. Should have been more suspicious, but we all have bad days.

I'm hoping Steam will reverse the ban and get my account back, but this is pretty nasty.

Thanks for the details. I'll be on the lookout and also warn my friends/guildmates to watch out. Hopefully Steam can get set things right for you.

SeaGtGruff · November 2021

There's an official ESO Discord server? If you have screen captures of the conversation, maybe you can contact ZOS and have them take action against the scammers for abusing the ESO Discord server that way? Or you could go directly to the Discord people and try it. I assume any scammers who get banned from Discord will just create new Discord accounts, but at least you'll have the satisfaction of having done something.

ghost_bg_ESO · November 2021

Here one long reading from Malwarebytes for the whole scheme:
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/scams/2021/03/steam-users-dont-fall-for-the-i-accidentally-reported-you-scam/

CaffeinatedMayhem · November 2021

I did get my Steam account back, and reported the scammers, but I doubt anything will get done. Discord only allows 1 attachement and 1 message link - which isn't enough to capture this scam.

SeaGtGruff · November 2021

It's good that you got your account back. I hope you immediately changed the password and checked to make sure they didn't buy a bunch of stuff and gift it to their real accounts or something like that. Does your Steam account profile display your credit card information? That would be another thing to lock down.

CaffeinatedMayhem · November 2021

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

It's good that you got your account back. I hope you immediately changed the password and checked to make sure they didn't buy a bunch of stuff and gift it to their real accounts or something like that. Does your Steam account profile display your credit card information? That would be another thing to lock down.

No, only last 4 are displayed for credit card info. I've taken all the security precautions now, but I'm still on community ban, which means they couldn't have done transactions anyway,

ghost_bg_ESO · November 2021

I was wondering last days why there were so much banned accounts in different steam game forums, even on regulars. This kind of explains it.

Disturbed_One · November 2021

Crazy how people still fall for this year+ old scam still...

Online security 101... if you don't know the person, assume it's not legit until proven otherwise.

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan · November 2021

Disturbed_One wrote: »

Crazy how people still fall for this year+ old scam still...

Online security 101... if you don't know the person, assume it's not legit until proven otherwise.

... and if someone asks you to send money, most of the time it's a scam.

Disturbed_One · November 2021

vsrs_au wrote: »

Disturbed_One wrote: »

Crazy how people still fall for this year+ old scam still...

Online security 101... if you don't know the person, assume it's not legit until proven otherwise.

... and if someone asks you to send money, most of the time it's a scam.

I'm just a pessimist and will assume it's a scam period.

But I guess there's a reason these scams continue to exist...

kargen27 · November 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

I did get my Steam account back, and reported the scammers, but I doubt anything will get done. Discord only allows 1 attachement and 1 message link - which isn't enough to capture this scam.

They will probably be aware of the scam and how it works though. So if you sent something that identifies one of the steps it would be enough for them to look into it farther. Save everything in case a request for more details is made.

Unfortunately if they are like most companies you will never know the outcome good or bad. Thank you for making is aware of this potential problem is usually the best you can hope for as far as responses go.

huntgod_ESO · November 2021

ghost_bg_ESO wrote: »

Here one long reading from Malwarebytes for the whole scheme:
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/scams/2021/03/steam-users-dont-fall-for-the-i-accidentally-reported-you-scam/

How do people fall for this stuff?